Favorite Books

The danger of listing one’s favorite books is obvious. Some favorite book or some amazing writer will be left out. Some huge gap in memory will create an unintended problem. That said, I will say I’ve been greatly influenced by these books and these authors, as well as many unnamed others:

Particular authors: William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Rumi, Hafiz, Rainer Maria Rilke, W.S. Merwin, Mark Strand, Mary Oliver, Robert Hass, Tom Wolfe, James Galvin, Annie Dillard, Kazuo Ishiguro, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Allison Lurie, Darrell Spencer, Francois Camoin, Nadine Gordimer, G.I. Gurdjieff, Andrew Harvey, Simone Weil, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien, Thomas Merton, Franz Kafka, Heinrich Böll, Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Maureen Whipple, Juanita Brooks, and countless others.