By Thomas Pynchon
160 pages; Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Available at: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

"I thought for a long time, What would this be like as a movie? I'm not sure it's possible." Pynchon's satirical, weirdly inventive novel centers on Oedipa Maas, a woman who stumbles onto what may or may not be a wide-reaching conspiracy by a secret mail-delivery organization. It's a wild ride, but at its core, it is a surprisingly poignant story about a woman on a quest for self-knowledge. "To me this book is about recovering human feeling. I remember that Oedipa Maas fills her sunglasses with tears. Because they're bubble sunglasses the tears don't fall, so she's actually looking through her own tears at the world. What a powerful image."

— As told to Karen Holt