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Photo: Joel Robison

"I cherish essay collections—they are long-term companions one repeatedly dips into. Three favorites are There & Then by James Salter, Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith and Portraits by John Berger. In all, beautiful writing and good thinking meet so completely, you can't tell where one ends and the other begins." —Teju Cole, author of the novels Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief

"I once saw a sign in front of a church: WE'RE ALL JUST TRYING TO GET HOME. No book does a better job of reminding me of that than The Odyssey." —Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the bestselling Everything Is Illuminated and the forthcoming Here I Am

"Lynda Barry might be the most underrated writer ever. She is the wisest and funniest chronicler of adolescence in America, and when my inner loner starts wailing uncontrollably, I pick up anything of hers and laugh until my face hurts, until she inevitably hits me with something so profoundly true and heartbreaking, I wonder if she's been spying on me my whole life." —Mary-Louise Parker, actress and author of the memoir Dear Mr. You

"Give me an English family—a bit eccentric, prone to romantic misbehavior, sexual secrets, and large dinner gatherings—and I will surrender, sink in, and be gone. Anthony Powell's 12-volume cycle of novels, A Dance to the Music of Time, is one. English novels almost always make me happy." —George Hodgman, author of Bettyville, a memoir
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Photo: Joel Robison

"I adore the refreshing skepticism of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. Whenever a story on Facebook fills me with mother-guilt (panic thatI've done my son or daughter permanent harm by letting them have cell phones or not washing their fruit), I channel my inner Goldacre: Oh, really? Who says? Based on what?" —Emma Donoghue, author of the novels Room and Slammerkin

"Just occasionally a book comes along that dramatically rewires your world view. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari is one such. It tells our story—our human history—in a way that challenges every assumption we have. Some might find it unsettling, but for me it was exhilarating and unputdownable." —Chris Anderson, author of TED Talks

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X grounds me. It's my go-to." —Shaka Senghor, author of Writing My Wrongs, a memoir

"I've loved Calvin Trillin's The Tummy Trilogy since I was a child, when my dad read it aloud to me." —Rebecca Traister, author of Big Girls Don't Cry and All the Single Ladies
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Photo: Joel Robison

"I recently came upon the unjustly neglected but blissful novels of William Dean Howells. Like Jane Austen, they revel in domestic success and unsuccess; like Henry James, they sometimes set their Americans in Europe; like Anthony Trollope, they are skeptically aware of political turmoil." —Cynthia Ozick, author of Quarrel & Quandary and The Shawl

"I was 45, and all I knew about the Civil War was what I'd read in high school. Embarrassed by my ignorance, I made Shelby Foote's nearly 3,000-page, three-volume trilogy (The Civil War) my bedtime reading for several months. Foote's gift for storytelling creates a narrative so engrossing, I'd forget I knew the war's outcome and keep turning pages, desperate to find out what happened." —David Benioff, co-creator of HBO's Game of Thrones and author of the novel The 25th Hour

"Post Office by Charles Bukowski is the book I refer to when I want to confront the narrative voice at its barest, most honest, most unflattering—and most winning." —Ottessa Moshfegh, author of Eileen, a novel