15 New Yorkers' Favorite Books

"The great power of literature is to expand our vision. Go Tell It on the Mountain is a case in point. You feel as if Baldwin bled over this book, that this book hurt to write. It's not a memoir; it's somebody taking very real feelings and turning them into art. He writes evocatively, but you don't need to have a graduate degree to understand his books—you just need to have a heart." —Ethan Hawke, actor and author

Books that made a difference to Ethan Hawke:

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers by Larry McMurtry

Cruising Paradise by Sam Shepard

And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky