Which Books Do Famous Authors Read and Recommend Most?

Everyone loves a list—especially a list of books. To that end, people (including certain people at a nice place called Literary Hub) are always asking famous writers to give them lists of books they love, and famous writers are always doing it, because again, who doesn’t like a list of books, and especially when those books are your own favorites, and you get to talk about them again. While considering the proliferation of the high-profile literary listicle, I started wondering which books famous authors most often touted among their favorites. And as often happens, once I started wondering, I soon knew I was in for some math.

I looked at 68 lists made by famous authors, from the classic (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway) to the contemporary (Yaa Gyasi, Mary Gaitskill, Maggie Nelson, George Saunders), and kept track of which books they recommended most often. The results were interesting—not particularly because of the most recommended books (many of them are pretty predictable) but because of the details—the groupings, the exclusions, the agreements between authors you wouldn’t necessarily think had similar taste. The fact that Ha Jin, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jonathan Franzen, and Philip Roth all recommend William Faulkner—but none of them agree on which book they like best. The book that Sandra Cisneros and Eileen Myles both chose. The fact that Joan Didion and Philip Roth have the same favorite Hemingway novel. The crossover between Marlon James and Donald Barthelme. The crossover between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Helen Fielding! The ongoing fight over which Tolstoy novel is the best. Well, you can see for yourself.

NB that of course, this list is limited by a) the available pre-existing listicles and b) my ability to maintain an ongoing Excel sheet for any longer, so no doubt the numbers would be slightly different if I had a team of readers and counters at my disposal. But alas. Consider this a sample size, and enjoy.

MOST RECOMMENDED BOOKS:

The winner, with 9 mentions:
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
(Recommended by Ernest Hemingway, Sloane Crosley, Bret Easton Ellis, John Irving, Mary Gatiskill, Helen Fielding, Philip Roth, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore)

7 mentions:
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
(after combining all the mentions of the different books into one)
(Recommended by Michael Chabon, Ha Jin, Claire Messud, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gary Shteyngart, A. S. Byatt)

6 mentions:
George Eliot, Middlemarch (Bret Easton Ellis, Gary Shteyngart, Zadie Smith, A.S. Byatt, Jennifer Egan, Lorrie Moore)
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Donald Barthelme, Joan Didion, John Irving, Irvine Welsh, Edwidge Danticat, Yaa Gyasi)
James Joyce, Ulysses (Henry Miller, Tom Stoppard, Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Irvine Welsh, Mary Gaitskill)
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Ernest Hemingway, Bret Easton Ellis, Philip Roth, Sheila Heti, Ha Jin, Claire Messud)
Leo Tosltoy, War and Peace (Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alan Hollinghurst, Ha Jin, George Saunders)

5 mentions:
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Marlon James, Helen Fielding, Michael Chabon, Claire Messud, Lily King)
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Donald Barthelme, Maya Angelou, Edwidge Danticat, Jennifer Egan, Percival Everett)
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (Donald Barthelme, Marlon James, Jonathan Franzen, Yaa Gyasi, Brit Bennett)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Alison Bechdel, Michael Cunningham, Maggie Nelson, Mary Gaitskill, Lily King)

4 mentions:
Anton Chekhov, The Complete Stories (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gary Shteyngart, Ha Jin, George Saunders)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Bret Easton Ellis, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jay McInerney, Irvine Welsh)
Bernard Malamud, The Assistant (Donald Barthelme, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth, Heidi Julavits)
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Henry Miller, Bret Easton Ellis, Percival Everett, George Saunders)

3 mentions:
James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain (Joan Didion, Yaa Gyasi, Brit Bennett)
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (Henry Miller, Heidi Julavits, Lorrie Moore)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Sarah Waters, Erica Jong, Lorrie Moore)
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, Henry Miller)
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (Donald Barthelme, Jeanette Winterson, Michael Cunningham)
Colette, Chéri (Erica Jong, J. K. Rowling, Philip Roth)
Don DeLillo, Underworld (Stephen King, Jennifer Egan, Irvine Welsh)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Ernest Hemingway, Rachel Kushner, Ha Jin)
The Brothers Grimm, Fairy Tales (Henry Miller, Philip Pullman, Sarah Waters)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zadie Smith, Edwidge Danticat, Brit Bennett)
James Joyce, Dubliners (Ernest Hemingway, Lorrie Moore, Lily King)
Flannery O’Connor, Collected Stories (Donald Barthelme, Tom Perrotta, Michael Cunningham)
Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (Ernest Hemingway, Philip Pullman, Alan Hollinghurst)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Margaret Atwood, Edwidge Danticat, Lily King)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (Tom Stoppard, Mary Gaitskill, Michael Chabon)
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (Jennifer Egan, Percival Everett, George Saunders)
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Complete Poems (Alan Hollinghurst, A. S. Byatt, Henry Miller [Idylls of the King])
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edwidge Danticat, Brit Bennett)
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (Tom Stoppard, Jay McInerney, Danzy Senna)
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Helen Fielding)

2 mentions:
Sherwood Anderson, Winesbug, Ohio (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Perrotta)
Arabian Nights (Henry Miller, Heidi Julavits)
Jane Austen, Emma (Jay McInerney, J.K. Rowling)
Jane Austen, Persuasion (Zoe Heller, Yiyun Li)
Isaac Babel, Collected Short Stories (Donald Barthelme, George Saunders)
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maggie Nelson)
Thomas Bernhard, Correction (Donald Barthelme, John Edgar Wideman)
Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Stephen King, Jeff VanderMeer)
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths (Donald Barthelme, Michael Chabon)
Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky (Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen)
Andre Breton, Nadja (Donald Barthelme, Henry Miller)
Charlotte Brontë, Villette (Kazuo Ishiguro, Yiyun Li)
Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha (Eileen Myles, Sandra Cisneros)
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (Marlon James, Eileen Myles)
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (Donald Barthelme, Percival Everett)
Albert Camus, The Stranger (Edwidge Danticat, Heidi Julavits)
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Henry Miller, A.S. Byatt)
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night (Donald Barthelme, Henry Miller)
Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Stephen King, Jorge Luis Borges)
Joseph Conrad, Victory (Joan Didion, F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (Margaret Atwood, John Irving)
Don DeLillo, White Noise (Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Franzen)
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Neil Gaiman, Mary Gaitskill)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (Joan Didion, Philip Roth)
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (Stephen King, Bret Easton Ellis)
Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders)
Knut Hamsun, Hunger (Donald Barthelme, Jo Nesbo)
Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd (Sloane Crosley, Helen Fielding)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Tom Perrotta, John Irving)
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (Joan Didion, Philip Roth)
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Jorge Luis Borges, Phillip Pullman)
Franz Kafka, The Trial (Philip Roth, Edwidge Danticat)
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (Stephen King, Tana French)
Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth (Yaa Gyasi, Lily King)
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (Erica Jong, Jennifer Egan)
Ian McEwan, Atonement (Stephen King, Curtis Sittenfeld)
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (John Irving, Michael Chabon)
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (Jo Nesbo, Mary Gaitskill)
V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas (Heidi Julavits, Claire Messud)
Flann O’Brien, At Swim Two Birds (Donald Barthelme, Tom Stoppard)
Edgar Allan Poe, Tales (Jorge Luis Borges, Michael Chabon)
Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight (Sandra Cisneros, Jennifer Egan)
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Yiyun Li, Kevin Powers)
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo (Jorge Luis Borges, Kevin Powers)
Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche (Michael Ondaatje, Michael Chabon)
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen)
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose (Kevin Powers, Percival Everett)
Stendhal, The Red and the Black (Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Henry Miller, Jorge Luis Borges)
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (Stephen King, Tana French)
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gary Shteyngart)
T. H. White, The Once and Future King (Sloane Crosley, Tana French)
P. G. Wodehouse, Summer Lightning (Philip Pullman, Helen Fielding)
Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel (Maya Angelou, Philip Roth)
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell)
Emile Zola, Germinal (Edwidge Danticat, Jennifer Egan)

*

MOST RECOMMENDED AUTHORS:

The criteria for these is that at least three discrete books be mentioned by at least two different authors (so it can’t be a single author—looking at you, Stephen King—recommending an entire backlist). They are organized by number of different books by the same author mentioned in the whole list.

8 books:
Henry James
The American (Ernest Hemingway); The Figure in the Carpet (Jorge Luis Borges); The Golden Bowl (Maggie Nelson); The Lesson of the Master (Jorge Luis Borges); The Portrait of a Lady (Claire Messud); The Private Life (Jorge Luis Borges); Washington Square (Lorrie Moore); What Maisie Knew (Alan Hollinghurst); the novels of Henry James (Joan Didion)

6 books:
Alice Munro
Friend of My Youth (Lily King); Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (Jonathan Franzen), Runaway (Jonathan Franzen); The Beggar Maid (Jonathan Franzen); The Lives of Girls and Women (Margaret Atwood); The Progress of Love (Curtis Sittenfeld); the stories in general (Lorrie Moore)

5 books:
Charles Dickens
Bleak House (Neil Gaiman, Mary Gaitskill); A Tale of Two Cities (Maya Angelou); David Copperfield (John Irving); Great Expectations (Sarah Waters); Oliver Twist (Stephen King)
Fyodor Doestoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov (Ernest Hemingway, Rachel Kushner, Ha Jin); Crime and Punishment (Joan Didion, Philip Roth); The Idiot (A.S. Byatt); The Possessed (Claire Messud); Demons (Jorge Luis Borges); his works in general (Henry Miller)
William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! (Ha Jin); As I Lay Dying (Stephen King); Sanctuary (F. Scott Fitzgerald); The Hamlet (Jonathan Franzen); The Sound and the Fury (Philip Roth)

4 books:
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice (Marlon James, Helen Fielding, Michael Chabon, Claire Messud, Lily King); Emma (Jay McInerney, J.K. Rowling); Persuasion (Zoë Heller, Yiyun Li); Mansfield Park (Alison Bechdel)
James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain (Joan Didion, Yaa Gyasi, Brit Bennett); The Fire Next Time (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maggie Nelson); Notes of a Native Son (Joan Didion); Giovanni’s Room (John Irving)
Henry Green
Loving (Alan Hollinghurst); Blindness (Heidi Julavits); Doting (Heidi Julavits); Nothing (Heidi Julavits)
Denis Johnson
Angels (Jonathan Franzen); Jesus’ Son (Jonathan Franzen); Train Dreams (Michael Cunningham); Tree of Smoke (Stephen King)
Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian (Kazuo Ishiguro); Cities of the Plain (Stephen King); No Country For Old Men (Stephen King); The Crossing (Stephen King)
Ian McEwan
Atonement (Stephen King, Curtis Sittenfeld); Enduring Love (Stephen King); Nutshell (Khaled Hosseini); The Cement Garden (Stephen King)
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick (John Irving, Michael Chabon); Bartleby, the Scrivener (Jorge Luis Borges); Benito Cereno (Jorge Luis Borges); Billy Budd (Jorge Luis Borges)
V. S. Naipau
A House for Mr. Biswas (Heidi Julavits, Claire Messud); A Bend in the River (Ha Jin); Guerrillas (Joan Didion); Half a Life (Karan Mahajan)
Philip Roth
American Pastoral (Stephen King); Portnoy’s Complaint (Gary Shteyngart); Sabbath’s Theater (Bret Easton Ellis); The Plot Against America (Stephen King)
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Tana French); Hamlet (George Saunders); Macbeth (Jo Nesbo); Romeo and Juliet (Lorrie Moore)
Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence (Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Helen Fielding); The Custom of the Country (Jay McInerney); Ethan Frome (Tom Perrotta); The House of Mirth (Jennifer Egan)
Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse (Alison Bechdel, Michael Cunningham, Maggie Nelson, Mary Gaitskill, Lily King); Orlando (Jeanette Winterson); The Waves (John Edgar Wideman); A Writer’s Diary (Alan Hollinghurst)

3 books:
Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions (Jay McInerney); Louis Lambert (Henry Miller); Seraphita (Henry Miller)
Saul Bellow
Herzog (Karan Mahajan); The Adventures of Augie March (Philip Roth); Seize the Day (Jonathan Franzen)
Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths (Donald Barthelme, Michael Chabon); Dreamtigers (Sandra Cisneros); Other Inquisitions (Donald Barthelme)
Michael Chabon
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin); Kavalier and Clay (Ursula K. Le Guin); Werewolves in Their Youth (Stephen King)
G. K. Chesterton
St. Francis of Assisi (Henry Miller); The Blue Cross (Jorge Luis Borges); The Man Who Was Thursday (Neil Gaiman)
Colette
Chéri (Erica Jong, J.K. Rowling, Philip Roth); The Last of Chéri (Erica Jong); The Pure and the Impure (Donald Barthelme)
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness (Stephen King, Jorge Luis Borges); Victory (Joan Didion, F. Scott Fitzgerald); The End of the Tether (Jorge Luis Borges); his works in general (Henry Miller)
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary (Ernest Hemingway, Sloane Crosley, Bret Easton Ellis, John Irving, Mary Gatiskill, Helen Fielding, Philip Roth, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore); Sentimental Education (Bret Easton Ellis); The Temptation of St. Anthony (Jorge Luis Borges)
Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Donald Barthelme, Joan Didion, John Irving, Irvine Welsh, Edwidge Danticat, Yaa Gyasi); Love in the Time of Cholera (Michael Chabon); The Autumn of the Patriarch (Marlon James)
Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd (Sloane Crosley, Helen Fielding); Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Lily King)l The Mayor of Casterbridge (John Irving)
Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms (Joan Didion, Philip Roth); The First Forty-Nine Stories (Tom Stoppard); The Sun Also Rises (Jay McInerney)
Henrik Ibsen
A Doll’s House (F. Scott Fitzgerald); Hedda Gabler (Jorge Luis Borges); Peer Gynt (Jorge Luis Borges)
Franz Kafka
The Trial (Philip Roth, Edwidge Danticat); Amerika (Jorge Luis Borges); The Complete Stories (Jorge Luis Borges)
Bernard Malamud
The Assistant (Donald Barthelme, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth, Heidi Julavits); The Fixer (Stephen King); The Magic Barrel (Donald Barthelme)
Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks (Ernest Hemingway, Philip Pullman, Alan Hollinghurst); Death in Venice (John Irving); The Magic Mountain (Henry Miller)
Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon (Donald Barthelme, Marlon James, Jonathan Franzen, Yaa Gyasi, Brit Bennett); Beloved (Margaret Atwood, Edwidge Danticat, Lily King); Sula (Yiyun Li)
Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire (Tom Stoppard, Mary Gaitskill, Michael Chabon); Pnin (Gary Shteyngart, Zadie Smith, Ha Jin); Lolita (Jo Nesbo, Mary Gaitskill)
Flann O’Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds (Donald Barthelme, Tom Stoppard); The Third Policeman (Donald Barthelme); The Best of Myles (Philip Pullman)
Joyce Carol Oates
We Were the Mulvaneys (Stephen King); Zombie (Stephen King); Wonderland (Joan Didion)
Kurt Vonnegut
Bluebeard (Percival Everett); Hocus Pocus (Stephen King); Slaughterhouse-Five (George Saunders)
Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust (Tom Stoppard, Jay McInerney, Danzy Senna); Brideshead Revisited (Stephen King); Put Out More Flags (Alan Hollinghurst)
H. G. Wells
The Time Machine (Jorge Luis Borges); The Invisible Man (Jorge Luis Borges); Country of the Blind and Other Selected Stories (Philip Pullman)
Oscar Wilde
Essays & Dialogues (Jorge Luis Borges); The Picture of Dorian Gray (Sheila Heti); The Plays (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
P. G. Wodehouse
Summer Lightning (Philip Pullman, Helen Fielding); Right Ho, Jeeves (Kazuo Ishiguro); The Code of the Woosters (Jay McInerney)

LISTS CONSULTED:

Good read found on the Lithub