Writers’s reading lists: Stephen King’s Reading Lists for Writers

In the afterword to On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King shares the following:

 “These are the best books I’ve read over the last three or four years, the period during which I wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Hearts in Atlantis, On Writing, and the as-yet-unpublished From a Buick Eight. In some way or other, I suspect each book in the list had an influence on the books I wrote….These are the ones that worked for me, that’s all. But you could do worse, and a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work. Even if they don’t, they’re apt to entertain you. They certainly entertained me.”

And then on the 10th anniversary edition:
“At the end of the original edition of On Writing, I listed about a hundred books which entertained and taught me.  The publisher’s suggested I update the list for this new edition, so here are eight-plus more – the best things I’ve read between 2001 and 2009.  As I said in the 2000 edition of the book… you could do worse.”

1. Peter Abrahams, End of Story
2. Peter Abrahams, The Tutor
3. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
4. Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn
5. Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
6. Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork
7. Benjamin Black [pseudo.], Christine Falls
8. Peter Blauner, The Last Good Day
9. Roberto Bolaño, 2666
10. David Carr, The Night of the Gun
11. John Casey, Spartina
12. Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
13. Lee Child, The Jack Reacher novels, starting with Killing Floor
14. Michael Connelly, The Narrows
15. Mark Costello, Big If
16. Michael Cunningham, The Hours
17. Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
18. Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
19. Richard Dooling, White Man’s Grave
20. David Downing, Zoo Station
21. Andre Dubus, The Garden of Last Days
22. Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
23. Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes
24. Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End
25. Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion
26. Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
27. Neil Gaiman, American Gods
28. Meg Gardiner, Crosscut
29. Meg Gardiner, The Dirty Secrets Club
30. William Gay, The Long Home
31. Robert Goddard, Painting the Darkness
32. Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
33. Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts
34. Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War
35. Charlie Huston, The Hank Thompson Trilogy
36. Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke
37. Garrison Keillor (ed), Good Poems
38. Sue Monk Kid, The Secret Life of Bees
39. Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
40. Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
41. John le Carré, Absolute Friends
42. Dennis Lehane, The Given Day
43. Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey’s Room
44. Jonathan Letham, The Fortress of Solitude
45. Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know
46. Bentley Little, Dispatch
47. Bernard Malamud, The Fixer
48. Yann Martel, Life of Pi
49. Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
50. Ian McEwan, Atonement
51. James Meek, The People’s Act of Love
52. Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
53. Patrick O’Brian, The Aubrey/Maturin Novels
54. Stewart O’Nan, The Good Wife
55. Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys
56. George Pelecanos, Hard Revolution
57. George Pelecanos, The Turnaround
58. Tom Perrotta, The Abstinence Teacher
59. Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
60. DBC Pierre, Vernon Little God
61. Annie Proulx, Fine Just the Way It Is
62. Michael Robotham, Shatter
63. Philip Roth, American Pastoral
64. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
65. Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
66. Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs
67. Richard Russo, Empire Falls
68. Dan Simmons, Drood
69. Dan Simmons, The Terror
70. Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
71. Tom Rob Smith, Child 44
72. Scott Snyder, Voodoo Heart
73. Neil Stephenson, Quicksilver
74. Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
75. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 
76. Joseph Wambaugh, Hollywood Station
77. Robert Warren Penn, All the King’s Men
78. Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger
79. Mark Winegardner, Crooked River Burning
80. Mark Winegardner, The Godfather Review
81. David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
82. Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

1. Peter Abrahams, A Perfect Crime
2. Peter Abrahams, Lights Out
3. Peter Abrahams, Pressure Drop
4. Peter Abrahams,Revolution #9
5. James Agee, A Death in the Family
6. Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs
7. Pat Barker, Regeneration
8. Pat Barker, The Eye in the Door
9. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
10. Richard Bausch, In the Night Season
11. Peter Blauner, The Intruder
12. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
13. T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain
14. Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
15. Christopher Buckley, Thank You for Smoking
16. Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From
17. Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth
18. Windsor Chorlton, Latitude Zero
19. Michael Connelly, The Poet
20. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Free eBook – Gutenberg / Kindle)
21. K.C. Constantine, Family Values
22. Don DeLillo, Underworld
23. Nelson DeMille, Cathedral
24. Nelson DeMille, The Gold Coast
25. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Free eBook – Gutenberg / Kindle)
26. Stephen Dobyns, Common Carnage
27. Stephen Dobyns, The Church of Dead Girls
28. Roddy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
29. Stanely Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
30. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
31. Alex Garland, The Beach
32. Elizabeth George, Deception on His Mind
33. Tess Gerritsen, Gravity
34. William Golding, Lord of the Flies
35. Muriel Gray, Furnace
36. Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale (aka This Gun for Hire)
37. Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
38. David Halberstam, The Fifties
39. Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters
40. Thomas Harris, Hannibal
41. Kent Haruf, Plainsong
42. Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
43. Stephen Hunter, Dirty White Boys
44. David Ignatius, A Firing Offense
45. John Irving, A Widow for One Year
46. Graham Joyce, The Tooth Fairy
47. Alan Judd, The Devil’s Own Work
48. Roger Kahn, Good Enough to Dream
49. Mary Karr,  The Liars’ Club
50. Jack Ketchum, Right to Life
51. Tabitha King, Survivor
52. Tabitha King, The Sky in the Water
53. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
54. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
55. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
56. Bernard Lefkowitz, Our Guys
57. Bentley Little,  The Ignored
58. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
59. W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (Free eBook – Gutenberg)
60. Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
61. Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
62. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
63. Alice McDermott, Charming Billy
64. Jack McDevitt, Ancient Shores
65. Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
66. Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden
67. Larry McMurtry, Dead Man’s Walk
68. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Zeke and Ned
69. Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
70. Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
71. Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
72. Stewart O’Nan, The Speed Queen
73. Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
74. Richard North Patterson, No Safe Place
75. Richard Price, Freedomland
76. Annie Proulx, Close Range: Wyoming Stories
77. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
78. Anna Quindlen, One True Thing
79. Ruth Rendell, A Sight for Sore Eyes
80. Frank M. Robinson, Waiting
81. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
82. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban
83. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
84. Richard Russo, Mohawk
85. John Burnham Schwartz, Reservation Road
86. Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
87. Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions
88. Richard Slotkin, The Crater
89. Dinitia Smith, The Illusionist
90. Scott Spencer, Men in Black
91. Wallace Stegner, Joe Hill
92. Donna Tartt, The Secret History
93. Anne Tyler, A Patchwork Planet
94. Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
95. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
96. Donald Westlake, The Ax