Have you read? Readers recommend their favorite books.

READER TO WRITER

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Jim Black lives in Wichita Falls, Texas.

With no formal training--except for a flunked creative writing course in college--I learned to write by reading. I learned well enough so that my first novel, River Season, was published in 2003/2004 by Viking/Penguin. I owe a great debt to many wonderful books and their authors--especially to these ten.

THE KILLER ANGELS

By Michael Shaara

* PULITZER PRIZE

Many historical novels are painstakingly researched and many are beautifully written. But it is rare to find one that is both. When you have finished Shaara's novel (based on the Battle of Gettysburg), pick up Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, by Shaara's son, Jeff. Is it possible that good writing is hereditary? Evidently.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

LEGION

By William Peter Blatty

Trust me: this sequel to Blatty's horrific blockbuster, The Exorcist, is even scarier and more thought-provoking than the earlier novel. Not just for horror buffs, Legion, which is about demonic possession and the nature of evil, appeals and satisfies on many levels. It is surely one of the best-kept secrets and most overlooked literary gems of all time.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE STARSHIP AND THE CANOE

By Kenneth Brower

Freeman Dyson is a world-famous astrophysicist who designs spaceships. His son, George, lives in a giant Douglas fir in British Columbia and builds kayaks. Brower's book is fascinating--and it's all true.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

SHOELESS JOE

By W. P. Kinsella

This book, which inspired the movie Field of Dreams, covers all the bases and touches on every emotion. The novel--not its movie version--treats us to the kidnapping of J. D. Salinger!

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

BOY'S LIFE

By Robert R. McCammon

Tinged with magic, McCammon's watershed novel explores the wonders of growing up as told by 11-year-old Cory Mackenson of Zephyr, Alabama, in 1964. Adventurous, humorous, and tragic, Boy's Life is storytelling of the highest order.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

HORSEMAN, PASS BY

By Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry has blazed a stunning trail of literary works and screenplays in his lifetime, acquiring a Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award along the way. But this brief and unabashedly sentimental first novel, and the basis for the movie Hud, is still my favorite McMurtry book.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

POINT OF IMPACT

By Stephen Hunter

Do you like thrillers? Hurry out and purchase a copy of this guaranteed can't-put-down tale--and every other Stephen Hunter book you can get your hands on. Then prepare to be mesmerized by this story of a former Vietnam sniper drawn, years later, into one last mission.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE

An Inquiry into Values

By Robert M. Pirsig

The reclusive author's personal "Inquiry into Values" and examination of the "Metaphysics of Quality" is a book like none other. A cover blurb claims: "This book will change the way you think and feel about your life." It's right.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK

By Annie Dillard

* PULITZER PRIZE

Even Thoreau and Whitman, I suspect, would be astounded by what Annie Dillard has put between the covers of this book, a collection of introspective essays about the natural world. If you like to highlight memorable passages, be warned--one highlighter isn't enough.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

RUNNING TO THE MOUNTAIN

A Midlife Adventure

By Jon Katz

Widely recognized for his insightful and entertaining examinations of our canine friends and our relationships with them, here Jon Katz gazes inward as he tries to understand his own midlife crisis. Running to the Mountain is a courageous, and ultimately rewarding, undertaking: it helps us better understand Jon Katz--as well as ourselves.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

UNIVERSITY LIFE

Niranjana Iyer lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Fiction, rather than nonfiction, has always provided the real scoop for me. So, before I moved from India to America for graduate school, I read these books to find out what American campuses were really like.

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY

By John Irving

Dealing with faith and doubt and, above all, friendship, the story of Owen Meany and Johnny Wheelwright throughout their prep-school days in New Hampshire is especially significant to me because I studied at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

CHANGING PLACES

By David Lodge

When Morris Zapp of Euphoria State University in California and Phillip Swallow of Britain's Rummidge University exchange academic positions for a year, they end up changing their lives. Euphoria State is based on the University of California, Berkeley, and Rummidge on the University of Birmingham. Lodge's novel is so funny and entertaining that I realized only much later how much information I had absorbed about the different academic systems of Europe and America.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

POSSESSION

A Romance

By A. S. Byatt

Who knew that academics could squabble over rare manuscripts and that college departments were just as competitive as corporations? Possession features two love stories, one contemporary and the other historical, against a backdrop of literary intrigue. Answers to the mystery are located in university libraries rather than in a CSI laboratory.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

WONDER BOYS

By Michael Chabon

From this novel, I first learned the significance of tenure in the academic world. English professor Grady Tripp struggles to finish a novel even as he must deal with his pregnant mistress, a troubled student, and an increasingly demanding agent. Events climax over a chaotic weekend.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE SECRET HISTORY

By Donna Tartt

Five classics students commit a murder in an elite Vermont college. The juxtaposition of sordid murder against a privileged institution made for compelling reading.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE NAMESAKE

By Jhumpa Lahiri

Gogol Ganguli, the American son of first-generation Indian parents, finds the issue of his identity puzzling--as exemplified by his Bengali ancestry, his American upbringing, and his Russian name. Although The Namesake is not an "academic" novel, I'm including it here because Gogol's father is an engineering professor in Massachusetts and because Lahiri describes Gogol's years at Yale with a close attention to the minutiae of student life.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

LOVE STORY

By Erich Segal

I first read this novel when I was 14, and wept buckets at the tragic story of a Harvard boy who loves and loses a Radcliffe girl.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

By Alison Lurie

Convers College, a liberal arts institution in New England, provides the setting for this story of a newly married couple's travails (in academia and elsewhere.) Although the novel was published in 1962, Lurie's descriptions of the pressures of academic life are as relevant today as they were 45 years ago.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

ANAGRAMS

By Lorrie Moore

This novel informed me that professors were often bored with their students. (I had always thought the opposite.) Moore's playful intelligence, perhaps best illustrated in her wonderful puns (she describes one character as a "cereal monogamist"), left me breathless.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

ON BEAUTY

By Zadie Smith

Race, class, and gender are examined in an Ivy League setting which features two academic rivals and their families. Smith's eye for detail is only matched by her ear for dialogue. The novel was published after I graduated, but my list would have been incomplete without it. (EXCELLENT SELECTION Nov/Dec 2005)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]