Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.
A client of mine recently asked me what novels I would recommend for the purpose of demonstrating different aspects of writer’s craft.
This episode answers that question by revealing 13 novels every writer should read!
Listen to the podcast now now or read the full transcript below.
Episode Transcript
Hello beloved listeners and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. I am your host Kevin T. Johns.
If this is your first time listening to the podcast, welcome. We love new listeners. This is episode … oh boy, I always forget to check before we start recording. It’s probably episode 59 or 60 or something, which means if you enjoy this episode there’s another 58, 59 episodes out there that you can go check out where I chat with all sorts of amazing people. Shawn Coyne, Jenny Blake, Chandler Bolt. Everyone in the world of helping authors. Tons of great interviews in there with people like Jeff Goins. Everyone you want to hear me chat with, I chat with. Go back. Dig into those archives and check out some of those older episodes.
Normally, I interview someone else, but every once in a while, like actually the last few episodes, it’s just me. This is going to be another one of them because of one of my one-on-one coaching clients … I’m a writing coach guys. It’s not just a title of a podcast. It’s something I do professionally. One of my clients asked me a really great question. I gave it a lot of thought. I decided I was going to answer him in podcast format. Reza, you are probably listening to this. Thank you so much for asking such a great question. We are going to get to it in a minute.
Reza is one of my one-on-one clients. I have a couple other one-on-one clients who have come on board as of late. Peter if you are listening to this, and Attila — welcome aboard guys. I can’t wait to work with you to get your books written.
This episode is going to address a very specific question that Reza asked. Reza grew up in Iran and came to Canada, where I live ten, years ago. He’s really been focusing on his English writing for the last ten years. He’s always been very interested in non-fiction. That’s the type of writing he does. He’s writing a nonfiction self-help book. He said, “Kevin, if I did want to start exploring English fiction, what would be some great books I could read that could help me understand writing better?”
I thought that was such a great question!
That’s what we are going to get into in today’s podcast. We are going to talk about 13 different books that I think every writer should read. Each of these books is going to demonstrate a different aspect of a writer’s craft that I think is really important.
Before we get into that, I do want to say this is not a conversation about overturning the cannon of traditional English literature. This is a podcast episode about writer’s craft. Alright? From the hundreds and hundreds of books I’ve read in my life, these were the books that came to mind as great examples, the best examples in different aspects of the craft of novel writing.
I will warn you, most of the authors I have chosen are white, heterosexual, American men. I’m not going to apologize for my bias. I like what I like, but I will acknowledge my biases. I’m a left-leaning, white, heterosexual, Canadian, male with a masters degree in English literature. All of my book choices are going to be biased by that position of privilege that I’m coming from. I do want to acknowledge that.
If you are listening to this and you are an Aboriginal person or you are a gay man or you are a woman for whom English is not your first language, by all means, create your own list of your favorite examples of different aspects of the writer’s craft. These just happen to be the people who I resonate with, who I’ve read in my life, and who jump out at me as great examples of different aspects of writing.
With that politically correct public service announcement out of the way, let’s dive into some great books that every single writer should read.
The Great Gatsby / Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lightning in a Bottle
Right off the bat, we are going to kick it off with maybe the biggest of them all. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Why should you read this book? It’s the great American novel. It is beautifully written. Brilliantly plotted. The characterization is crystal clear. There are surprising plot twists, but on top of all of that, it’s one of those rare things in art. It’s one of those things that every artist strives after: that magical piece of art where everything just works. Everything gels for where Fitzgerald was in his life. For the story that he chose to tell. Everything comes together in The Great Gatsby to work perfectly.
I’m going to throw a twist on this for you. I don’t want you just to read The Great Gatsby. I also want you to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s follow up to The Great Gatsby, which is Tender is the Night. There’s a reason for that.
In the exact same way that everything works in The Great Gatsby, just every aspect of it is sublime, nothing works in Tender is the Night. Tender is the Night is a disaster of a book. It’s the follow-up to what I would probably argue is the greatest American English language novel of all time.
A lot of writers that I know, they do this thing where they compare themselves not just to the greatest writers of all time, but they look at the one masterpiece from the greatest writer of all time. If you are going to sit at home and say, “Oh my God, my novel is a piece of crap compared to The Great Gatsby.” You know what? It probably is, but F. Scott Fitzgerald’s follow-up was also a piece of crap in comparison to The Great Gatsby.
I really think it’s important that as a writer you understand there is craft. There is technique. There’s hard work. There’s going pro. There is all of that, but there also is a magical element. Fitzgerald couldn’t recreate it. None of us can. If we could all recreate it, we’d all have hit books year after year after year, but there is something magical that comes together in The Great Gatsby that is just the complete opposite in Tender is the Night.
Read both those books so that you can understand not just the genius of The Great Gatsby, but also was a fluke it was, arguably, compared to Fitzgerald’s follow-up book.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Point of View
The next book that I want to recommend is The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
I picked this book because one of the biggest challenges I see aspiring novelists struggling with is point of view.
Point of view is such a tricky element of writing. A lot of first time novelists go into writing a book not even really understanding what it is or how it functions. They do a lot of head-hopping or they jump back and forth between third person or omniscient. They are not conscious of the role the point of view plays in narrative fiction.
The Catcher in the Rye is an absolutely wonderful example of an author capturing a character’s point of view. Holden Caulfield is our main character in The Catcher in the Rye and everything we experience as readers in that book is filtered through Holden’s point of view. There is not an omniscient narrator. Salinger didn’t choose to have God up in the sky looking down on New York and narrating Holden’s adventures. We are there inside Holden’s head, experiencing the journey with him and the language that Salinger uses, it isn’t Salinger’s language. It’s Holden’s language. The way New York is described is the language Holden would use to describe New York, not J. D. Salinger.
That very important element of point of view is captured perfectly in The Catcher in the Rye.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Attitude and Voice
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favorite books. It’s what I would point people to when they are talking about “voice” or “authorial voice.”
People are often a little too obsessed with voice and what is their writerly voice. So you can look to the writing of Hunter S. Thompson for an example of writer whose voice is different from every other writer’s. I can read a piece of writing from Hunter S. Thompson and know that it’s Hunter S. Thompson without anyone telling me. There’s very few writers that you could say that about.
I was conscious of following up The Catcher in the Rye with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because J.D. Salinger was a writer for The New Yorker magazine. The New Yorker, to a certain extent, defined a certain style of writing and liberal intellectual approach to literature in New York City for a lot of the 20th century. I like to compare that to Hunter S. Thompson, who is this other voice.
Thompson is the outsider voice. He wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for Rolling Stone magazine. This was a Rock n’ Roll journalist writing for a counter culture magazine. I think for all of the beauty and intelligence and wit that you are going to find in the work of Salinger, you are going to find energy and rage and just in your face energy and attitude coming out of Hunter S. Thompson’s writing. I highly recommend checking it out.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Poetic Brilliance
It’s so hard to answer the question, “What’s your favorite book of all time?” But when I have to settle on a single book, it’s Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.
If you found out you had three days to live and you only had one book to read in those last three days of your life, I’d want you to read Mrs. Dalloway.
It captures everything. It takes all of existence and, in a narrative that takes place over a single day with just a handful of characters, somehow captures the psychological complexity of human existence within a book that is just absolutely beautifully written.
You are never going to find a book with more gorgeous sentences than Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. That’s the example that I would look to if you want to see poetic writing at its best. And if you want to see psychological complexity at its best.
If you want to see just amazing literature, Mrs. Dalloway is where I would send you. Go check that one out.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques
Manipulation of Time
Here’s another one where my next recommendation plays off of the last one. Mrs. Dalloway takes place over a single day. It’s an example of how storytellers can really slow down time and really appreciate every little corn horn beeping on the street or every little interaction of buying flowers. That’s what Mrs. Dalloway is about. It’s about taking the small things in life and turning them into magic. Now I want to contrast that with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
One Hundred Hundred Years of Solitude, as the title suggests, takes place over decades and decades. It covers seven generations in a family. While Virginia Woolf chose to focus an entire novel on a single day, and largely two or three main characters, Marquez covers a hundred years and seven generations of this single family.
Then on top of that there’s a lot of really fascinating non-linear story telling going on. The style of One Hundred Hundred Years of Solitude is called “magical realism.” There’s some really fascinating moments where Marquez will be with one character and say, “Fifty years later such and such happened to that character.” Then 300 pages later that thing happens.
It’s hard to convey quickly like this, but there’s some amazing work going on with the bending and folding of time in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It’s such a great example of how using language, we can skip ahead a hundred years and then come back and later on the same second for ten pages.
Time is very flexible in fiction. Whether it’s Mrs. Dalloway or whether it’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, those are two great examples of how you can play with time as a writer.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Minimalism
Next up, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I think of A Farewell to Arms as almost … it’s like Mrs. Dalloway and A Farewell to Arms are somehow opposite ends of the same spectrum. Both somehow capture love, death, war, humanity and bring all these things together into a single book.
While Woolf captures those things by playing with language and creating these turns of phrase in these long flowing sentences, Hemingway captures it all the exact opposite: by being super minimal.
If you as a writer are trying to make that decision about your style, those are two books you could look to. Ask yourself, do I want to be a writer more like Virginia Woolf and have these poetic long flowing sentences or do I want to be a writer like Hemingway and tell things really dry and really straightforward?
I would argue both of those books, Mrs. Dalloway and A Farewell to Arms, are devastating. They are both hugely powerful works that just took my heart, grabbed a hold it, and then broke it in half. They achieved that impact on me in totally different ways.
You, as a writer, will have to do some thinking about what is going to be your style. What’s going to be your approach to tearing out my heart and breaking it in half?
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Bridging Literary and Commercial Fiction
Next up is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. This is actually a book I didn’t read in University or as a teenager. Due to its subject matter, I was always turned off to the idea of it for obvious reasons.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the protagonist is a pedophile. Not exactly something you would think would be fun, light reading and yet Nabokov with Lolita has somehow created this perfect bridge between literary fiction — all this beauty and intelligence that we are talking about in something like Mrs. Dalloway or even A Farewell to Arms — and commercial fiction, which I really also love. The fast pace. The edge of your seat story telling. Almost over the top or even appalling subject matter and moments of funniness contrasted with moments of violence and despair and, well, everything. Everything.
Some of these books, what I love about them so much is they capture so many aspects of life all in one single narrative. I would say, if you were a writer, if you said “I really love great literature or really strong language, great writing, but I also want to have a book that they are going to make a movie of someday and that I can give to my mom to read or something…” Well, I mean, no, Lolita is not an example of that, but it is a good example of a book that bridges that gap between literary great writing, but also all of the things you would look for in a mainstream thriller novel, which is great story telling. Great twists. Edge of your seat stuff.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Stream of Consciousness
Next up, On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
This is just a great example of the stream of consciousness approach to literature and to writing. This is the idea of getting it out of your body and onto the page. I think there’s probably a lot more revision and editing that actually went on than we like to pretend with Kerouac, but, all the same, a lot of the writers I work with deal with blocks. They deal with second-guessing. They deal with trying to get everything right first try. So it can be really great to look at something like On the Road, which arguably was written stream of consciousness, which means Kerouac just sat down and wrote the hell out of that thing, as opposed to really structuring it out or thinking about each scene in a really specific manner beforehand.
It’s a beautiful novel. It’s a great novel. It’s a great example for a writer that sometimes it’s not about planning everything out meticulously and getting everything right. Sometimes it’s just about capturing that thing that is inside you. Getting it outside of you and getting it onto the page.
On the Road is also based on Kerouac’s own experiences in life. He changed the names and turned into a novel, but it is largely based on his own experiences. It’s fairly realistic, which is our next topic.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Realism
If you are interested in realism, read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
Again, it’s just one of those utterly heartbreaking, heart wrenching, incredibly engrossing novel.
I love superheroes. I love fantasy and sci-fi and all that stuff, but sometimes realism can be even more powerful than a planet blowing up. Sometimes watching a single family starve to death is more moving. It grips you as a reader in a much more powerful way than the distancing that fantasy can sometimes create.
If you want to write realism, if you want to base stuff on real life but still have it be hugely powerful, take a look at The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Comedy
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. This is a really simple one. You want to see how funny literature can get? You want to read a hilariously funny book? Read Catch 22.
The interesting thing is this book is political satire as well. This is an anti war book. This is a book pointing out the hypocrisy of war.
That’s what the best comedy does. The best comedy pokes holes in the status quo. It points out the ridiculousness of things we might otherwise take for granted.
You want to write funny, check out Catch 22. Even if you don’t want to read the whole book, it’s actually a pretty long book, just read the first chapter. I would say the first chapter is probably the funniest piece of literature I’ve ever read. It’s hilarious book. Get it. Read it. Laugh your ass off.
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Literature as Political Weapon
We talked about how Catch 22 has this political bent to it. If you are interested in looking at literature as a political weapon, you should read 1984 by George Orwell. That would be the next book that you would want to look at.
I read this book when I was 13, I think. I started reading it at 7:30 one night. It was the first book ever that I read through the night. I just could not put it down. It was so engrossing.
On top of it just being an incredible novel, it’s become part of our cultural fabric. It has put authoritarians on notice. I think some of the stuff that Trump has been doing over the last couple years has been walking that fine line of pushing up against “newspeak” and “Big Brother” and all these concepts that we get from 1984. Thanks to Orwell having written that book, we can look to political hypocrisy, we can look to “alternative facts.” We can look at the way language can be used by those in power to manipulate the masses and to just bald-faced lie to get away with their agenda.
If you are interested in the politics of literature, if you’re interested in writing a book that’s not just a piece of entertainment, but that’s a weapon against status quo and against creeping authoritarianism. Read 1984.
Ulysses by James Joyce
Form Informing Story (i.e. the medium is the message)
That brings us to our last book. My last recommendation. You might hate me for this, but it’s Ulysses by James Joyce.
It’s like 200,000 words long. It’s pretty difficult stuff. It’s not light reading, but you are going to thank me for it. It’s such a brilliant masterpiece of a novel.
What you can look to in Ulysses as a writer, is how form informs the story and reflects the theme.
Way earlier on here we were talking about this idea of voice and how all these authors think they need to find their authentic voice. Well, what you will see in Ulysses is that James Joyce completely alters the style of his writing from chapter to chapter to reflect the theme and content of that chapter.
For example, there is a chapter about music. That chapter is filled with songs and filled with rhythmic writing. There’s someone who is out walking during this chapter and this person’s cane is tapping on the cobblestones. Tap tap. Tap tap. That walk takes on a musical element like the theme of that chapter.
In another chapter, the theme is about publishing and the chapter is filled with headlines. It’s such a brilliant example for writers that it’s not about finding your voice. It’s about finding the right voice, the right form to reflect the story that you are telling.
Take a month. Take two months. Read through Ulysses and pay attention to the form of it. It’s another one of those stories that take place over a single day. It’s overlayed overtop of Ulysses, the ancient story, but don’t even worry about that. Just look at how different one chapter is from the next and how brilliantly Joyce alters how he writes to reflect what’s going on in the story he’s telling.
A Quick Review
Alright. Let’s do a quick recap.
The Great Gatsby plus Tender is the Night to see how brilliant writing can be, but also what a fluke it can be and how quickly things can go wrong.
Look at The Catcher in the Rye for point of view. You’ll learn how a character’s point of view can effect the language of the story.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for authentic rage, energy, and that rock ‘n roll voice.
Mrs. Dalloway, my favorite book ever, for psychological complexity and the poetical expression.
A Hundred Years of Solitude for how fiction can manipulate and play with time.
A Farewell to Arms as a great example of a minimalist approach to writing.
Lolita as the perfect combination of literary fiction and commercial fiction.
On the Road for an example of a stream of consciousness approach to writing that doesn’t overthink itself too much.
1984 for literature as a political weapon.
Catch 22, to discover just how funny literature can be.
The Grapes of Wrath, to check out amazing example of the power of realism.
Ulysses by James Joyce, so that you can see how the form a writer uses, the sentences that they choose, the style that the bring to a chapter can reflect and emphasize or play against what’s going on in the story itself.
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