MTC Mixtapes: asks our editors, writers, and readers to share their responses to a particular question about something they’re loving, hating, fascinated by, or curious about right now. For Mixtape #2, we asked our October writers: What are your “Big Five” Books? Not necessarily your “all-time favorite” books, but five books from across your life that have shaped you in some formative way?
We hope their recommendations bring new things to read into your orbit, inspire you to read or reread an old classic, or spur you to reflect on your own literary influences. We also encourage you to check out each of these writer’s essays for Mid Theory.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald
Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists by Joan Copjec
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe
Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life by Theodor Adorno
Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Milkman by Anna Burns
Writing in a Time of Violence by Eavan Boland
(If I were permitted a 6th, it would be As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner)
The Crooked Line by Ismat Chughtai
Abol tabol or Rhymes of Whimsy by Sukumar Ray
Fun Home and Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel
Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo
The Manifesto of the Dalit Panthers
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop
Glass, Irony & God by Anne Carson
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Katsu! by Adachi Mitsuru
Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean
Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler
Monstress written by Marjorie Liu and drawn by Sana Takeda
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Night by Elie Wiesel
Fablehaven by Brandon Mull