Phillip Roth has died.
We guess he was an author of some note, we had heard of him, actually, but never read him. We really ain't the literary type. People smarter than us (Steve Sailer) have said he is the greatest post-war American author.
We really couldn't say.
Roth put together a list of his 15 influential books. Here it is.
About Roth's list we really have nothing to say. But we thought it'd be fun to put together a list of books that influenced us.
1-The Dark Tide Trilogy, Dennis L. McKiernan. A LOTR knockoff but very good, and the first actual novels we ever read. We did so during the summer of '86, pulled us right out of our dyslexia.
2-Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy*: Well duh. Read it over a winter break in '88. Responsible for the feel and pace of so many of our novels. Israel Strikes was even called an Israeli version of RSR.
3-The Year I Owned the Yankees, Sparky Lyle: very funny, python-esque novel about the Yankees. A farce. Read in on a family road trip to Kentucky in 1990. Sparky is now the face of our local minor league team, the Somerset Patriots.
4-Give War a Chance, PJ O'Rourke**: Saw it at the mall a few weeks before leaving for Wesley College. Challenged most of our assumptions and one of the funniest books we ever read.
*See also Harold Coyle, Larry Bond.
**We are now the same age O'Rourke was when he published. Which sucks.
The first two authors I remember getting into David Weber and Harry turtledove
ReplyDeleteNice. Me too. Guns of the South is one of the two or three best alt-hist novels written. I read four or five Honor Harrington novels.
ReplyDeleteIf u like space battles read weaver's stars at war series a d if u like historical novels read bright starry banners by Alan Carter best civil war novel I ever read
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