52 Books of Influence: A Full Deck to Play Solitaire on a Desert Island

Someone recently asked me for a list of the 50 books that have most impacted my own writing—'50 literary pillars' is i think how it was put. I thought it would be useful to repost these here (updated some & perhaps to-be-updated in the future as such things are always in flux). I actually ended up with 52, which seems appropriate for a number of reasons (for 1, i've been obsessed with the number 4 lately & 4 doesn't cleave into 50). These are the 52 books i'd want in my library if i had to limit it for whatever reason. Not that these are necessarily my «favorite» books, but they are the books that have most shaped & informed my own writing & art & general outlook on life. These are books that i keep over my desk to reference or reread. The links go to the book or where i blogged about them (if i have) ....

A♠ My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola (i've talked of his others here & here)

K♠ The World As Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer

Q♠ Codex Seraphinius by Luigi Serafini (i also translated some of the 'decodex' here)

J♠ The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

10♠ The Odyssey by Homer

9♠ The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus

8♠ The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman

7♠ Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson (or Matter and Memory)

6♠ In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan (or Trout Fishing in America)

5♠ The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

4♠ White Noise by Don Delillo (or Americana)

3♠ The Famished Road by Ben Okri

2♠ Popol Vuh  

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A♥ Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford

K♥ Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes

Q♥ Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

J♥ On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Thompson,

10♥ Cathedral by Raymond Carver (or his other stories)

9♥ Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee by James Tate

8♥ A Humument by Tom Phillips

7♥ Excitability by Diane Williams

6♥ In the Heart of the Country by J.M. Coetzee

5♥ The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

4♥ Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte

3♥ The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard (or The Drowned World)

2♥ Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss

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A♣ Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari (or A Thousand Plateaus)

K♣ Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung

Q♣ Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

J♣ The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (or V.)

10♣ Motorman by David Ohle

9♣ Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

8♣ Silence by John Cage

7♣ For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (or The Sun Also Rises)

6♣ The Singing Fish by Peter Markus

5♣ Blindness by Jose Saramago

4♣ A History of the Imagination by Norman Lock

3♣ The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

2♣ Ever by Blake Butler

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A♦ The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

K♦ The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (or As I Lay Dying)

Q♦ Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson (i've blogged of his others here & here)

J♦ Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz (or Divorcer)

10♦ Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford

9♦ Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

8♦ Archive Fever by Jacques Derrida (or Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius)

7♦ Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

6♦ Canto General by Pablo Neruda 

5♦ Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (or The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy)

4♦ Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez

3♦ The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead by William Burroughs (or Naked Lunch)

2♦ Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

& the two joker cards: The I Ching & The Origin of Species