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

∫um 1 once asked us for a list of the 50 books that have most impacted our own writing... '50 literary pillars' is how it was put, so we figured we'd repost these here (updated some + perhaps to-be-updated in the future as such things are always in flux). We actually ended up w/ 52, which seems appropriate for a number of reasons (for 1, we've been obsessed w/ the # 4 lately + 4 doesn't ÷ into 50). These are the 52 books we'd want in our library if we had to limit it for whatever reason... not that these are necessarily our «favorite» books, but they are the books that have most shaped + informed our own writing + art + general outlook on life. These are keepers, books we covet, stashed near our desk to reference or reread. The links go to the book or where we blogged about them (if we have) ...

A♠ My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola (we like this book so much we've been known to call this blog www.MyLifeInTheBushOfGhosts.com)

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

Q♠ The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

J♠ The Odyssey by Homer

10♠ The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman

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

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

7♠ Popol Vuh

6♠ Black Elk Speaks

5♠ White Noise by Don Delillo (or Americana)

4♠ The Famished Road by Ben Okri

3♠ The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus

2♠ The World As Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer

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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 collections)

9♥ Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte (or The Visual Display of Quantitative Information or his others)

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

7♥ A Humument by Tom Phillips

6♥ Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein (or collected works)

5♥ The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

4♥ Excitability by Diane Williams

3♥ The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

2♥ Correction by Thomas Bernhard (or Extinction, The Loser or Woodcutters)

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

K♣ Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (or Ulysses)

Q♣ Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung

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

10♣ Motorman by David Ohle

9♣ Silence by John Cage

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

7♣ Blindness by Jose Saramago

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

5♣ Mount Analogue by René Daumal

4♣ How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles

3♣ A History of the Imagination by Norman Lock

2♣ The Trouble with Being Born by E.M. Cioran (or A Short History of Decay or On the Heights of Despair)

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A♦ The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

K♦ The Complete Garielle Lutz (or anything else she wrote)

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

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

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♦ Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

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

5♦ Canto General by Pablo Neruda 

4♦ Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez

3♦ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

2♦ The Free-lance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed (or Mumbo Jumbo)

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