I’m not much of a fan of re-reading, possibly because, as a holdover from childhood, I tend to read for story. Once I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it. So I was surprised, while writing this post, to realize there are books I do find myself revisiting from time to time. Which, over a span of 50 reading years, is getting to be an awful lot of times. Mostly they’re collections of stories and poems. It’s as if the musical part of my writing brain has struck a deal with the bossy narrative part. OK, you got your story. So now can I hear it again, just for the music? And like half of a long-married couple, the impatient, let’s-get-on-with-it narrative side says, Oh alright. Wake me when you’re done.

Here, then, are the top five books I never get tired of.

1. Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

I was a kid in 1960 when the 26-year-old Roth won the National Book Award for this collection, his debut. At the time, I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the contents, but when I devoured these stories in high school, lifting the book off a readerly aunt’s shelf, they knocked my knee socks off. Last year, I taught selections to a crop of students who’d never read Roth. How great to see their socks get knocked off too. …
Continue reading »