Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Michael Ondaatje: 5 most important books

In the April 23, 2007 issue of Newsweek, Booker Prize-winning novelist Michael Ondaatje named his five most important books ... after limiting "himself to 20th-century works and assum[ing] Faulkner, Cather and García Márquez went without saying."

Read about all five titles.

Ondaatje also picked a book and panned a book using other criteria:
A classic that, on rereading, was disappointing:

Ideal Marriage by Dr. Th. H. Van De Velde. A marriage manual. I stole it from my mother's shelf. It was a turn-on when I was 14. It's not a turn-on at 74.

The book you care most about having your children read:

My own memoir, A Writer's Life — because I want them to know me as I see myself.
Ondaatje's new novel, Divisadero, is out this month.

--Marshal Zeringue