Seven novels that influence Stephen Chbosky's writing

Stephen Chbosky's new novel is Imaginary Friend.

At The Week magazine the author tagged seven books that influence his writing, including:

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (1979).

In a dystopian future, 100 teenage boys enter a televised competition, commencing a long walk from the Maine-Canada border into Massachusetts. The prize for the last one standing is whatever his young heart might desire. The punishment for the 99 who stop is death. That is the premise for the best war story ever told, even though there is technically no war in these pages. The dialogue that the boys engage in is as fresh today as it was when a certain college freshman with a very bright future wrote it under a pseudonym — more than a decade before he wrote The Stand under his own name.

Read about the other entries on his list.

--Marshal Zeringue