Monday, October 07, 2019

Six of Tim O'Brien's favorite books

Tim O'Brien received the 1979 National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing in 2013.

O'Brien's new book is Dad's Maybe Book, a work of nonfiction which "shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humor, and rewards of raising two sons."

At The Week magazine, O'Brien recommended six of his favorite books. One title on the list:
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1862).

This has long been one of my favorite books, and I read it again this year. It's the story of two fathers and two sons and their disappointments in each other. A son can never quite satisfy a father; a father can never quite satisfy a son.
Read about another entry on the list.

Fathers and Sons is among Martin Sixsmith's six best books and Jamie Fewery's ten best fictional fathers.

--Marshal Zeringue