Eleven books that every aspiring television writer should read

At io9 Charlie Jane Anders came up with a list of eleven books that every aspiring television writer should read, including:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Says Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman, LOST, Helix), "Not only did [Adams'] work instill in me at a young age a love of wordplay, non-linear narrative logic and extremely unexpected consequences — all of them incredibly useful tools in the writers room (even on TV shows far from the thematic preoccupations of Adams's work) — it also taught me that the universe is a capricious bureaucracy where absurdly subjective interpretation is the rule of law, entire creations can be destroyed by the powerful and unfeeling, and all of the material concerns of the individual are ultimately hare-brained distractions from the greater truth... in short, it was the perfect primer for life in the entertainment industry."

Read about another book on the list.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy appears on Saci Lloyd's top ten list of political books for teenagers, Rob Reid's list of 6 favorite books, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of ten of the best bars in science fiction, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten satirical novels that could teach you to survive the future, Don Calame's top ten list of funny teen boy books, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best instances of invisibility in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue