Lat year on my book tour, someone asked me to list my top 20 books. Here they are, in in no particular order. This list's too short, I left a million books out. Funny thing, I think I'd like to read them all over.

Bleak House—Charles DickensPride and Prejudice—Jane AustenThe Barset Chronicles—Anthony TrollopeDaisy Bates in the Desert-Julia BlackburnSnow Country-Yasunari KawabataThings Fall Apart –Chinua AchebeFootsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer- Richard HolmesSlouching Toward Bethlahem and The White Album—Joan DidionBrown girl, Brownstones-Paule Marshall Midnight’s Children-Salmon RushdieA Room of One’s Own and Mrs. Dalloway-- Virginia WoolfConfessions of a Confidence Man—Thomas MannHowl ---- Alan GinsbergDeath of the Heart-- Elizabeth BowenIf This is a Man and The Reawakening-- Primo LeviCollected Poems-- W.B. YeatsThe Transit of Venus-- Shirley HazardThe Vagabond--ColletteGaudy Night-- Dorothy Sayers—A Testament of Youth-- Vera BrittainLet Us Now Praise Famous Men --James Agee and Walker Evans Son of the Morning Star—Evan ConnellPortrait of a Lady-- Henry JamesThe Custom of the Country-- Edith WhartonThree Plays: Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Plow and the Stars --Sean O’CaseyHiroshima- John Hersey --Armies of the Night --Norman MailerThe Great Gatsby and The Crack Up -- F. Scott Fitzgerald—Pursuit of Love and Don’t Tell Alfred-- Nancy Mitford—Hons and Rebels and The American Way of Death-- Jessica Mitford—The Daredevils--Gary AmdahlThe Wide Sargasso Sea-Jean RhysThe Diaries of Anais Nin- Anais Nin-The Golden Notebook and The Grass is Singing--Doris LessingAlice in Wonderland --Lewis CarrollMiddlemarch- George Eliot-ScoundralTime and Pentimento-Lillian HellmanGuns of August-Barbara TuchmanThe Once and Future King--T.H. WhiteWar and Peace-Leo TolstoyTime of the Toad-Dalton Trumbo