The Nixon Tapes: 1973 Ed. by Douglas Brinkley & Luke Nichter I watched the Watergate hearings while I was a boy in Canada. They said Nixon was the ultimate politician, but no: He was stiff, he’d sweat, he was human, a tragic figure who got caught up in his own insecurities. My favorite part [in these tapes] is the banality: Nixon talks about his mother-in-law making this pie he f—–g hates, and all these guys going, “Yessir!” Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell I love oral histories. Mitchell was a New Yorker writer who’d go around a city and write about interesting people he’d met, from the mayor to the lowest bum. He was probably the first to do New Journalism, [before] Gay Talese. Hi...[Read more]

My favorite memoir is Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up.” I think that’s the best book about being a comedian, written by a comedian, ever done.

Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl Grist For The Mill by Ram Dass Shambhalla the Sacred Path Of The Warrior by Trungpa The Shining!! by Stephen King Lord Amberson Volt's amazing "Home Surgery Guide"

Oh, my favorite book? AJ Jacobs - anything by him I really find fun, and easy to ready. I also really like - what's his name - Mitch Albom, anything by him I really like. He wrote a book called FOR ONE MORE DAY, I read it on a plane, and it really stuck with me, and I thought it was a really beautiful book - it starts out with him trying to commit suicide, and he ends up reliving a perfect day with his mom, and I've always loved that book. It was the first book that had a really significant impact on me. I got off the phone, called my mom and said "I love you." It's a really great book.

Fragments of a Journal by Eugene Ionesco Nietzche (bio by Walter Kaufman is a great bible for Nietzche) Socrates (books about him and Plato's works) I'm reading a lot of psychology, some by Koestler I read comic theory, THE HUMOR CODE is a good read, as is Koestler's act of creation and I've been reading a lot of The Far Side and R. Crumb stuff too.

Well, I read 2 books at once. I just started a biography of John Wayne and it's terrific. And I read every crime novel by Michael Connelly, who I think is the best. And a brilliant book I just finished was One Summer. It detailed life in America in 1927. It's an amazing read, One Summer.

The Marx Brothers book is a great book. Before that, I read another book about comedy — I think I’m doing this because it gives me that feeling I’m missing, of being around. When you’re in comedy, you’re like a tropical fish in an aquarium, or at least I am. That’s my life. If you said to a tropical fish, Would you like to go anyplace else, he’s going to go: You know what, I think I’d like to just stay here, I like the aquarium. So I am a tropical fish in an aquarium. And since I can’t go onstage and hang around other comedians, I read about them. So there’s this other book I just found on my bookshelf — I bought it, and never read it — it’s called “Seriously Funny,” by Gerald Nachman. This ...[Read more]

Falling Upward by Richard Rohr Everything Belongs by RR Love Wins by Rob Bell What We Talk About by Rob Bell Be Here Now by Ram Dass Grist for the Mill by Ram Dass The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment by Golas The Power of Myth (the book) by Joseph Campbell and Richard Moyers

The best non-fiction I've read is anything by Joseph Campbell. And probably the best fiction I've ever read was a Pulitzer Prize winning book called INDEPENDENCE DAY by Richard Ford.

Bonfire of the Vanities.

I like to read funny books. I said Confederacy already but Don Quixote is funny and Lolita is funny. Just read Richard Price The Whites (not funny) but it was great.

The stack next to my bed is embarrassingly High. the one on my desk right now is "3 Ingredient Cocktails" by Robert Simonson. Great Read!

I have an obsession with books about kids with Asperger’s syndrome. I like the way they think — it suits me. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon is great. That and [Jonathan Safran Foer’s] Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close — they’re on a separate bookshelf. They don’t understand what the other books are saying by their facial expressions, but they’re perfectly lined-up.

I am currently reading almost everything I can - loving Spider-Man and Silver Surfer by Slott; bummed Fables is coming to an end; stuff by Jason Aaron is great, just read Ant-Man by Nick Spencer right before this started, and it really had that Superior Foes of Spider-Man feel. Currently re-reading Hickman's FF, which is so complex and well-thought-out, it frightens me from ever attempting something similar.

As a young man, probably THE FOUNTAINHEAD. But now, I'm too old to be influenced. I know where I stand, and I know who I am.

Well, I like anything that's written by Leo Tolstoy, or Gogol, my favorite is War & Peace.

The first adult novel I read, and this is a favorite memory of mine, resulted from my grandfather — who was a voracious reader — taking me to Novel Idea in Tulsa, Okla., to pick up a book for school. As we headed to the checkout line he said, ‘Why don’t you pick out something to read for pleasure?’ I went to the Young Adult section, and he stopped me: ‘No, no. Go to the Fiction section.’ I was 12, and this was a big deal. The Fiction section is where all the books with sex and bad language lived. I self-consciously browsed the aisles, careful to avoid unwittingly picking up Fear of Flying or something, until I came to a paperback with a spooky cover. The title: Salem’s Lot. Description: Vamp...[Read more]

Jerry Salz has a great book called How To Be An Artist. Also The Artists Way is worth getting for sure.

[Traveling Mercies.] The autobiographical essays in this collection cover faith and family, booze, men, and self-love. They’re full of the small moments in [Anne] Lamott’s life, the observations that make you laugh really hard and make you bawl really fast — two of my favorite activities. She talks about how the most popular prayers are “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I’ve read all her work, and she continually surprises me and speaks to me. One of the lines from this book that I love is: “All you can do is show up for someone in crisis. Your there-ness… can be life giving, because often everyone else is in hiding.” That’s just killer. Lamott is so open an...[Read more]

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara