Cervantes. I found Don Quixote transformative. I mean, I never read anything like that before. Well, I'm reading this norwegian guy and I can't remember his goddamn name. I'm trying to remember! I know what it's called, the book is called My Struggle. By Karl Ove Knausgaard. No wonder I couldn't remember it. The title is even very daring, but it's an unflinching look into mortality, which I like to do. I like to look into mortality, in an unflinching manner. Some days, I'll flinch. Some days I'll be honest with you Victoria, I'll stare into my own mortality in that abyss. I'll flinch. But I can't say the same for Horgalveyeysbadlobad. I'm sure he flinches too, but he writes it down and pret...[Read more]

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.

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]

I loved the Great Gatsby. I can’t believe they did it in 3D. What the fuck? Dahrma bums. these are just random. My Travels with Charlie. Grapes of Wrath. Crime and Punishment. Slaughterhouse 5. All vonugut when i was a youngster. Catcher in the Rye. 9 Stories. SOmething by Thomas Mann I can’t remember. Heart of Darkness. I claudius. The Golden Ass. Hercules my shipmate. Fire from Heaven. Persian boy. The chronicles of narnia when I was a kid and now my daughters. TR biography. lots others.

[This link contains all the recommended books - there are more than 100] The list contains City of Thieves by David Benioff, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, and Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang.

It's one of the greatest books of all time, and the greatest character is The Mule

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.

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

Q: As a lover of Russian literature, who would you say your favorite Russian author is? Thoughts on Dostoevsky vs Tolstoy? A: Well, to say that Tolstoy Gogol and Dostovesky are the great novelists from Russia would be akin to say that William Faulkner, Mark Twain and Harold Robbins are the great American writers.

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]

Well, my favorite author is Mark Twain. He’s smart, and funny. Huckleberry Finn, especially the chapter all the purists hate, in which Tom Sawyer stages an elaborate rescue of Jim, is a writer having as much fun as possible. But my favorite book is a two-parter by Laurens Van Der Post, A Story Like The Wind and A Far Off Place. My favorite book used to be The Plague by Albert Camus.

I recommend the book Dreamland by Sam Quinones, but that's not going to get you out of anything. That's going to get you way in.

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]

Chester Himes! Thomas Pynchon (obviosuly) john o'hara..John Steinbeck...George Orwell....Shirley Jackson! Caroline Blackwood

all time is either Fables or Sandman or Spider-Man or Fantastic Four.

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.

Johnny Carson 1984 Confession of an Economic Hitman Kicking Through the Ashes Feed The Beast The Chitlin' Circuit Callus On My Soul Cheat: A Man's Guide to Infidelity Among the Thugs The Count of Monte Cristo The Westies Sweet Child of Mine: How I Lost My Son to Guns N' Roses My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns N' Roses Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN Becoming Richard Pryor The Bible Flag of Our Fathers

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.

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]