Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett:
Spoiler: Malone Dies. But slowly, oh, so slowly.
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The Birthday of the World, stories by Ursula K. Le Guin:
Great short stories by the thinking man’s sci-fi writer. Le Guin is concerned with gender constructs and how they inform societal structure. This book covers pretty much every, single alternate possibility from the system we currently have – some are much better; others are far worse; all are fascinating.
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The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya:
Spoiler: Someone dies. Much more quickly than Malone did, however, and surrounded and survived by many loving, squabbling mistresses and friends, all Russian. This book made me want to get up before dawn to visit Fulton Fish Market, but it’s doubtful that I ever really will.
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Slippage, stories by Harlan Ellison:
Definitely read “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” and “Mefisto In Onyx.” Maybe read “Jane Doe #112,” “She’s a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother,” and “Midnight In the Sunken Cathedral.” Probably skip the rest.
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We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction by Joan Didion:
Joan Didion is The Essayist, period. Each and every one of her sentences is so sharp and on point that if you tripped and fell on this tome, you’d bleed out instantly.
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Stories by Anton Chekhov:
Chekhov convincingly speaks in a thousand different voices (although they are all Russian – it’s a really big country).
