Figure 1. Gerhard Richter, "5 Doors II" (1967)

Some of Eileen Joy's Favorite Books (Fiction & Poetry)

Martin Amis, London Fields & Time's Arrow

Paul Auster, Leviathan, The New York Trilogy, & Oracle Night

Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine

Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter

Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever: Stories

Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

Charles Baxter, Believers: A Novella and Stories

Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead & Things that Fall from the Sky: Stories

Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, and t Zero

Raymond Carver, Cathedral: Stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories, & Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories

Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys: A Novel

J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

Billy Collins, Ballistics: Poems, Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems, Sailing Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, & The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems

Michael Cunningham, The Hours: A Novel & Specimen Days: A Novel

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick, & The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Stephen Dunne, New and Selected Poems: 1974-1994

Jennifer Egan, The Keep & A Visit from the Goon Squad

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel

William Gibson, Neuromancer

Louise Gluck, The Wild Iris

Jorie Graham, The End of Beauty: Poems, Erosion & Sea Change: Poems

Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

John Irving, The Cider House Rules, The Hotel New Hampshire, A Prayer for Owen Meany, & The World According to Garp

Denis Johnson, Angels, Fiskadoro, Jesus's Son: Stories, & Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

Edward P. Jones, The Known World

Mary Karr, Sinners Welcome: Poems

Ben Lerner, Mean Free Path

Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude

Mark Leyner, Et Tu, Babe? & My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist: A Novel

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Collected Stories, Love in the Time of Cholera, & One Hundred Years of Solitude

Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain

Czeslaw Milosz, New and Selected Poems, 1931-2001, Road-side Dog, & Second Space: New Poems

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas: A Novel

Haruki Murakami, Hardboiled Wonderland at the End of the World & Norwegian Wood

Rick Moody, The Ice Storm & Purple America

Lorrie Moore, Anagrams, Like Life: Stories, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, & Birds of America: Stories

Toni Morrison, Beloved & Paradise

Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets, The Book of Questions, Odes to Common Things & The Yellow Heart

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers

Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

Richard Powers, The Echo Maker, Gain, Galatea 2.2, & Operation Wandering Soul

Spencer Reece, The Clerk's Tale: Poems

Ranier Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Letters to a Young Poet, & Sonnets to Orpheus

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping: A Novel

Arundahati Roy, The God of Small Things

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

Richard Russo, Empire Falls

George Saunders, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline & Pastoralia

Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here

Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover: A Romance

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

Wislawa Szymborska, Monologue of a Dog & Poems: New and Collected

D.M. Thomas, The White Hotel

Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, A Life in the Woods

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle, Hocus Pocus, & Slaughterhouse-Five

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Joy Williams, Breaking and Entering, Escapes, & Taking Care

Jeannette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion, & Sexing the Cherry

Richard Yates, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates

Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life: A Memoir