7 reasons to read wide-ranging ‘1,000 Books to Read Before You Die’
Readers love lists of books the way foodies love menus, as tip sheets, debate propositions and Proustian madeleines.
James Mustich’s friendly new book, “1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List” (Workman), serves all those purposes. He’ll talk about his choices Friday at Milwaukee’s Boswell Books.
For two decades Mustich recommended quality books in the pages of “A Common Reader,” a smart mail-order catalog. “1,000 Books to Read” reflects his past as a bookseller. It’s not a canon of the 1,000 best or most important books. Instead, he’s imagined the books he would stock in a shop that had room for exactly 1,000 different titles.
In his capsule recommendations, Mustich provides not only a synopsis of plot or subject but also context for a reader. “Who the author was, why she was important, where the particular work fits in her other works … how it fits in relation to other works of the period,” he said in a recent phone interview.
His picks are roughly half fiction, half nonfiction. They’re ancient as the Bhagavad Gita and as contemporary as Ellen Ullman’s “Life in Code” (2017). Many writers of color are represented, including Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, Colson Whitehead, Isabel Allende, Anita Desai and Azar Nafisi.
For people unsated by 1,000 titles, Mustich points to 6,000+ additional related and similar books at the end of his capsules.
Here are seven reasons to dive into his book.
1. It’s for readers, not academics.
Mustich’s long experience as a bookseller shows in his selections, which include more biography, memoir and literary travel writing than a chin-stroking canonizer would pick.
Don’t sell him short: There are plenty of classics here, and some difficult or avant-garde works, such as Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” (1973), Georges Perec’s “Life: A User’s Manual” (1978) and Julio Cortázar’s “Cronopios and Famas” (1962).
But I’d say his imaginary shop specializes in robust pleasure reading: strong narratives and books with compelling or stylish voices.
Take, for example, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” (1933), Gertrude Stein’s gossipy memoir, playfully written as though it were told by her longtime companion Toklas. You don’t have to be interested in Stein’s experimental fiction to enjoy this romp.
True-crime fans can turn to “Classic Crimes: A Selection From the Works of William Roughead” (1951), lurid tales of murder, body-snatching and other mayhem from 18th- and 19th-century Britain.
And in a time when personal letterwriting has almost disappeared, Mustich recommends Flannery O’Connor’s “The Habit of Being” (1979), a great collection of the letters she wrote, both bitterly sarcastic and soul-searching.
2. It will spark many debates.
Mustich joked that he could have called this “1,000 Arguments” rather than “1,000 Books.” Readers can and will dissent on both what he included and what he left out. For example, many Wallace Stegner fans have questioned his choice of the novel “Angle of Repose” (1971), telling him he should have picked “Crossing to Safety” (1987) instead.
He picked Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” (1930), but I would argue that “Red Harvest” (1929) is a better and more hard-boiled Hammett novel.
Many people will groan at seeing Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (1957) and Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” (2003) in here, though Mustich offers clear rationales of why they should be stocked in his mythical shop of 1,000 books. Even in a stock limited to that number, I would have found room for Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred” (1979), a novel that grapples with slavery in America and its ramifications in a complex way.
A purpose of his book is to start these kinds of conversations about why reading, and what reading, is important to us, Mustich said.
3. It offers many surprising choices.
Sometimes Mustich presents a canonical or enduringly popular author, but not the obvious book.
For example, he recommends “The Plague” (1947) by Albert Camus, which I’d second. But he also promotes “The First Man,” Camus’ unfinished autobiographical novel published posthumously in 1994, rather than the more famous “The Stranger.”
His Samuel Beckett selections include likely suspects “Waiting for Godot” (1952) and the novel “Molloy” (1951), but also the short brooding novel “Company” (1970), which Mustich suggests is a good entry point to the Beckett corpus.
Other picks are the kind an astute bookseller would make: neglected or overlooked books and word-of-mouth favorites, such as Penelope Fitzgerald’s “Offshore” (1979), a Booker Prize novel about people living on houseboats and barges in the Thames; and “The Horse’s Mouth” (1944), Joyce Cary’s novel about an outrageous old artist.
4. It recommends Wisconsin authors.
It’ll shock no one that Mustich finds room for the two best-known writers born in Wisconsin: Pepin native Laura Ingalls Wilder for “Little House in the Big Woods” (1932), her only novel set in her home state; and Madison native Thornton Wilder, for “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” (1927), his most popular and influential novel. Mustich also recommends “My First Summer in the Sierra” (1911) by pioneering wilderness advocate John Muir, a Scotland native who spent formative youthful years in Wisconsin.
Delightfully, he includes one of my favorites, “City” (1952) by Millville native Clifford D. Simak, a sci-fi gem in which future dogs discuss the legend of creatures called Man and a robot who tries to help Man. Most surprisingly — and this kind of surprise would make this book a fine gift for a reader you know — he selects Pat Jordan’s memoir “A False Spring” (1975). Jordan was a highly touted pitching prospect who signed to the Milwaukee Braves’ minorleague system. Alas, he never made it to the big leagues, but he became an excellent writer about sports and other subjects.
5. It will enrich your book club selections.
During our interview, I asked Mustich what book from his thousand he’d recommend for a one-city, one-book program. He offered two choices.
First, “A Lesson Before Dying” (1993), by Ernest J. Gaines, a novel about the friendship a teacher forms with a wrongly convicted man on death row, “because it is about the dignity of all lives … something increasingly in danger of being lost in our high-velocity society.”
Mustich also suggested Russell Hoban’s children’s novel “The Mouse and His Child” (1967), about the quest of two toy mice to become self-winding. “I would say without hesitation and without any qualification (about) age, it is one of the most life-enhancing books I’ve ever read,” Mustich said. “The last two words in the book are ‘Be happy,’ and it earns all of that.”
6. It has something for nearly everybody.
Mustich’s tent is big enough for children’s books, such as “From the MixedUp Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” and “Harriet the Spy”; for heavily visual stories including Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” and Roz Chast’s “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”; for mysteries, such as P.D. James’ “A Taste for Death” and Georges Simenon’s “Maigret and the Man on the Bench”; and for poetry, including collections of Baudelaire, Catullus and Wislawa Szymborska.
7. It’s an attractive book itself.
Janet Vicario’s design and imagewrangling has made this volume of more than 950 pages an appealing book to browse and dip into. It would be a great addition to a nightstand, a guest room, or any other spot for a few minutes of reading and calm reassurance that you will never run out of books to discover.
Jim Higgins is the author of “Wisconsin Literary Luminaries: From Laura Ingalls Wilder to Ayad Akhtar” (The History Press).