By title

By author

Micol Ostow

• The Haunting of Hill House
• Shirley Jackson

• “The ne plus ultimate haunted house story, I like to think of Amity‘s Gwen as sort of a modern spin on Eleanor, a young woman seeing and experiencing ghostly things, whose mind and perceptions can’t be trusted.”

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• Shirley Jackson

• “A slow-burner filled with atmosphere. Merricat is the platonic ideal of an unreliable narrator.”

• The Shining
• Stephen King

• “A suggestible man, prone to violence, isolated in a hotel that exerts evil force over his will… Jack Torrance is to Amity‘s Connor as Hill House‘s Eleanor is to Gwen.”

• Tighter
• Adele Griffin

• “A modern take on The Turn of the Screw, Griffin draws from chilling source material and makes it her own for today’s teen readers.”

• To Die For
• Joyce Maynard

• “A dark and twisty thriller (the movie’s great, too) that serves up multiple POV’s on a platter. I spent a lot of time poring over the many distinct voices of that book.”

• The Maddaddam trilogy
• Margaret Atwood

• “Epic and sprawling, boldly visionary, and still she manages to tie all of her narrative threads together by the series’ conclusion. To spend ten minutes in that woman’s head!”

• Dangerous Girls
• Abigail Haas

• “Pacing, pacing, pacing. Totally un-put-downable.”

• The Amityville Horror
• Jay Anson

• “(That one probably goes without saying.)”

• We Were Liars
• E.Lockhart

• “The pages turn and the ending twists!”

Sam Potts

• Lou Gehrig, Boy of the Sandlots
• Guernsey Van Riper Jr.

• I think this is the first book I ever picked out on my own and read by myself. I'm pretty sure it is. I can tell you this for sure: Lou Gehrig always has been and always will be my favorite baseball player. And I'm from Boston, so that's saying something about the influence of this book.

• What Do People Do All Day?
• Richard Scarry

• Before there was the Internet, there was What Do People Do All Day? to describe the whole world and everything in it. Still hours of fun to explore every page.

• Stuart Little
• E.B. White

• He wears a sweater and sails a boat and drives a car and gets dumped on a garbage barge. Oh, and he's a mouse.

• Paddle To The Sea
• Holling C. Holling

• An adventure story starring a carved wooden boat that travels all the way across Canda. A carved wooden boat? you say. That's right: a carved wooden boat! I wished I could be that boat.

• The Great Brain, Great Brain Series
• John D. Fitzgerald

• This book and the other Great Brain books that followed are a handy how-to guide in the arts of scheming, swindling, cheating, and being a younger brother.

• Tintin Adventures (Series)
• Herge

• We just called them "Tintins." I'd say, "Do you have any new Tintins?" and my friend Jamie would say, "I just finished The Black Island. You can borrow it but you have to give it back." YOu always had to give them ack because these books are precious.

• Dubliners
• James Joyce

• Yeah it's James Joyce, but so what? He ain't so tough. The beauty of these stories is in their simplicity. You'll be able to taste the peas with vinegar and pepper in "Two Gallants." Read this when your friends are reading Catcher in the Rye. (And read that one, too.)

• Ficciones
• Jorge Luis Borges

• A character named Borges comes across an encyclopedia of a fictional land. Pierre Menard rewrites bits of Don Quixote verbatim, by coincidence. Funes remembers everything that happened, ever. Amazing. Worth re-reading about every five years or so.

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Essays and Arguments
• David Foster Wallace

• If you get far enough to read about the toilets in the title essay, you'll probably go on to read every word Wallace ever wrote. This book also contains the most terrifying description of baton-twirling you could ever read.

• Anatomy of a Typeface
• Anthony Lawson

• For the serious typographer as well as the font enthusiast: histories of all the classic typefaces from the days when fonts weighed about 50 pounds (because they were made out of lead). Simply indispensable.

Patrick Jones

• Becoming the Natural, My Life In and Out of the Cage

• There are many UFC biographies out, so it's who you like. I'm an old guy; I like the old guy.

• Headlock

• A novel about a teen breaking into wrestling while wrestling with some problems of his own. The author is a Ric Flair fan (whooo!).

• Lion’s Tale, Around the World in Spandex

• There's a lot of wrestling biographies out there, but Y2J's is probably best of the newer ones probably because he takes himself the least serious of all the squared circle scribes.

• Mondo Lucha A Go-Go, The Bizarre and Honorable World of Wild Mexican Wrestling

• Filled with photos of these masked Mexican wrestlers, this is a must to understand the history and scope of pro wrestling.

• Octagon

• Nothing but photos of UFC fighters through all stages of their careers. From the founders like Ken Shamrock to the modern kings of eight-sided cage, a wonderful way to browse the history of UFC.

• Title Shot, Into the Shark Tank of Mixed Martial Arts

• The book follows the author's journey to become a MMA fighter. He thought training for the Army was hard work. Welcome to the cage.

• Warrior Angel

• The 4th novel of a series that started in the 1960s still punches hard with hard punches and harder choices.

• Whole Sky Full of Stars

• A quick little read about a young man trying to earn money, and respect, by winning a boxing tournament.

• Why I Fight, A Novel

• The gritty covers lets you know the story inside is a tough one about a young man searching for himself, one fight at a time.

• WWE Encyclopedia

• You get photos, lists, more photos, and more lists. As JR would say, "Business is about to pick up."

Loren Long

• The Magic Finger
• It made me think about what it would feel like to be an animal . . . especially an animal being hunted.
• Hatchet
• I was fascinated by the question . . . what would you do if you were lost all alone in the wilderness?
• A Season on the Brink
• For any NCAA basketball fan or anyone interested in a quirky biographical study of a legendary coach . . . Bobby Knight.
• The Winner’s Manual, For the Game of Life

• I like to learn how extraordinary/successful people approach life and this is a unique (just published) book about methods and ideals that Jim Tressell brings to his Ohio State football program.

• Marley and Me
• Sorry, I'm a softy for dogs. I had just lost my dog of 14 years and read this book on a book tour. Ended up bawling my eyes out all alone in a Hotel in Tampa. Guy Reads, guy cries.
• The Little Engine That Could
• The essential picture book for every collection . . . my favorite growing up. Take it off to college with you!

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• Homeland
• R.A. Salvatore

• "The first fifty pages of the Dark Elf Trilogy have enough swordplay and plot twists to make you gasp."

• The Tin Woodman of Oz
• L. Frank Baum

• "All the Oz books, actually. But I liked the Tin Woodsman the most, so this is the book I'm listing. Let's not psychoanalyze."

• The Belgariad
• David Eddings

• Also, The Mallorean. "When I was the new kid in school, the characters in these books were my buds. Funny, courageous, and there's 1000 pages worth of them."

• The Princess Bride
• William Goldman

• "Funny and clever and full of heart."

• Dragonlance: Chronicles and Legends

• by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. "I started with the computer game and then turned to the books. Lots of gods and glowy magic and giant spiders rearing in pain! Awesome."