Top Three: Don Lee

We asked Don Lee, author of 'Yellow': What are your favorite books of all time?

June 1, 2003

The Great Gatsby 

By F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner Classics)

Everyone's favorite, and for good reason. It’s as close to the perfect novel — and to the Great American Novel — as anyone has ever written.

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

By Richard Yates (Vintage Books)

The situations in these stories might seem a bit dated, but there's no diminution in their emotional impact. Yates remains the master of the humiliating moment. True squirmies.

The Stories of John Cheever 

By John Cheever (Vintage Books)

I think reading this book made me want to write short stories. They're lyrical, majestic, ironic, and even when cloaked in satire, they sing with the small joys of living.

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