I was assigned to write a list of my top ten favorite books in my life, and I’ve put too much thought into it. It’s supposed to represent the “classics of [my] idiosyncratic world experience,” and equally represent all phases and ages of my life. I’m posting it here because if you guys have time, I’d be really interested to hear yours.

It’s only vaguely alphabetical by author, not by preference–that would be too hard.

1. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: my first favorite book, introduced me to the idea that science fiction can critique colonialism.
2. Minding American Education by Martin Bickman: We have had good schools in America, it just hasn’t caught on recently. Anyone involved in education should read this book.
3. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs:
4. Anti-Oedipus by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: This book will be the foundation of my life’s work. D & G write like poets, they create a brand new vocabulary and dismantle the regime of psychoanalysis.
5. Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsburg: the most effective poem ever written, published in the most convenient and useful and groundbreaking series of poetry (the pocket poets series).
6. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin: In this list, this book stands in for a phase of my reading life when I was deeply invested in literary science fiction. LHD is a masterwork of the genre; it illustrates how alternate reality-creation is always political—in this case, feminist—by imagining alternate power structures.

7. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner: what twisted decomposing America
8. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon: Many people have trouble with GR because they try to “make sense” of it instead of simply submitting to Pynchon’s schizoid production. Politically and culturally, the most important novel of the 20th century.
9. The Home and The World by Rabindranath Tagore: I just finished it, fascinating treatment of sexual politics, gorgeous philosophical prose.
10. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells: as I read it, my first introduction to Marxism.

Runners up that it hurt to cut:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick

A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud

The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

Revolutionary Suicide by Huey Newton