In case you missed the news, Jazz great Dave Brubeck died Wednesday morning, one day short of his 92^nd birthday. Brubeck was a jazz master and was the composer of the most famous modern jazz song: “Take Five.” Here is a video of him performing it live 46 years ago. This song remains one of my all-time favorites and I’ve written many a poem to the upbeat-beat of this piece.

In honor of the calendar year coming to a close, I’ve started a list of “must-read” books. Most of them I’ve managed to sneak in already, and some are on my wish list: Please feel free to add to the list and share the books that are the most important to you.

My Top 40 (in no particular rank):

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

Drown, by Junot Diaz

Heidegger’s Glasses by Thaisa Frank

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

 

Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison

The God of Small Things by Arundhuti Roy

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

 

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz

The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

 

I, The Divine, by Rabih Alameddine

Runny Babbitt by Shel Silverstein

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro

 

The Art Lover by Carole Maso

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid

Life in Ordinary Time by Marie Howe

The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forche

The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton

The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

 

The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Fatherland by Robert Harris

Shipping News by Annie Proulx

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

The Maytrees by Annie Dillard

 

Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

The Year of the Fog by Michelle Richmond

Smoke by Dorianne Laux

Mythology by Edith Hamilton

Waiting by Ha Jin