Regular reading is mandatory. What follows are books that made a difference in my writing life. Highly recommended:
•A Wild Sheep Chase, Sputnik Sweetheart, & all the others by Haruki Murakami
•Neverwhere, American Gods, Sandman, Stardust, & all the others by Neil Gaiman
•The Colorado Kid, 11/22/63, & all the others by Stephen King
•The Gone Away World, Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
•Fight Club, Survivor, & all the others by Chuck Palahniuk
•The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, & all the others by Raymond Chandler
•The Brothers Karamazov, Crime & Punishment & all the others by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
•The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos
•TheHunter by Richard Stark
•No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian & all the others by Cormac McCarthy
•Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim & all the others by David Sedaris
•Transmetropolitain by Warren Ellis
•The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
•TheTunnel by William Gass
•The Hunger Artist, & In the PenalColony by Franz Kafka
•Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
•The Moonis Down by John Steinbeck
•The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
•Watchmen,by Alan Moore and David Gibbons
•The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God by Etgar Keret
•Trespass by Valerie Martin
•Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
•Party of One: A Loner’s Manifesto by Anneli Rufus
•Travel Writing by Peter Ferry
•The Throne of the third Heaven of Nations Millennium General Assembly by Denis Johnson
•Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
•Guns, Drugs, and Monsters by Steve Niles
•The History of the Seige of Lisbon by Jose Saramago
•62: A Model Kit by Julio Cortazar
•Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
…and check in later for more suggestions.