Reading List
Colum McCann
Novelist
Colum McCann left Dublin as a young journalist, cycled across the United States, and turned the encounter into a career of novels about people crossing between worlds. Let the Great World Spin, built around Philippe Petit’s 1974 walk between the Twin Towers, won the National Book Award in 2009, and Apeirogon took the friendship of a bereaved Israeli and a bereaved Palestinian as its structure. He teaches at Hunter College and co-founded the storytelling non-profit Narrative 4.
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A Goat’s Song
by Dermot Healy · 1994 · Fiction
“is steeped in alcohol and regret, but it is also the most gorgeous elegy to love and loss in recent memory.” — via Article
02
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Desert Solitaire
by Edward Abbey · 1968 · Memoir
“When there's not a drop of water around, then we realize that the whole world is an ocean.” — via Article
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The Shipping News
by Annie Proulx · 1993 · Fiction
“Once you've read it, Quoyle, the main character, a jilted newspaper reporter, will never leave your mind.” — via Article
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Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville · 1851 · Fiction
“It's an exploration into the depths of human consciousness; we all eventually become Ishmael in the hope to survive.” — via Article
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Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley · 2003 · Fiction
“This might, at first, seem to be a strange choice for a work that takes place at sea. But Shelley's novel begins with a startling scene of a dogsled, driven by a gigantic figure, fleeing across the Arctic ice . The novel, which is perfect for our times, is a moving exploration of science and philosophy and of course the damage we inflict on ourselves in our quest for power.” — via Article
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The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway · 1995 · Fiction
“I read this novel to my father when he was sick and lay dying in his hospital bed in Dublin . It was a profoundly cathartic experience for both of us. He understood perfectly the metaphors at hand: Sometimes he was the old man and sometimes it was me. I think the grand search at sea was gorgeously entwined with his journey to come. And we were both dreaming of lions.” — via Article