Jon Krakauer's Favorite Books

At Outside, we've been reading (and publishing) Jon Karakauer for years (he first wrote for the magazine in 1981). So it was nice to flip open Newsweek this week to see what Jon has been reading all this time. Newsweek asked him to name the most important books on his shelf.

The list:

1) The Dead Father, by Donald Barthelme. Krakauer called it "a breathakingly original meditation on the volatile bond between father and sons."
2) Against Love, by Laura Kipnis
3) House, by Tracy Kidder. "It made me yearn to to become an accomplished writer," Jon told Newsweek.
4) The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm
5) For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard. In the piece, Jon calls it "the most engaging book I've encountered about the nature of evil..."

(He forgot Into Thin Air, but we won't hold that against him.)

Jon also gave props to Principia Mathematica, (Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell) which he says is actually read by only one of every 20 people who claim they've have read it. (We admit, we had to Google that one).

Jon's pick for the most disappointing classic? In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. Jon told Newsweek, "After I learned of his boast that he wrote all the dialogue from memory, much of it struck me as having been invented."

--Justin Nyberg

Comments

[Wayne]

And here I thought that Principia Mathematica was written by Sir Isaac Newton.