Nugent, as I often hear him called, is a friend of Judd’s and of boyfriend’s from grad school. I’ve met him once, and he’s probably one of the soundest insane people I’llever meet, but also, remarkably, appears to be one of the more sensible people out there, too.

Anyways, welcome to the inbox, Nugent.

Here’s what Nugent sez:

Okay so we all know that I look at Newsweek as the bible. I trust them more than
the best peer reviewed journal in existence.

their latest issue was all about books. what follows is a list of 50 books.

I’ll even throw in the intro paragraph which explains why these books were
picked.

And….Judd….happy belated birthday…aren’t we all june babies?

What to Read Now. And Why.

“We know it’s insane. We know people will ask why on earth we think that an 1875
British satirical novel is the book you need to read right now–or, for that
matter, why it even made the cut. The fact is, no one needs another best-of
list telling you how great The Great Gatsby is. What we do need, in a world
with precious little time to read (and think), is to know which books–new or
old, fiction or nonfiction–open a window on the times we live in, whether they
deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new
and surprising ways. Which is why we’d like you to sit down with Anthony
Trollope, and these 49 other remarkably trenchant voices.

1) The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
2) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
3) Prisoner of the State by Zhao Ziyang
4) The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr
5) The Bear by William Faulkner
6) Winchell by Neal Gabler
7) Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid
9) Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
10) God: A Biography by Jack Miles
11) The Unsettling of American by Wendell Berry
12) A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
13) Underground by Haruki Murakami
14) Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen
15) Air Guitar by Dave Hickey
16) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
17) The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin
18) City: Rediscovering the Center by William H. Whyte
19) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick
20) Benjamin Franklin by Edmund S. Morgan
21) The Mississippi Books by Mark Twain
22) Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
23) Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
24) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
25) Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman
26) Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden
27) Whittaker Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus
28) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
29) American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
30) The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn (read this one)
31) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
32) Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris
33) Kim by Rudyard Kipling
34) Walking with the Wind by John Lewis
35) The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollingburst
36) The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

side note: The Dark is Rising is a series of 5 novels written for kids. read
this way back in the day. Think Harry Potter before Harry Potter.

37) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
38) Underworld by Don DeLillo
39) Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne
40) American Pastoral by Phillip Roth
41) The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
42) The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker
43) Senator Joe McCarthy by Richard H. Rovere
44) Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
45) The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
46) Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
47) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
48) American Journeys by Don Watson
49) Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes
50) The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson

So get to it.

I’ve already ordered Prisoner of the State and Predictably Irrational (which looks like it’s riffing off of Malcom Gladwell, but I’ll give it a go. I do enjoy me some Malcom Gladwell. )

Here’s a few favorites/must-reads off of my bookshelf:

The Republic – Plato

Clockwork Orange – Burgess

Starship Troopers – Heinlein

Farenheit 451 – Bradbury

1984 – Orwell

Still Life with Woodpecker – Robbins

The Invention of Everything Else – Hunt