Writers Read

We writers tend to read a lot. And we’re always happy to suggest those books that most impacted our writing.

Ask a copy or content writer about favorite book and they’ll list off half a dozen before you’ve finished asking. Don’t be surprised if the name Ernest Hemingway is on the list.

 But what if you asked Hemingway for a recommended reading list?

Hemingway gave this list to aspiring writer Arnold Samuelson in 1934 with the instructions:

Here’s a list of books any writer should have read as a part of his education… If you haven’t read these, you just aren’t educated. They represent different types of writing. Some may bore you, others might inspire you and others are so beautifully written they’ll make you feel it’s hopeless for you to try to write.

 The Blue Hotel - Stephen Crane

The Open Boat - by Stephen Crane

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Dubliners - James Joyce

The Red and the Black - Stendhal

Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann

Hail and Farewell - George Moore

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Oxford Book of English Verse

The Enormous Room - E.E. Cummings

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Far Away and Long Ago - W.H. Hudson

The American - Henry James

Interestingly, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the book that Hemingway referred to as “the best book an American ever wrote,” was not on the list.   

So how many of the books on Hemingway’s list have you read? Would he have considered you educated?