This Is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work

I have been dipping in and out of this volume for nearly a year. Yesterday I sat down determined to finish. There are quite a few well-known authors represented, and also some I never heard of. This reminds me of my favorite music CDs – movie soundtracks. I get a nice sampling of an extremely wide-ranging variety of music. Many times, it pushes me back to the music store to get more CDs by a single artist. Sometimes it reminds me how much I detest certain styles (read Country Western).
There were also some odd selections. Al Franken reprinted a NYT review blasting his book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot. He also included a letter he wrote to the NYT responding to the review and Jean Kirkpatrick’s response to his letter. Pretty show more funny.
The entry by Joyce Carol Oates (one of my all-time favorite writers) was chilling and her head note offered some insight into the spate of books revolving around violence. Natalie Angier’s “Confessions of a Lonely Atheist” was wonderful, as were selections by Anne Tyler, Doris Lessing, David Sedaris, and Arianna Huffington, along with many others. Five stars!
--Jim, 6/15/07 show less

I've enjoyed dipping into this. It nhas introduced me to several authors I didn't know about. I shall be searching out some stuff by Julia Alvarez, Paul Auster, A. M. Holmes, Gish Gen, Barry Lopez, Haruki Murakami and David Sedaris (although I did know about him). And.... Gay Talese is wonderful.