Arnold Samuelson was a young man who met Hemingway and ended up working on his boat for a year. Hemingway told him to read these books in order to be a writer:
“Here’s a list of books any writer should have read as a part of his education,” he said, handing me the following list:
Stephen Crane – The Blue Hotel, The Open Boat.
The Red and the Black- By Stendhal
Of Human Bondage – Somerset Maugham
Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
Dubliners – James Joyce
Anna Karenina- Tolstoy
War and Peace – Tolstoy
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Hail and Farewell – George Moore
Brothers Karamazoff – Doestoevsky
Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
Far Away and Long Ago-W. H. Hudson
The American-Henry James.
Oxford Book of English Verse-
The Enormous Room-E. E. Cummings.
“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 it’s hopeless for you to try to write.
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