Bookmarks

Prolific writers are generally voracious readers, consuming new and old texts at a rapid clip to fuel their ideas and get outside their own head for perspective outside their own experiences. In Bookmarks, we ask writers and creators to share what they’re reading and how it shapes them, hoping to learn a little about their thinking in the process.

Paul Beatty on “The Nazi and the Barber”

Bookmarks

Paul Beatty, the Booker Prize Winning Author of “The Sellout"" recommends "The Nazi and the Barber,” a novel by Holocaust survivor Edgar Hilsenrath. More

Length:

2:15

Alissa Quart On "Days of Abandonment" and "Sleepless Nights"

Bookmarks

Alissa Quart recommends Elena Ferrante's "Days of Abandonment" and Elizabeth Hardwick's "Sleepless Nights."More

Marshall Boswell Recommends David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"

Bookmarks

David Foster Wallace wrote memorably about AA in his famous novel "Infinite Jest." Writer Marshall Boswell reads one of his favorite passages.More

Length:

2:59

Alex Abramovich on "Blues People"

Bookmarks

Alex Abramovich recommends "Blues People: Negro Music in White America" by Leroi Jones, who later changed his name to Amiri Baraka.More

Length:

2:23

Kazuo Ishiguro on "Prayers for the Stolen"

Bookmarks

The recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature recommends Jennifer Clement's novel about teenage girls surviving the violence of cartel-controlled Mexican border villages in "Prayers for the Stolen."More

Length:

2:57

A.O. Scott Recommends "The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson"

Bookmarks

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott recommends the collected writings of film critic Otis Ferguson, a pioneer of the language of film criticism and advocate for all the types of labor that go into filmmaking.More