Reading recommendations

This list of works Annie Dillard has recommended or praised is compiled from dozens of sources, listed at the bottom.


Abbey, Edward: Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (memoir)

"[...] an angry and eloquent writer" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Achebe, Chinua: No Longer at Ease (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Adams, Henry: The Education of Henry Adams (memoir)

"I like its vigorous thought and its assumption that an account of one's intellectual life is indeed an account of one's life" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 155). In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, where an excerpt from this book is reprinted (433-440), she says, "Irony about onseself, at any age, becomes the memoirist better. Henry Adams is steadily ironic. His Education of Henry Adams scants a lifetime of extraordinary achievement; he claims to be puzzled throughout, and 'trying to get an education' " (x). Also included in "My New England Bookshelf" (66).


Agee, James (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes his novels in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Agee, James: "A Mother's Tale" (fiction)

In her introduction to this story, she writes, "When you finish, you can scarcely believe anyone could write such a grand thing. [...] It's not Christian allegory, this story, it's good old-timey existentialism" (1).


Aiken, Conrad (poetry)

In an interview, she says she finds his poems "very powerful" ("Drawing the Curtains," 96).


Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Asher, Don: Shoot the Piano Player (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (205-21).


Ashton, Dore: The Unknown Shore (aesthetics)

One of "the best of the many analyses and histories of abstract and Abstract Expressionist art I've read lately" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Austin, Mary: Earth Horizon and Land of Little Rain (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (441). That latter is included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Bacon, George: Booming and Panicking in Puget Sound

"[...] a wonderful, wonderful book [...] I must have read it 15 to 20 times" ("A Pilgrim's Progress").


Bakeless, John: The Eyes of Discovery (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (317). She calls it a "wonderful book" in "First Taste of America" (26).


Baker, Russell: Growing Up (memoir)

Calls it "vivid and genial," and says that, like, "Most of the best memoirs," it "refrain[s] from examining the self at all" (Bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 156). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (49-67).


Baldwin, James: Notes of a Native Son (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (248-68).


Ballard, J. G.: Empire of the Sun (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Barfield, Owen: Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry

In "Reading for Work and Pleasure," she says it "stimulated my thinking" (66).


Barks, Coleman: New Worlds (poetry)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Barnes, Kim: In The Wilderness (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Barrington, Judith: “Initiation" (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this chapter in the bibliography (441).


Bartram, William: Travels (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (316).


Bate, Walter Jackson: Samuel Johnson and John Keats (biography)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Bates, Henry Walter: The Naturalist on the River Amazon (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (316).


Bateson, Mary Catherine: With a Daughter’s Eye (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Bernays, Anne: The Address Book (fiction)

Mentioned in "Reading for Work and Pleasure" (66).


Bernstein, Leonard: Unanswered Questions (aesthetics)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Beston, Henry: The Outermost House (memoir)

"This Cape Cod masterpiece is broad and simple" (Bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 157). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321) and "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122).


Bishop, Elizabeth: “Memories of Uncle Neddy”

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this story in the bibliography (441).


Bloomfield, Leonard: Language

In her author's note, she calls it "excellent (if antiquated)" ("Language for Everyone," 488).


Blythe, Ronald: Akenfield (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Bogan, Louise: Journey Around My Room (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Booth, Philip: Available Light (poetry)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Bourke-White, Margaret: Portrait of Myself (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Brinnin, John Malcolm: Dear Heart, Old Buddy; Dylan Thomas in America; and Sextet (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (441).


Brown, Rosellen: Tender Memories (fiction) and Cora Fry (poetry)

Both included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Broyard, Anatole: Kafka Was the Rage (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Buber, Martin: Tales of the Hasidim, Volumes 1 & 2

"My approach to spirituality is intellectual, in the Neoplatonic tradition. That's why I'm also attracted to Christian mysticism, American transcendentalism [...], and Hasidism" ("The Good Books: Writer's Choices," 80). At Calvin College Festival of Faith & Writing, she said she started studying the Hasids by reading these books and "really, really, really liked them."


Buechner, Frederick: The Alphabet of Grace (theology)

"This is a perfectly structured work of art, a well-made exemplum of grace" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Buechner, Frederick: Son of Laughter; The Book of Bebb; and Godric (fiction)

"The writing reaches wildly exalted pitches and sustains them. Often it displays that distinctively rhythmic, impassioned, controlled originality that has marked inspired writing through the ages—writing that sounds as though the writer is holding onto a lightning bolt. [... He] has always excelled at making complex characters, often comic ones, live on the page. [...] Buechner's literary reputation rests securely on the Bebb tetralogy [...] Leo Bebb is one of the handful of truly enlarged and indelible characters in American literature [... Godric] is the intensely real story of an 11th-century English hermit and saint. [...] What reader can forget discovering, in adolescence, that the classic canonical books are also the best ones—the most enjoyable? With profound intelligence, Buechner's novel does what the finest, most appealing literature does: It displays and illuminates the seemingly unrelated mysteries of human character and ultimate ideas" ("The Ancient Story of Jacob, Retold in a Passionate, Exalted Pitch," A15).


Buechner, Frederick: The Sacred Journey (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (80-90).


Burn, June: Living High (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Burroughs, Franklin: Billy Watson’s Croker Sack (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Byrd, Richard E.: Alone (memoir)

"[...] I couldn't catch my breath for a week" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122).


Cantwell, Mary: An American Girl (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Carey, Johnny, Cort Conley, and Ace Barton: Snake River of Hells Canyon (history)

"[...] beautifully written history [...]" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Carr, Tim and Pauline: Antarctic Oasis: Under the Spell of South Georgia

"I'll be first in line to buy it" ("Antarctica").


Carson, Rachel: The Sea Around Us; The Edge of the Sea; and Under the Sea Wind (nonfiction trilogy)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Castedo, Elena: Paradise (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Cather, Willa: Death Comes for the Archbishop; O Pioneers!; and My Antonia (fiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315). In "Reading Between the Lines," she singles out O Pioneers! as Cather's best, saying it should have been included in "the Modern Classics roster of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century" (A1).


Chadwick, John: The Decipherment of Linear B (history)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Chappell, Fred: I Am One of You Forever (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Chappell, Fred: It is Time, Lord (fiction)

"Annie Dillard recommends any novel by Fred Chappell saying he is a 'great American writer of intellectual, emotional, gothic power [...]' " (Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, 24).


Chappell, Fred: Moments of Light (fiction)

In her foreword to Moments of Light, she says "These are living, vivid narratives whose rich actions lodge in the imagination [...]" (xv).


Chappell, Fred: River; Bloodfire; and Wind Mountain (poetry)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694). In her foreword to Chappell's Moments of Light, she says of the first two volumes (the third hadn't been published yet, and the fourth hadn't been published when the "Critic's Christmas Choices" was published), "Both alone and together they are masterpieces, as successful as they are ambitious" (ix). Later, Earthsleep was published. These four make up Midquest, a multi-part, book-length poem.


Chatwin, Bruce: In Patagonia (nonfiction)

Included in the original version of "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (Antaeus, no. 57 (1986): 286), but not in the updated version in The Nature Reader anthology.


Chesnut, Mary: A Diary from Dixie (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441).


Coetzee, J. M. (fiction)

"Man, is he good" ("A Writer's Writer on Her Work").


Coggeshall, Rosanne: Hymn for Drum (poetry)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Colebrook, Joan: A House of Trees (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Connell, Evan S., Jr.: Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel and Points for a Compass Rose (poetry)

"These poems are masterpieces. You could bend a lifetime of energy to their study, and have lived well. The fabric of their meaning is seamless, inexhaustible. ... their language is steely and bladelike; from both of its surfaces flickering lights gleam. Each page sheds insight on every other page; understanding snaps back and forth, tacking like a sloop up the long fjord of mystery" ("Winter Melons," 90). At the Calvin College Festival of Faith & Writing, she said that "it's my favorite book in the whole world."


Conrad, Joseph: The Mirror of the Sea (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Conrad, Joseph: Lord Jim (fiction)

"I read Lord Jim again recently and was just astounded" ("Metaphysical Graffiti").


Conroy, Frank: Stop-Time (memoir)

"Conroy masters a narrative, dramatic, novelistic handling of scenes" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 157). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (132-41).


Conway, Jill Ker: The Road from Coorain (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Cooper, Bernard: Maps to Anywhere (memoir)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she calls this book "grand" (xi). In her afterword to Memoirs, she includes it in the bibliography (441).


Crews, Harry: A Childhood: The Biography of a Place (memoir)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (1-18).


Crowther, Hal: Unarmed But Dangerous

In her foreword to the book, she says, "It is a rare man who possesses both a passionate conscience and a brilliant wit. [...] Hal Crowther is a wit who never lapses into cynicism or relativism [...] Again and again, Crowther’s brilliant jeremiads rise to a pitch of outraged eloquence" (xi-xii).


Dahlberg, Edward: Because I Was Flesh (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Dana, Richard Henry: Two Years Before the Mast (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442). Also included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122), "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (316), and the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (156).


Darwin, Charles: The Voyage of the Beagle (nonfiction)

Recommended despite its "tedium"; she says, "the breadth of the young scientist's information and the vigor of his curiosity are admirable" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 316).


Davison, Peter: Half Remembered (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Day, Clarence: Life with Father (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Day, Dorothy: The Long Loneliness (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


deBuys, William: River of Traps

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Delany, Sarah L. and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth: Having Our Say (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Delbanco, Nicholas: Possession; Sherbrookes; and Stillness (fiction trilogy)

She calls him a "more recent favorite [...] whose Sherbrookes trilogy [...] answers Emerson's call for originality" ("My New England Bookshelf," 66).


Delbanco, Nicholas: Running in Place: Scenes from the South of France (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Dickinson, Emily (poetry)

She says this poet "never stales because you've never got her" ("My New England Bookshelf," 66).


Digges, Deborah: Fugitive Spring (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Dinesen, Isak: Out of Africa (memoir)

"[...] magnificent English prose" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Dobbs, Kildare: Running to Paradise (memoir)

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (158).


Doig, Ivan: This House of Sky and Heart Earth (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (442).


Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Douglas, Mary: Natural Symbols and Purity and Danger (anthropology)

"These books play with ideas—new ideas—and excite me about ideas in the way that great literary criticism does" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Dubus, Andre: Broken Vessels (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Dubus, Andre: "The Eternal Supper" (Portland autumn 1993)

"I liked Andre Dubus’s piece about the Eucharist [...] very, very much. It stunned me" (“Eucharistic Celebration,” 2).


Dunham, Katherine: A Touch of Innocence (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Durrell, Gerald: My Family and Other Animals (memoir)

"[T]he most beautifully written of all his hysterically funny books" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Durrell, Gerald: The Whispering Land (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321).


Durrell, Lawrence: Bitter Lemons (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Eastman, Charles A.: Indian Boyhood (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley: The Nature of the Physical World (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (317).


Ehrlich, Gretel: The Solace of Open Spaces (nonfiction)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Eiseley, Loren: "The Star Thrower" (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (416-32).


Eliot, George: Middlemarch (fiction)

Listed as one of her favorite historical novels in "My Favorite Historical Novel" (87).


Eliot, T. S.

"If this century could claim no other poets than Eliot, Yeats, and Stevens, this would still be the century of English poetry's greatest achievement" ("The Purification of Poetry—Right Out of the Ballpark," 293).


Ellison, Ralph: Going to the Territory (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (280-87).


Emerson, Ralph Waldo: Essays; "Nature"; "The American Scholar"; etc. (nonfiction)

"What radical conclusion could I reach, what revolutionary course could I preach, that I couldn't find in Emerson? How did this dizzying poseur and corrupter of youth get wrapped up as a fuddy-duddy and thrown away? He calls each of us to the same impossible task: forging an original relationship with the universe" ("My New England Bookshelf," 66). "My approach to spirituality is intellectual, in the Neoplatonic tradition. That's why I'm also attracted to Christian mysticism, American transcendentalism [...], and Hasidism" ("The Good Books: Writer's Choices," 80). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (316).


Engels, John: Blood Mountain (poetry)

She says his poems are "full of that mixture of topographical spareness and intellectual richness that has characterized this region's writers" ("My New England Bookshelf," 68). Also included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Ernaux, Annie: A Man’s Place and A Woman’s Story (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (442).


Evans, Howard Ensign: Life on a Little-Known Planet (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Fabre, J. Henri: Souvenirs entomologiques and The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre (nonfiction)

"This is beautiful, knowledgeable prose" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 317).


Facey, A. B.: A Fortunate Life (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Fairey, Wendy W.: One of the Family (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Faulkner, William: Absalom, Absalom! (fiction)

Listed as one of her favorite historical novels in "My Favorite Historical Novel") (87). He is also mentioned as a favorite non-New England writer in "My New England Bookshelf" (66).


Finch, Robert: The Primal Place and The Common Ground (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Finney, Jack: Time and Again (fiction)

Calls it a "wonderful little book about New York in 1882" ("A Pilgrim's Progress").


Fishman, Steve: A Bomb in the Brain (memoir)

Said she was impressed by this book in "What writers are reading on summer vacation" (53). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Fitzgerald, F. Scott

"His great form was the sentence. He truly understood the beauty and possibilities of the sentence in English" (F. Scott Fitzgerald: 24 September 1896 to 21 December 1940; 24 September 1996 Centenary Celebration). However, according to "Ideas are tough; irony is easy," she thinks he "deal[s] too much in social issues."


Fitzgerald, Robert: The Third Kind of Knowledge (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Fletcher, Colin: The Complete Walker (nonfiction) and The Man Who Walked Through Time (memoir)

Included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122).


Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier (fiction)

Says she loves it in "Into the Yellow Wood" (162).


Ford, Ford Madox: Your Mirror to My Times (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Franklin, Benjamin: Autobiography (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Freuchen, Peter: Adventures in the Arctic: My Life in the Frozen North (memoir) and Book of the Eskimos (anthropology)

Regarding the latter: "Everything about Eskimo culture is fascinating [...]" Both included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122); the latter included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Fuentes, Carlos (fiction)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (693).


Gallagher, Nora: Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith (memoir)

It's "an incredibly good book," "one of the best books I ever read." (comment at the 92nd Street Y reading in 1999)
"I cried twice in the course of reading this short book, and I laughed about 120 times out loud." ("Natural Wonders: an interview with Annie Dillard," 33).


Galvin, James: The Meadow (fiction)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Garland, Hamlin: A Son of the Middle Border (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (116-31).


Garrett, George: Death of the Fox; The Succession; and Entered from the Sun (fiction)

She says this "Elizabethan cycle [...] gives a complete, complex world" in "My Favorite Historical Novel" (87), where it is listed as one of her favorite works of historical fiction. The Succession is also mentioned in "Reading for Work and Pleasure" (66).


Garrett, George: Do, Lord, Remember Me (fiction)

She says it is "a study of [a] Southern fundamentalist preacher who wrestles with God. Good characters" (Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, 41).


Garrett, George: "My Two One-Eyed Coaches" (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this essay in the bibliography (442).


Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.: Colored People (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Gibbings, Robert: Over the Reefs

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Glasgow, Ellen: The Woman Within (memoir)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she calls the author "excellent" (x). In her afterword to the same book, she includes this memoir in the bibliography (442).


Goldbarth, Albert: A Sympathy of Souls and Great Topics of the World

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she says the prose pieces in these books are "perfectly structured" (xi). In her afterword to Memoirs, she includes the first book in the bibliography (442).


Golden, Marita: Migrations of the Heart (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Goldsmith, Joel

"I confess a fond and enduring weakness" for his books (For the Time Being 89).


Gombrich, E. H.: Art and Illusion (aesthetics)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Gonzalez, Ray: Memory Fever (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Gordon, Mary: Final Payments (fiction)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Gorky, Maxim: My Childhood; My Apprenticeship; and My Universities (a memoir trilogy)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (442), where she calls them books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (159).


Gornick, Vivian: Fierce Attachments (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (91-99).


Graham, Stephen: The Gentle Art of Tramping (nonfiction)

Described as "elegant" in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Grant, Ulysses S.: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Graves, John: Goodbye to a River and From a Limestone Ledge (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes the first book in the bibliography (442).


Graves, Robert: Good-bye to All That (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Grealy, Lucy: Autobiography of a Face (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (442).


Green, Henry: Pack My Bag (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Greene, Graham: A Sort of Life and Ways of Escape (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (443). She calls the first book "An austere, intelligent autobiography" in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (159).


Greenstein, George: Frozen Star (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Grumbach, Doris: Coming into the End Zone and Extra Innings (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (443).


Guinness, Alec: Blessings in Disguise (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hall, Donald: Kicking the Leaves (poetry)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Hall, Donald: String Too Short to Be Saved; Their Ancient Glitt’ring Eyes; and Life Work (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (443).


Hall, Edward T.: An Anthropology of Everyday Life (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hampl, Patricia: A Romantic Education and Virgin Time (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (443).


Hardy, Thomas: Return of the Native and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (fiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315). And according to interviewer Grace Suh, Hardy is one of Dillard's "all-time favorite fiction writers" ("Ideas are tough; irony is easy").


Harnack, Curtis: We Have All Gone Away and The Attic (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (443).


Hart, Moss: Act One (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hay, John: Nature's Year

She says it is the "best nature writing since Thoreau" (Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, 235). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Hecht, Ben: A Child of the Century (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Heilman, Samuel: The Gate Behind the Wall (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hellman, Lillian: Pentimento and An Unfinished Woman (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (443).


Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls (fiction)

"I loved it!" ("Metaphysical Graffiti").


Hemingway, Ernest: Green Hills of Africa (nonfiction)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318). And according to interviewer Grace Suh, Hemingway is one of Dillard's "all-time favorite fiction writers" ("Ideas are tough; irony is easy").


Herr, Michael: Dispatches (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hersey, John: Here to Stay (nonfiction)

Included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122).


Heschel, Abraham

One interviewer says Dillard "calls [him] the great religious thinker of the [20th] century" ("A Pilgrim's Progress"). "My approach to spirituality is intellectual, in the Neoplatonic tradition. That's why I'm also attracted to Christian mysticism, American transcendentalism [...], and Hasidism" ("The Good Books: Writer's Choices," 80).


Hoagland, Edward: Red Wolves and Black Bears; Walking the Dead Diamond River; The Tugman’s Passage; and Balancing Act (nonfiction)

The first two are included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes the last three books in the bibliography (443).


Hongo, Garrett: Volcano (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hopes, David Brendan: The Glacier's Daughters (poetry)

She says his poems are "[...] full of that mixture of topographical spareness and intellectual richness that has characterized this region's writers" ("My New England Bookshelf," 68).


Horgan, Paul: Things As They Are; Everything to Live For; and The Thin Mountain Air (fiction trilogy)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (693).


Horgan, Paul: Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History and Tracings: A Book of Partial Portraits (nonfiction)

The first book is included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes the second book in the bibliography (443).


Howard, Maureen: Facts of Life (memoir)

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (157). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (68-79).


Hudson, W. H.: The Purple Land; A Naturalist in La Plata; Far Away and Long Ago; and The Book of a Naturalist (nonfiction)

"[...] tells wonderful stories of the Argentina of his boyhood" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 317). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes the first and third books in the bibliography (443).


Hughes, Langston: The Big Sea (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Hull, John: Touching the Rock (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hunter-Gault, Charlayne: In My Place (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Hurston, Zora Neale: Dust Tracks on a Road (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (390-95).


Huxley, Elspeth: The Flame Trees of Thika (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


James, Henry (fiction)

According to interviewer Grace Suh, James is one of Dillard's "all-time favorite fiction writers" ("Ideas are tough; irony is easy").


James, Henry: A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (443).


James, William: A Pluralistic Universe

"[...] he chats not at all and thinks sustainedly, if eccentrically, and his enthusiasm for thinking itself is vigorous" ("My New England Bookshelf," 66).


James, William: The Varieties of Religious Experience

Listed in “The Books that Shape Lives.”


Jeans, Sir James: The Mysterious Universe (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (317).


Jenkins, Dan: Baja Oklahoma

Mentioned in "Antarctica."


Johnson, James Weldon: Along This Way (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Jordan, Teresa: Riding the White Horse Home (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Kaplan, Alice: French Lessons (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Kastner, Joseph: A Species of Eternity (nonfiction)

"America's first naturalists describe the new world" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 317).


Kaysen, Susanna: Girl, Interrupted (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Kazantzakis, Nikos: Report to Greco (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (159).


Kazin, Alfred: A Walker in the City (memoir)

"This stirringly illustrates a paradox on which, I think, the finest autobiographical literature depends [...] that the life of the spirit [...] enters the child through the senses. I have read this book over and over again" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 156). In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she calls it "beautiful" (x). In her afterword to the same book, she includes this memoir in the bibliography (443).


Keillor, Garrison: Lake Wobegon Days (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Keller, Helen: The World I Live In and The Story of My Life (memoir)

When she found the first book, she "read it at once; it surprised me by its strong and original prose" (The Writing Life, 30). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes the second book in the bibliography (443).


Kent, Rockwell: N by E (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Kenyon, Jane: The Boat of Quiet Hours (poetry)

"These lyrics deepen and spread her characteristic close observations of daily life—farm life, solitary, and so full of feeling to be almost unbearably poignant. There are poems about clothespins, grasses, ice, coffins and hay. There is a new strand of Christian imagery. Almost all the poems have brilliantly undercut last lines. I find them very moving" (from her introduction to Kenyon's 1989 reading at Wesleyan University).


Kenyon, Jane: From Room to Room (poetry)

"The lyrics in this book describe small moments that reverberate, often ironically, often painfully. As a poet, she deadpans her way to beauty. She uses simple syntax and simple language hard as needles. Some poems describe childhood in an ingenious, shocking tone. There are a number of prose poems, whose strength derives from their controlled plainness; there are six poems from Anna Akhmatova [translated by Keynon]" (from her introduction to Kenyon's 1989 reading at Wesleyan University).


Kerouac, Jack: The Dharma Bums

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," (315).


Kilgo, James: Deep Enough for Ivorybills (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Nicolaides, Kimon: The Natural Way to Draw

Listed in “The Books that Shape Lives.”


Kingston, Maxine Hong: The Woman Warrior (memoir)

"There is a long story in here about a Chinese aunt that is one of the funniest stories I've seen in print" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 157-58). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (231-47).


Kittredge, William: Owning it All

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Kittredge, William: Who Owns the West? (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (355-71).


Kroeber, Theodora: Ishi in Two Worlds (anthropology)

"This is a wonderful story [...]" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122).


Lansing, Alfred: Endurance (memoir)

She says it is, "of the many expedition books I've read, the most vivid and stirring. [...] I return to this book as a lab rat pushes its bar for hits of endorphins. Its intensity never fails" ("Antarctica"). "I buy every copy I see; so do all my friends" (Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, 223). Also listed as one of her two favorite selections in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122).


Larsen, Jeanne: Silk Road: A Novel of Eighth-Century China

She calls it "a Buddhist bodice-ripper" in "What writers are reading on summer vacation" (53).


Lavender, David: One Man’s West (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (443).


Lawrence, T. E.: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Laxness, Halldor: Independent People (fiction)

Says that it "is as funny as Beckett—and for the same reason: 'The soul refuses to give up the struggle.' [...] Iceland grips Mr. Laxness. Northern open lands beyond tree line, over which vast skies change, inspire scenes of metaphysical simplicity. [...] it is one of the hundred or so best [books ever]" ("Hard Times in Ultima Thule," 35).


Left Handed: Left Handed, Son of Old Man Hat: A Navaho Autobiography (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (315-20).


Leibowitz, Herbert A.: Fabricating Lives

Recommends it "[f]or an intelligent consideration of classic American memoirs" (afterword to Modern American Memoirs, 446).


Levi, Primo: Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (444), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446).


Levin, Harry: Memories of the Moderns (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Levi-Strauss, Claude: Tristes Tropiques (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Lewis, C. S.: Surprised by Joy (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444). Also included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (159).


Lightman, Alan P.: Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Logan, William Bryant: Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

In For the Time Being, calls it an "excellent book" (125).


Lopez, Barry: Desert Notes and Arctic Dreams (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Lopez, Barry: "Replacing Memory" (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (372-89).


Lorenz, Konrad: King Solomon's Ring (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321).


Lusseyran, Jacques: And There Was Light (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


MacLean, Norman: A River Runs Through It

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (157). In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


MacNeil, Robert: Wordstruck (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Malcolm, Norman: Memory and the Mind (philosophy)

"A sober and witty treatment of the problem of memory [...]" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Malouf, David

"He's just a knockout—he's just fabulous!" ("A Writer's Writer on Her Work").


Manchester, William: “Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All” (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this essay in the bibliography (444).


Mason, Robert: Chickenhawk (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Masters, Hilary: Last Stands (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Mathabane, Mark: Kaffir Boy (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Matthiessen, Peter

She recommends "anything" by him in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Maugham, Somerset: Of Human Bondage (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Maxwell, Gavin: Ring of Bright Water (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444). Also included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122) and "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Maxwell, William: Billie Dyer and Other Stories (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Maxwell, William: Ancestors (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


McCarthy, Cormac: Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (fiction)

Listed as one of her favorite historical novels in "My Favorite Historical Novel" (87).


McConkey, James: Court of Memory (memoir)

"This memoir is a treasure because of its extraordinary depth of feeling. The thoughtfulness he brings to bear on his life, his modesty, and his rare literary ability to push events through to meanings, make this memoir a rich find for people who love literature" ("What They're Reading"). "[...] I admire its structural integrity and literary intelligence" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 156). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (345-54).


McKain, David: Spellbound (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


McKay, Jean: Gone to Grass (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


McKenna, Rollie: Rollie McKenna: A Life in Photography (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


McLaurin, Tim: Keeper of the Moon (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


McMurtry, Larry: Lonesome Dove (fiction)

Listed as one of her favorite historical novels in "My Favorite Historical Novel" (87). In "At Home with Annie Dillard," she calls him "about the only man I've met who understands women" (H2).


McPhee, John: Basin and Range and Annals of the Former World (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Mead, Margaret: Blackberry Winter (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (396-406).


Mehta, Ved: Vedi (memoir)

"In beautiful, formal, vivid language, the writer describes his blind, vigorous boyhood in India" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 158). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444). Also mentioned in "Reading for Work and Pleasure" (66).


Melville, Herman: Moby-Dick and "The Encantadas" (fiction)

Regarding the former: "[...] Moby-Dick is the greatest novel [...] [Melville is] our greatest artist. [...] I admire especially Melville's willing that it should all mean (all of it, even the facts), his all-or-nothing stab at greatness in the novel, his urgency and power, his book's splendor and scale" ("My New England Bookshelf," 66-67). "The best book ever written about nature" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 316). "What book best defines the relationship between time and eternity? [...] Since I like a spoonful of sugar with my metaphysics as much as the next fellow, and since I believe that formal art is, because it partakes of this relationship itself and uniquely, best qualified to treat of such subtleties, the choice, limited to books, becomes one of value within literature. Which brings us, pace Shakespeare, to Moby-Dick" (“Books: some suggestions”). The latter is included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315) as well.


Merrill, James: A Different Person (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Merton, Thomas: The Seven Storey Mountain (memoir)

Listed in “The Books that Shape Lives.” In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444). Also included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (158).


Middleton, Harry: The Earth Is Enough (memoir)

In July 1989, she called it the best work she had read so far that summer ("What writers are reading on summer vacation" 53). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (158-71).


Miller, Henry (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes "much of [his] fiction" in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Millman, Lawrence: Our Like Will Not Be There Again: Notes from the West of Ireland (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Milton, John: Samson Agonistes

Listed it as her second favorite book at "The Art and Craft of Memoir" lecture series.


Mitchell, John Hanson: Living at the End of Time

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Mitchell, Joseph: McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Mitchell, Susan: “Dreaming in Public” (memoir) [most easily found in The Best American Essays 1988‎, edited by Dillard]

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this essay in the bibliography (444).


Momaday, N. Scott: The Way to Rainy Mountain and The Names (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (444).


Monette, Paul: On Becoming a Man (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Moodie, Susanna: Roughing It in the Bush

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Moody, Anne: Coming of Age in Mississippi (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (321-44).


Morris, Wright: Will’s Boy (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (222-30).


Mowat, Farley: People of the Deer (memoir)

Included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122).


Muir, Edwin: An Autobiography (memoir)

"A beautiful evocation of the timelessness of early childhood, in the Orkney Islands" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 158). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Muir, John: My First Summer in the Sierra; Travels in Alaska; and The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (444). She includes the first two in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," saying, "He is one of the finest prose writers in English, and his spiritual energy is awesome and exhilarating" (122). She also includes the first two in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," saying, "Muir's vivid prose rich in tropes, and his pluck and piety, make him the best writer of the 'sublime' school" (317).


Munro, Eleanor: Memoir of a Modernist's Daughter (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (19-23).


Murray, Pauli: Song in a Weary Throat and Proud Shoes (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (444).


Murray-Smith, Stephen: Sitting on Penguins

Calls it an "Australian classic [...] a title I find right up there with Dan Jenkin's Baja Oklahoma" ("Antarctica").


Nabhan, Gary

She recommends "anything" by him in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Nabokov, Vladimir: Pale Fire (fiction)

She proclaimed her love for it in the interview "Drawing the Curtains" (36).


Nabokov, Vladimir: Speak, Memory (memoir)

"Nabokov's memoir of old Russia is pure description, emotional in its spareness" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 159). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446).


Naipaul, V. S.: Finding the Center and The Enigma of Arrival (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography and particularly recommends the latter (444).


Naipaul, V. S.: A Way in the World (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Nelson, Richard K.: The Island Within; Hunters of the Northern Ice; and Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (nonfiction)

"Richard K. Nelson is a very great, if not the greatest, nature writer we have. [...] Anyone can see stuff and learn facts; it's what you make of it. His rhetorical pitch was as wild as Thoreau's on Katahdin, transporting as Shakespeare pushing art into the realms that ennoble the reader. I finished The Island Within out of breath. [...]" ("The Nature Writer's Nature Writer," 56). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes the first book in the bibliography (444).


Neruda, Pablo: Memoirs (memoir)

"The poet writes a muscular prose [...]" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (159).


Newby, Eric: Love and War in the Apennines (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Offutt, Chris: The Same River Twice (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (297-314).


Ogburn, Charlton, Jr.: The Winter Beach (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Olson, Sigurd F.: Open Horizons, The Lonely Land, and Runes of the North (memoirs)

Included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122).


Ondaatje, Michael: Running in the Family (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Orlen, Steve: Permission to Speak (poetry)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Ortner, Sherry B.: Sherpas Through Their Rituals (anthropology)

"A very witty monograph" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Owens, William: This Stubborn Soil (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (269-79).


Ozick, Cynthia: Art and Ardor (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (108-15).


Pasternak, Boris: Doctor Zhivago (fiction)

"Pasternak's sense of the world's beauty illumines every Moscow alley, every kilometer of railroad track buried in snow" ("Antarctica"). Also mentioned in "Metaphysical Graffiti".


Pemberton, Gayle: The Hottest Water in Chicago (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Pfeiffer, John: The Emergence of Man (anthropology)

"This general work inspired me to read dozens of studies in prehistory; of all of them, this one remains the most interesting" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694). In For the Time Being, she refers to him as "the ever fine writer" (99).


Phibbs, Brendan: The Other Side of Time (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Phillips, Jayne Anne: Black Tickets (fiction)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Pinion: Wind on the Sand: The Hidden Life of an Anchoress

In her foreword, she says it "is a fascinating book, which I enjoyed reading immensely. [...] My favorite aspect of the book, and of the anchoress' life, is the running paradox involved in leading a life that partakes of the eternal, right here in funny old time" (v).


Platt, Rutherford: The Great American Forest (nonfiction)

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she calls it "one of the most interesting books ever written" (166). Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321).


Pliny: Natural History (the Philemon Holland translation)

She says he wrote "when science and poetry blurred" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 316).


Ponce, Mary Helen: Hoyt Street (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (444).


Powell, Anthony: A Dance to the Music of Time

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (693). Listed it as her third-favorite book at "The Art and Craft of Memoir" lecture series, where she said, "at the moment I’m very enamored with this twelve-volume series."


Powys, John Cowper: A Glastonbury Romance; Wolf Solent; and Maiden Castle (fiction)

She calls the first a "long, very strange novel," and the author "a fine neglected genius" (Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, 95).


Powys, John Cowper: Autobiography (memoir)

"The oddest of this great writer's many odd books" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 158).


Price, Reynolds: Clear Pictures (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (172-77).


Proust, Marcel: Remembrance of Things Past (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Puleston, Dennis: Blue Water Vagabond (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Quade, Kirstin Valdez: Night at the Fiestas: Stories (fiction)

Recommended in "Annie Dillard, author and seasonal Wellfleet resident, gets a medal from the president."


Quammen, David: Natural Acts ("or anything") (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan: Cross Creek (memoir)

She praises "its broad-spirited re-creation of energetic and hospitable decades among friends" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 156-57). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Read, Piers Paul: Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (nonfiction)

"The boys who went with the Uruguayan rugby team were upper-class Catholics; now they are first-class mystics" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122).


Reed, Kit: Cry of the Daughter (fiction)

She says it portrays "The old South, beautifully" in "My Favorite Historical Novel" (87), where it is listed as one of her favorite historical novels.


Reed, Kit: The Ballad of T. Rantula and The Better Part (fiction)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (693).


Rhodes, Richard: A Hole in the World (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Richardson, Robert D.: Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind

She called it the "best biography I've ever read in my whole life [...] It's all interior. It's like being married to somebody. [...] It's intimate. It's why I read biography: because you only get to live once, and this way you get to experience, from the inside, someone else's life' " ("Annie Dillard: Pilgrim's Progress," D3).


Robinson, Marilynne: Housekeeping (fiction)

Journalist Mary K. Feeney says that if Dillard "had voted on her choices" for "the Modern Classics roster of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century," she would have included, among others, this book ("Reading Between the Lines," A1). She also mentions that she likes it in Encounters with Chinese Writers (24).


Rodriguez, Richard: Hunger of Memory (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Rose, Phyllis: Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (biography)

"This is a book of ideas, not of gossip: it deals incisively with issues intellectual, social, and artistic, and performs valuable close readings on the texts" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Rose, Phyllis: Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages

Calls it a "fascinating study" in "Reading for Work and Pleasure" (66).


Roth, Henry: Call It Sleep (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Roueche, Berton: The River World and Other Explorations (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Rubin, Louis D., Jr.: The Golden Weather (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de: Wind, Sand and Stars (memoir)

"Lyricism, mysticism, courage: this is the book the astronauts read" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122). "[...] one of the best books on any subject" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 318). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446). Also included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (160).


Saint Pierre, Paul: Smith and Other Events (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Sandoz, Mari: Old Jules (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Sartre, Jean-Paul: The Words (memoir)

"Sartre's original memoir is, I think, his best, most literary work" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 159-60). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446).


Schaefer, Jack: An American Bestiary: Notes of an American Naturalist

"This is serious mammalogy, all-American, full of fascinating stuff, all new to me, and wild" ("Books for Sale," 122).


Scherman, Katharine: Spring on an Arctic Island (memoir)

"This fine writer and observer [...] fills her personal tale with interesting lore" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Scholes, Robert: Structuralism in Literature (criticism)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).


Scott, Evelyn: Escapade (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Selzer, Richard: Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery; Letters to a Young Doctor; and Confessions of a Knife (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320). The last one is excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (100-07).


Senden, Marius Von: Space and Sight (nonfiction)

"Absolutely fascinating" (Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, 191). In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she calls it "a wonderful book" (27).


Settle, Mary Lee: “London—1944” (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this essay in the bibliography (445).


Shammas, Anton: Arabesques (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Shapiro, Alan (poetry)

"[...] an excellent poet [...]" ("A Writer's Writer on Her Work").


Sheed, Wilfrid: Frank and Maisie; My Life as a Fan; People Will Always be Kind; and In Love with Daylight (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (445). The first book is included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (159).


Shen Congwen: Recollections of West Hunan (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (441), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446).


Simon, Kate: Bronx Primitive (memoir)

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (158). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (40-48).


Simpson, Eileen: Poets in Their Youth (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Smith, Annick: Homestead

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Smith, Lee: Fair and Tender Ladies (fiction)

She says, "This is about as moving a work of literature as has ever been written" in "My Favorite Historical Novel" (87), where it is listed as one of her favorite historical novels. Journalist Mary K. Feeney says that if Dillard "had voted on her choices" for "the Modern Classics roster of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century," she would have included, among others, this book ("Reading Between the Lines," A1). Old Dominion University's The Courier writes that Dillard "has called [Smith] 'the best of the younger generation of Southern writers' " (5).


Smith, Lee: Fancy Strut (fiction)

She says it is an "extremely funny, well-made contemporary American novel: [a] cross between Dickens and Woody Allen. Beautifully put together, very funny characters" (Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, 111).


Smith, Lee: Oral History

Mentioned in "Reading for Work and Pleasure" (66).


Smith, Lillian: Killers of the Dream (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Smith, William Jay: Army Brat (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Soyinka, Wole: Ake (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Spark, Muriel: Curriculum Vitae (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Spiegelman, Art: Maus (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Staples, Brent: Parallel Time (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Stegner, Wallace: Angle of Repose

He "saw what could be done with Western history. [...] He had very few characters [in Angle of Repose], very little incident, and what he did was go over it, making it deeper and deeper and deeper, dealing with the woman (his main character) again and again and again until she had a mythological stature. She became figural" ("Eulogy: Friends, Students and Admirers Remember Wallace Stegner") (E1).


Stegner, Wallace: Wolf Willow (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (24-39).


Stein, Gertrude: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Stevens, Wallace (poetry)

"[...] Wallace Stevens is the greatest poet" ("My New England Bookshelf," 66). "If this century could claim no other poets than Eliot, Yeats, and Stevens, this would still be the century of English poetry's greatest achievement" ("The Purification of Poetry—Right Out of the Ballpark," 293).


Stone, Robert: Damascus Gate, A Flag for Sunrise, and Dog Soldier

Journalist Mary K. Feeney says that if Dillard "had voted on her choices" for "the Modern Classics roster of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century," she would have included, among others, the first two books listed above ("Reading Between the Lines," A1). The interviewer Grace Suh says Dillard "greatly admires" his work ("Ideas are tough; irony is easy").


Stratton-Porter, Gene: A Girl of the Limberlost; Freckles; and Moths of the Limberlost

"She's wonnn-der-fulll. [... These books] set me onto science, and I've been on science ever since I read it in the seventh or eighth grade" ("A Pilgrim's Progress"). The last book is included in “The Books that Shape Lives,” "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321), and the bibliography in her afterword to Modern American Memoirs (445).


Talayesva, Don: Sun Chief (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Taylor, Peter: A Summons to Memphis (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Teale, Edwin Way: The American Seasons tetralogy (North with the Spring; Journey into Summer; Autumn Across America; and Wandering through Winter) (memoir)

"A tour de force [...] learn from the master where we live" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321).


Teale, Edwin Way: The Strange Lives of Familiar Insects

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she calls it "a book I couldn't live without" (170).


Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre: The Divine Milieu; "Mass of the World"; and "The Heart of the Matter" (nonfiction)

"I love him. Every single thing. I think that Americans have been reading the wrong books. They keep reading The Phenomenon of Man, which is just pretty much crackpot, and they don't read the wonderful things, the 'Mass of the World' and The Divine Milieu. He enters the realm as I try to enter the realm, where nothing can be said but in art, but in metaphor, but in simile—because words fail and reason fails, as everyone knows. Only art can enter those realms, however pathetically" ("Natural Wonders: An Interview with Annie Dillard"). In For the Time Being, she praises The Divine Milieu and his essays "The Mass of the World" and "The Heart of the Matter" as "intelligent, plausible, and beautiful" (103).


Terres, John K.: From Laurel Hill to Siler's Bog (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320).


Thesiger, Wilfred: Arabian Sands (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (318).


Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall: The Harmless People (anthropology)

"[...] beautifully written, unsentimental" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 318). Also included in "Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk" (122).


Thomas, Lewis: The Youngest Science (memoir); The Lives of a Cell; The Medusa and the Snail; and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony (nonfiction)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes the first book in the bibliography (445). Also included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (157). The others are included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320). In "Thinking About Language," she calls The Lives of a Cell "a wholly excellent book" (3).


Thompson, Flora Lewis: Lark Rise to Candleford (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445), where she calls it one of the books "[r]eaders might especially enjoy" (446).


Thoreau, Henry David: Walden; Cape Cod; and The Maine Woods (memoir)

She praises the first book's "formal shapeliness and metaphorical, hyperbolic prose [...]" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 156). Also listed in “The Books that Shape Lives” and "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (316). In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes all three books in the bibliography (445). In an interview, she mentioned him as one "of the writers I feel closest to" ("Remembrances of Things Past," 78).


Thurber, James: My Life and Hard Times (memoir)

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (158).


Tinbergen, Niko: Curious Naturalists (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321).


Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina (fiction)

In an interview, she said, "who would not like to have written [...] Anna Karenina?" ("Into the Yellow Wood," 161). "I often reread books. [...] Tolstoy [...] gets better and better" ("Remembrances of Things Past," 78).


Tolstoy, Leo: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (fiction)

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi).


Toth, Susan Allen: Blooming: A Small Town Girlhood and Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes these books in the bibliography (445).


Trefil, James

She recommends "anything" by him in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Trevelyan, Katharine: Through Mine Own Eyes (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Trillin, Calvin: Remembering Denny (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Trilling, Diana: The Beginning of the Journey (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Trollope, Anthony: An Autobiography (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Turgenev, Ivan: Sportsman's Sketches

Listed in “The Books that Shape Lives.” Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (315).


Turnbull, Colin M.: The Forest People (memoir)

"Turnbull is an utterly engaging anthropologist [...]" ("Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," 122). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Twain, Mark: Life on the Mississippi (memoir)

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (156).


Ullman, James Ramsey: The Day on Fire

Listed in “The Books that Shape Lives.”


Updike, John: Pigeon Feathers; Rabbit is Rich; and early fiction (e.g. "Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car") (fiction)

First two books mentioned in Encounters with Chinese Writers, where she calls the latter, "A major American novel, out of the question" (24). In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, she includes his early stories in a list of the twentieth century's "finest works of fiction [that] have strongly autobiographical elements" (xi) and in Teaching a Stone to Talk mentioned "Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car" as a story that "moved me" (132). In "My New England Bookshelf," she says he "continues to lead American letters in the path of righteousness [...]" (68). Also mentioned in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (693).


Updike, John: Self-Consciousness (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Vallier, Dora: Abstract Art (aesthetics)

One of "the best of the many analyses and histories of abstract and Abstract Expressionist art I've read lately" ("Critic's Christmas Choices," 694).


Van der Post, Laurens: The Heart of the Hunter (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (321).


Vorse, Mary Heaton: Time and the Town: A Provincetown Chronicle (memoir)

She praises "its broad-spirited re-creation of energetic and hospitable decades among friends" (bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 156).


Wade-Gayles, Gloria: Pushed Back to Strength (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Wallace, Alfred Russel: A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (nonfiction)

"This remains the best and liveliest book on the South American forest" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 317).


Wallace, David Foster: “The Awakening of My Interest in Annular Systems”

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this story in the bibliography (445).


Walton, Izaak: The Compleat Angler (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (316).


Washington, Booker T.: Up from Slavery (memoir)

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (157).


Waters, Ethel: His Eye is on the Sparrow (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445). Also included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (158).


Weil, Simone: Waiting for God (theology/philosophy)

She says that Weil and Abraham Heschel "have everything I need" ("A Pilgrim's Progress"). "This fanaticism, this all or nothingness, both attracted and repelled me. [...] My approach to spirituality is intellectual, in the Neoplatonic tradition. That's why I'm also attracted to Christian mysticism, American transcendentalism [...], and Hasidism" ("The Good Books: Writer's Choices," 80-81).


Welty, Eudora: One Writer’s Beginnings (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (445).


Wharton, Edith: A Backward Glance (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (446).


White, Bailey: Mama Makes Up Her Mind (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (446).


White, E. B.: “Once More to the Lake” (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this essay in the bibliography (446).


White, Gilbert: The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (nonfiction)

"Close observation and high literary style [...]" ("Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," 316).


White, Stewart Edward: The Mountains and The Pass (nonfiction)

Included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (320). She calls him "a wonderful writer, an unknown writer" (Brigham Young University reading).


White, William M.: All Nature is My Bride: Passages from the Journals (poetry)

In her introduction to the book, she says that "by lifting these passages from [Thoreau's] Journals, Bill White sheds light on their wholeness. [... Thoreau] knew what he was doing; he was a juggler from way back" (ix). She goes on to say that in the poems' "perfectly sensitive arrangements, nothing is lost, all is gained" (xi).


Whitman, Walt (poetry)

In an interview, she mentioned him as one "of the writers I feel closest to" ("Remembrances of Things Past," 78).


Wideman, John Edgar: Brothers and Keepers (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (407-15).


Williams, Joy. The Florida Keys: A History & Guide

"In addition to Joy Williams' brilliant and moving fiction, her guidebook is of course the best guidebook ever written, and it's fun to read for pleasure alone, because she's witty, tells plain truths, and cracks jokes" ("Books." Key West Magazine Spring 2016: 64).


Williams, Oscar (editor): A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry

Listed in “The Books that Shape Lives.”


Williams, Terry Tempest: Refuge

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (446). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Williams, William Carlos: Autobiography (memoir)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (446).


Wilson, Edward O.: Naturalist

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (446). Also included in "Natural History: An Annotated Booklist" (319).


Wolff, Geoffrey: The Duke of Deception

In her introduction to Modern American Memoirs, where an excerpt from this book is reprinted (288-296), she calls it one of the "great memoirs in which the narrator is not the object of all attention" (x).


Wolff, Tobias: This Boy’s Life (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (193-204).


Wozencraft, Kim: Notes from the Country Club (fiction)

In her afterword to Modern American Memoirs, she includes this book in the bibliography (446).


Wright, Richard: Black Boy (memoir)

Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (178-92).


X, Malcolm: The Autobiography of Malolm X (memoir)

Included in the bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (157). Excerpted in Modern American Memoirs (142-57).


Yeats, William Butler (poetry)

In "A Writer's Writer on Her Work," she mentions him as one of the poets that inspire her. "If this century could claim no other poets than Eliot, Yeats, and Stevens, this would still be the century of English poetry's greatest achievement" ("The Purification of Poetry—Right Out of the Ballpark," 293).


Zimmer, Paul: The Zimmer Poems (poetry)

Included in "Critic's Christmas Choices" (694).



Sources (written by Dillard, unless otherwise indicated):

92nd Street Y reading on May 10, 1999.

"The Ancient Story of Jacob, Retold in a Passionate, Exalted Pitch," Boston Globe, 30 May 1993: A15.

"Annie Dillard, author and seasonal Wellfleet resident, gets a medal from the president" by Edward Miller. Provincetown Banner 11 September 2015.

"Annie Dillard: Pilgrim's Progress" by Charles Trueheart. Washington Post, 28 October 1987: sec. D, 1-3.

"Antarctica," Mungo Park (website), January 1998.

"The Art and Craft of Memoir," New York Public Library lecture series. February 25, 1986.

"At Home with Annie Dillard" by Mary Grauerholz. Boston Globe, 5 December 2002, H2.

Bibliography from Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir: 155-60. She says, "These are some first-person narratives I dearly love."

"Books for Sale" by L.S.B. Harper's Magazine, Vol. 252, No. 1510 (March 1976): 122.

“Books: some suggestions.” Smithsonian vol. 7, no. 4 (July 1976): 120.

“The Books that Shape Lives.” The Christian Century vol. XCIII, no. 19 (26 May 1976): 522.

Brigham Young University reading on September 26, 1989.

"A City of Words: The 13th Annual Literary Festival." Old Dominion University's The Courier, 21 September, 1990, 5.

"Critic's Christmas Choices," Commonweal, Vol. CVI, No. 22 (7 December 1979): 693-94.

"Drawing the Curtains: An Interview with Annie Dillard" by Karla M. Hammond. Bennington Review 10 (April 1981): 30-38.

Encounters with Chinese Writers. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984.

Entry in F. Scott Fitzgerald: 24 September 1896 to 21 December 1940; 24 September 1996 Centenary Celebration. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1996: 21.

“Eucharistic Celebration” (letter to editor). Portland 13.3 (autumn 1994): 2.

"Eulogy: Friends, Students and Admirers Remember Wallace Stegner" by Bob Sipchen. Los Angeles Times, 16 April 1993, E1.

"Foreword" to Moments of Light by Fred Chappell. Newport Beach, California: New South Press, 1980. ix-xvii.

"Foreword" to Unarmed But Dangerous by Hal Crowther. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1995. xi-xii.

"Foreword" to Wind on the Sand: The Hidden Life of an Anchoress by Pinion. Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981. v-vi.

For the Time Being. New York: Knopf, 1999.

"The Good Books: Writer's Choices," edited by Karen Fitzgerald. Ms., December 1985: 80-81.

"Hard Times in Ultima Thule," New York Times Book Review, 20 April 1997: Bookends (back page).

"Ideas are tough; irony is easy," an interview by Grace Suh. The Yale Herald, 4 October 1996.

"Into the Yellow Wood: An Interview with Annie Dillard" by George Myers, Jr. Onthebus, Vol. 15/16 (Fall/Winter 1999): 158-162.

"Introduction" to All Nature is My Bride: Passages from the Journals. Old Greenwich, CT : Chatham Press, 1975. ix-xi.

"Introduction" to "A Mother's Tale" (a story by James Agee). You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe, edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard. Perennial, 1994. 1.

"Language for Everyone." Southwest Review vol. 71 (1986): 488-92.

"Metaphysical Graffiti," an interview conducted by James Marcus. Web only. 1999.

Modern American Memoirs. Edited with Cort Conley. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

"My Favorite Historical Novel," American Heritage Magazine, Volume 43, Issue 6 (October 1992): 87.

"My New England Bookshelf," New England Monthly (November 1985), p. 66-68. She says, "Of all the world's literature, I find that of New England most moving. [...] New England thinkers plunge [into the metaphysical] as cheerfully and, apparently, as comfortably as into the old neighborhood swimming hole. [...] Their subject was being."

"Natural History: An Annotated Booklist," The Nature Reader, edited by Daniel Halpern and Dan Frank. Hopewell, New Jersey: Ecco, 1996. 315-321.

"Natural Wonders: an interview with Annie Dillard" by Maureen Abood. U. S. Catholic, Vol. 64 (November 1999): 30-33.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1974.

"The Nature Writer's Nature Writer," Outside (January 2003): 56.

"A Pilgrim's Progress," an interview by Mary Cantwell. The New York Times 26 April, 1992.

"The Purification of Poetry—Right Out of the Ballpark," Parnassus, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 1984): 287-301.

"Reading Between the Lines: Best-Novels List Stirs Debate on Literary Merit" by Mary K. Feeney. The Hartford Courant 21 July 1998: A1.

"Reading for Work and Pleasure," New York Times Book Review 4 December 1983: 66.

"Remembrances of Things Past," an interview with Alvin P. Sanoff. U. S. News and World Report 16 November 1987: 78.

"Tales of Grandeur, Tales of Risk," Harper's, Vol. 249, No. 1494 (November 1974), p. 122. Dillard says, "I beg you to choose from among these books; they're the pick of eight years' reading."

Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.

"Thinking About Language," The Living Wilderness (Autumn 1974): 2-3.

"What writers are reading on summer vacation" by Charles E. Claffey. Boston Globe 26 July 1989, 53.

"What They’re Reading" by Brian Knowlton. International Herald Tribune 4 April 1994.

"Winter Melons," Harper's, Vol. 248, No. 1484 (January 1974): 87, 89-90.

Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, edited by Linda Sternberg Katz and Bill Katz. Reston, Virginia: Reston Publishing Company, 1983: 24, 41, 95, 111-12, 191, 223, 235.

"A Writer's Writer on Her Work," Chicago Tribune Lecture. November 4, 2001. Web streaming: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

The Writing Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.