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.