18 Bookmarked books in order

The Bookmarked series focuses on a famous work of literature that left a powerful impression on an author (hence the name, Bookmarked—a book that left its mark). Each entry in the series will be a no-holds-barred personal narrative detailing how a particular novel influenced an author on their journey to… show more.

A collection of four novellas, Different Seasons includes some of Stephen King's most enduring and well-known works, including "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption," which was made into the film The Shawshank Redemption, and "The Body," which was made into the movie Stand by Me. For this entry in the Bookmarked… show more.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be the greatest American novel ever written, its exploration of decadence, idealism, social upheaval, and excess having been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. In this entry in Ig's acclaimed Bookmarked series, author Jaime Clarke examines how… show more.

“There was a book. Oh man was there a book. It is still to this day a book I mention it to any book lover if asked for a recommendation. The best books stick with you, often reminding you of the power, and potential, of storytelling, and House of Leaves… show more.

The New York Times called Malcolm Lowry's 1947 novel Under the Volcano "One of the towering novels of this century," and the Modern Library ranked the book number eleven on its list of the one hundred Best English-language novels of the twentieth century. In his Bookmarked entry, critically celebrated author… show more.

Set in a small, dusty Texas town, The Last Picture Show is one of Larry McMurtry's most memorable novels, and the basis for the enormously popular movie of the same name. In this volume in Ig's acclaimed Bookmarked series, award-winning author Steve Yarbrough shares with us the importance of this… show more.

A haunting meditation on love, loss, companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark, Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is one of the most important and influential short story collections in contemporary literature. In his entry in the esteemed Bookmarked series, acclaimed author Brian… show more.

George Saunders’ Pastoralia is an exaggerated dystopia of late capitalist America, merging the spirit of James Thurber with the world of the Simpsons. In his entry in Ig’s acclaimed Bookmarked series, award-winning author Charles Holdefer addresses how Saunders captures the pain and absurdity of the American service sector, and does… show more.

Stoner is a 1965 novel by the American writer John Williams. It tells the story of William Stoner, who attends the state university to study agronomy, but instead falls in love with English literature and becomes an academic. The novel narrates the many disappointments and struggles in Stoner's academic and… show more.

“Birkerts reads Nabokov even as he allows Nabokov to read him. This is reading as high art, exhilarating and wise.”―CHRISTOPHER BENFEY, author, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay

“Much more than an exercise in literary criticism, this short book increasingly reads as a profound, sensitive, insightful meditation on family, history,… show more.

“Lucid, candid reflections on Black identity.”―KIRKUS

Set mainly in Greenwich Village and Harlem, James Baldwin’s 1962 novel, Another Country, is a groundbreaking work of sexual, racial and artistic passions that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality.

In her volume in Ig’s acclaimed Bookmarked series, award winning author… show more.

“In taking on Capote’s masterwork, Justin St. Germain has written nothing less than an essential reckoning with the entire American enterprise of nonfiction. His book changed forever how I see not only In Cold Blood, but also true crime and the limits of literary journalism. I learned so much. This… show more.

A Southern Booksellers Association Recommendation 

“In this trenchant memoir of reading and writing, Pamela Erens returns over a lifetime to George Eliot's Middlemarch. The calm, understanding, and generosity that she finds in Eliot's masterpiece—albeit differently, at different moments in her own life—inflects Erens’s own account of becoming, and being, a… show more.

“This astonishing new book, by the brilliant Robin Black is an intimate meditation on reading and writing, aftermath and possibility, the tension between the never-stable, endlessly interpretable depths of a book and the fragility of life, the finality of death. I emerged from this breathtaking work with a transformed understanding… show more.

A poet who crafted the greatest character in literary history with his engaging anti-hero of Satan, John Milton connected personal experience with the breadth of cosmic epic. His Paradise Lost is a touchstone of English literature.

In the latest entry in Ig's celebrated Bookmarked series, author Ed Simon considers Paradise… show more.

Celebrated by writers including Jonathan Franzen, who said that “[t]his crazy, gorgeous family novel is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century," The Man Who Loved Children is a 1940 novel by Australian writer Christina Stead. The harrowing portrait of a dysfunctional family, the novel focuses on… show more.

Brilliantly addressing issues such as class struggle, female friendship, women's autonomy, and literary creation… show more.