Make Your Own MFA

Put on a shirt old man!

In an effort to put together a more targeted plan for reading, I came up with what I consider my own personalized MFA plan. It’s a list of books I have been planning to read...at some point. Some of these I picked because of the writing style, some for subject matter, and some are classics. For me, they’re all important in one way or another. I should point out this list doesn’t include any books I’ve already read and many of these books were chosen because I had some interest in digging deeper into the subject, style, or mechanics so if some of the authors on here aren’t familiar…well, there you go.

   

Year 1:

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls

John Steinbeck: To A God Unknown, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men

William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and The Fury, Light In August, Absalom, Absalom!

Larry Brown: Fay, Joe, Dirty Work

Lajos Egri: The Art of Dramatic Writing

I looooove to smoke.

Year 2:

Joyce Carol Oates: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been (short story collection)

Tim O’Brien: Going After Cacciato

Raymond Carver: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (short story collection)

Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge (short story collection)

Great Writing Series (5 Books): Revision, Setting, Dialogue, Plot & Structure, Character & Viewpoint

Cormac McCarthy: The Orchard Keeper, Suttree

Richard Wright: Black Boy, The Outsider

Harry Crews: A Feast of Snakes, Body, Car, Scar Lover, The Knockout Artist

Thomas Bullfinch: Bullfinch’s Mythology

Joseph Campbell: The Heroes Journey, Pathways to Bliss

Neil Strauss: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Don’t Try this at Home

Blake Snyder: Save the Cat

Linda Seger: Making A Good Script Great

Edward Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic

Charles Bukowski: Hollywood, Hot Water Music

Thom Jones: Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine

Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment

Isaac Babel: Red Cavalry and Other Stories

Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon, Beloved, The Bluest Eyes, Jazz

Mario Vargas Llosa: Time of the Hero, Conversations in the Cathedral

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Leaf Storm, 100 Years of Solitude, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Mary Shelley: The Last Man

Charles Dickens: Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House

Ernest Hemingway: Across the River and Into the Trees, To Have and Have Not, Garden of Eden

William Faulkner: The Reivers, Sanctuary

John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Travels with Charley, The Moon Is Down 

Seriously, you're going to read this in a year?!

Feel free to drop me a line with any suggestions, or books you'd put on your MFA reading list!