Andrew Klavan Show - 10 Essential Novels You MUST Read
Aired: 2025-06-05
Duration: 08:27


=== Why Novels Matter (07:41) ===

[00:00:00]  So my producer Tom wanted me to do a video called 10 Novels You Must Read Before You Die.
[00:00:06]  And usually I just do whatever Tom says because he's got this crazy look in his eyes.
[00:00:10]  I'm afraid he's just going to go off one day and it's going to be a disaster, bloodshed.
[00:00:13]  I don't even like to think about it.
[00:00:15]  But at this time, you know, I was thinking about this and I was thinking, the problem I have is not what novels you have to read because there are no novels you have to read.
[00:00:24]  The problem I have is a lot of people don't read novels.
[00:00:25]  And especially I go on and I promote my novels on conservative radio, the only play, conservative podcasts and so on, the only places where they'll let me go.
[00:00:34]  And a lot of times people will say, you know, why should I read novels?
[00:00:37]  Conservatives don't really get this.
[00:00:39]  So to me, that's like asking why you should take a walk, why you should fall in love.
[00:00:43]  I mean, reading novels, appreciating art and great literature are part of the joys of life.
[00:00:48]  I mean, it's just so beautiful.
[00:00:49]  And they do, in fact, if you want to be practical about it, they increase your wisdom.
[00:00:54]  Reading novels, but not reading a novel.
[00:00:56]  See, that's why I didn't agree with that idea that reading a novel is not going to increase your wisdom.
[00:01:01]  Reading novels, great novels, increases your wisdom over time.
[00:01:05]  So let's start with The Great Gatsby, one of the greatest novels I've ever written.
[00:01:08]  F. Scott Fitzgerald, an American writing in part of the lost generation, the jazz age of the 20s.
[00:01:14]  And this is the story of a man who has never gotten over the love of his life.
[00:01:19]  He's lost her, and he can see her.
[00:01:21]  He lives in a house, a place where I grew up, and he can look across the water and see a green light that represents her.
[00:01:28]  And she represents all kinds of things to him.
[00:01:30]  He's a man who made his own way in the world.
[00:01:32]  We're not quite sure how, but we find out a little bit about that.
[00:01:36]  And she represents the kind of class and elegance and beauty that he is trying to attain.
[00:01:43]  It's a beautiful, beautiful romantic novel.
[00:01:46]  There's a mediocre movie of it with Robert Redford, but if you read, if you watch the movie, you'll get the plot, so it'll be even easier to read.
[00:01:53]  It's very, very short.
[00:01:54]  You can read it probably in a day or two.
[00:01:57]  Really worthwhile.
[00:01:58]  And you'll notice a lot of these books, probably a disproportionate of these books are American novels, and that's because Americans write more simply than the British and other countries.
[00:02:10]  Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
[00:02:11]  I was going to say Huckleberry Finn because Huckleberry Finn is iconic and is one of the greatest American novels, but Tom Sawyer is actually technically a better novel and it's easier to follow and Huckleberry Finn bogs down a little toward the end.
[00:02:23]  It's a wonderful, wonderful story of boyhood in the 1800s America.
[00:02:30]  It is just a beautiful story.
[00:02:32]  And then if you like it, you can follow it up with the sequel, which is Huckleberry Finn.
[00:02:35]  Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
[00:02:36]  It's funny.
[00:02:37]  It's wise.
[00:02:38]  It's written as if for children, but it's really an adult novel.
[00:02:41]  Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
[00:02:43]  Conrad's prose can be a little bit dense, but if you've ever seen the movie Apocalypse Now, it was based on Heart of Darkness.
[00:02:49]  It is about a man who journeys into Africa to find somebody who has gone missing and finds something much, much darker and more disturbing than that.
[00:02:59]  It is a great, great adventure novel, very short, beautifully written.
[00:03:03]  If you can just, because it's so short, you can take your time with the prose and explore his beautiful, wonderful, complex prose.
[00:03:11]  A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.
[00:03:13]  Now, Ernest Hemingway is great because he was the all-American American novelist in that he used very short, very clear sentences.
[00:03:21]  And I picked A Farewell to Arms because it's an absolutely beautiful love story.
[00:03:25]  I fell in love with the heroine of this book when I was a kid.
[00:03:28]  I just, my heart actually just lost my heart from an actual fictional character.
[00:03:32]  The first page or two is one of the greatest pieces of American writing, as the first page of Huck Finn is one of the greatest pieces of American writing.
[00:03:39]  Hemingway was a beautiful, brilliant stylist, and A Farewell to Arms is his most approachable book about the love between a wounded ambulance driver in World War I and the nurse who takes care of him.
[00:03:51]  And it's just got some great scenes.
[00:03:54]  This is the only book.
[00:03:55]  The next one is the only book I'm recommending that is long, long, long, but it is great, great, great.
[00:04:00]  And I think if you have time, if it's the summer and you want to take time to read what must be, I don't know, six, 700-page book, it is great.
[00:04:09]  David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.
[00:04:11]  You know, Charles Dickens, my son-in-law said this to me, and it's funny, he said it to me at the same time, almost at the same time I was thinking it because we were both looking at the same Charles Dickens story.
[00:04:20]  Charles Dickens understood one of the most simple but deepest facts of life, that nice people do nice things and bad people do bad things.
[00:04:28]  And the reason that that's important is we're all so different and we have different philosophies and we think if we have different philosophies, you must be evil.
[00:04:33]  But he understood that that's not always true.
[00:04:35]  David Copperfield is just the story of a man's life.
[00:04:38]  It's the book he liked best because it really represents himself more than any.
[00:04:42]  You notice that David Copperfield, the initials of David Copperfield, the Charles Dickens initials backwards.
[00:04:48]  And it's a beautiful, beautiful story of trial and tribulation and triumph.
[00:04:52]  And it is just the characters you will never forget that will become a part of your life.
[00:04:56]  And I know it's long, but it's just worth it.
[00:04:59]  It's just great.
[00:05:00]  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
[00:05:02]  And I picked that one over Jane Austen, who is a better novelist, but a far more complex novelist.
[00:05:10]  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is just a great read.
[00:05:13]  It is a gothic read.
[00:05:14]  Right now, something called romanticy is very popular with women.
[00:05:18]  They love the romance of women and dark men and all that.
[00:05:22]  That is the story.
[00:05:22]  It is a beauty in the beast story.
[00:05:24]  It's just terrific.
[00:05:25]  If you have trouble with the language, you can listen to my daughter's show, Storytime for Grown-Ups by Faith Moore.
[00:05:31]  She reads it and explains it as she goes along, and she has a wonderful voice, and you will like that.
[00:05:37]  The Maltese Falcon by Doshel Hammett in my genre, the hard guy, the tough guy mystery genre.
[00:05:44]  Raymond Chandler was the greatest, greater writer, a greater writer than Doshel Hammett, but The Maltese Falcon is an almost perfect mystery and just iconic.
[00:05:53]  And just that character of Sam Spade, later played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie, is one of the great American characters of all time and just a fantastic read.
[00:06:02]  You won't be able to put it down.
[00:06:03]  It's just great.
[00:06:04]  Therese Racam by Emile Zola.
[00:06:06]  I wanted to include a Zola book.
[00:06:07]  This is the shortest one I've ever read.
[00:06:10]  In some ways, it's kind of the poor man's war and peace, terrific murder story, a really riveting book, and just explores the conscience of a murderer in a great way and much shorter and easier to read than Crime and Punishment.
[00:06:24]  But if you like it, you can move on to Crime and Punishment.
[00:06:26]  It's a good place to start.
[00:06:28]  The Trial by Franz Kafka, a really, really great modern novel.
[00:06:31]  And it'll drive you crazy.
[00:06:33]  It is just, if you've ever dealt with the DMV, this is Franz Kafka imagining a world in which the whole world has become the DMV.
[00:06:43]  The trial about a man who is accused of something, but he never can find out what.
[00:06:47]  It is just a tremendous, tremendous book.
[00:06:50]  And I think you'll really like it.
[00:06:52]  It's the most modern of these books.
[00:06:54]  All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Ramarck is a great, great war novel.
[00:07:00]  I picked it because it's very, very simple.
[00:07:02]  It is about the German side of World War I and what that is like.
[00:07:06]  And the prose is absolutely simple and straightforward and solid.
[00:07:12]  And it is just the experience of being in one of the truly most meaningless, most destructive.
[00:07:19]  It was almost, World War I was almost as if Europe just died of old age.
[00:07:24]  There was no reason to fight it, and it wiped out a generation of men and ultimately led to the destruction of the greatest culture that had ever existed on earth, the European culture.
[00:07:32]  All Quiet on the Western Front just captures both the heroism and the idealism and the stupidity and the craziness of it all.
[00:07:40]  A terrific novel.

=== Why Read Novels? (00:45) ===

[00:07:42]  So I recommend these novels because I recommend novels.
[00:07:45]  I think reading a novel is the most direct, if you think of art like a drug, a drug that actually makes you better instead of worse, the novel is, to me, the mainlining that drug.
[00:07:57]  It's no actor gets in your way, no director gets in your way, only one mind making a story in the language he wants to use and transferring that story from his mind to your mind.
[00:08:08]  That is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
[00:08:10]  You can read it at 4 o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep.
[00:08:13]  You can read it on the beach.
[00:08:14]  You can do anything you want with it.
[00:08:16]  But these are great novels.
[00:08:17]  Great novels that are easy to read and fun to read.
[00:08:20]  And yes, will they change their life?
[00:08:22]  Yes, they will.
[00:08:23]  And will they change it for the better?
[00:08:24]  Yes, they will.
[00:08:25]  And then you can move on to more complex stuff.