David Vann's six favorite books

David Vann's new novel, Dirt, is a dark tale about the troubled relationship between a young man and his mother.

One of the author's six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Proulx is a master stylist. Much of The Shipping News is constructed in sentence fragments and lists that cut away everything grammatical, everything unnecessary, which is appropriate for a story about a protagonist learning to be a reporter. Quoyle is a fabulous creation, unloved in a novel that finally is a love story.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Shipping News appears on Rachel Seiffert's top ten list of books about troubled families, RJ Ellory's five best list of human dramas, Elise Valmorbida's list of top ten books with a happy ending, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best fishing trips.

--Marshal Zeringue