The Official
Elmore Leonard Website

Elmore picked his ten favorite books for a special feature on the audible.com website called “A Life in Books: Authors & the Literature that Shaped Them.”

My ten favorite books represent a love and appreciation of reading, which goes back to when I read All Quiet on the Western Front when I was 10.When I decided to become a writer, Hemingway was my model, his spare prose and realistic dialogue. But he had no sense of humor and I discovered Richard Bissell who did. With Higgins it was, “Oh, that’s how you do it.” The rest of the works are by people who have given me the most pleasure and know how to write. Writers with such unique sounds that I better not read them when I’m writing, saving them for the time between books.

Elmore’s Favorites

 
Bang the Drum Slowly By Mark Harris
For Whom the Bell Tolls By Ernest Hemingway
No Country for Old Men By Cormac McCarthy
Paris Trout By Pete Dexter
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Pregnant Widow By Martin Amis
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
High Water by Richard Bissell
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
The Professional by W. C. Heinz