1) Lolita
317 pages; Random House
It blows open a new understanding of the world, its gorgeousness, its corruption and pain, all embedded in the 20th century's most extraordinary English prose.
— Vince Passaro
2) Four Quartets
2) Four Quartets
37 pages; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
This is the most musical and wisest poetry in the language of our time and place. (Short of that, The Complete Poems 1927' '1979, by Elizabeth Bishop.)
— Vince Passaro
3) The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century
3) The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century
191 pages; Shambhala
We all sometimes need to imagine what it would be like to live simply and purely, dedicated to a force larger than ourselves.
— Vince Passaro
4) Waiting for Godot
4) Waiting for Godot
357 pages; Grove
We need to remember that just because we're sad, that doesn't mean we're not also marvelously comical and transcendently courageous.
— Vince Passaro
5) Things Fall Apart
5) Things Fall Apart
148 pages; Heinemann
This, the first in Achebe's monumental and unsparing trilogy of Igbo life in western Africa, is the strongest and most important novel of the postcolonial world.
— Vince Passaro
