Favorite books of local writers

J. Peder Zane, book-review editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, has just published a book, "The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books" (Norton). Zane asked 125 American and British authors to name their top 10 books of all time, then "tabulated" the results. ("Anna Karenina" was No. 1 on the "Ten Greatest Works of Fiction of All Time" — for more information consult www.toptenbooks.net).

Zane helpfully forwarded the top 10 picks of two of our most illustrious local authors, writer and filmmaker Sherman Alexie and essayist, travel writer and novelist Jonathan Raban. Here's what's on their "best of" bookshelf:

Sherman Alexie's Top 10

1. "Invisible Man"
by Ralph Ellison

2. "Howl"
by Allen Ginsberg

3. The poems of Emily Dickenson

4. "The Things They Carried"
by Tim O'Brien

5. "Don Quixote"
by Miguel de Cervantes

6. "Ceremony"
by Leslie Marmon Silko

7. "She Had Some Horses"
by Joy Harjo

8. "The Branch Will Not Break"
by James Wright

9. "The Grapes of Wrath"
by John Steinbeck

10.. "Beloved"
by Toni Morrison

Jonathan Raban's Top 10

1. "Our Mutual Friend"
by Charles Dickens

2. "Emma"
by Jane Austen

3. "Don Juan"
by Lord Byron

4. "The Portrait of a Lady"
by Henry James

5. "The Last Chronicle of Barset"
by Anthony Trollope

6. "Middlemarch"
by George Elliot

7."Tristram Shandy"
by Laurence Sterne

8. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
by Mark Twain

9. "A Handful of Dust"
by Evelyn Waugh

10. "Summer Lightning"
by P.G. Wodehouse

Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times book editor