Experts > Alina Varlanuta

Alina Varlanuta's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Alina Varlanuta recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Alina Varlanuta's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels...
more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI don’t have [a favourite book]. But I do have favourite characters: The flawed and broken Olive Kitteridge assembled by Elizabeth Strout.  (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

2

Geek Love

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out—with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes—to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical...
more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI don’t have [a favourite book]. But I do have favourite characters: [....] Binewskis family exhibited by Katherine Dunn. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

3

Life

A User's Manual

Life: A User's Manual is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's Commedia and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's Ulysses. Perec's spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, like an onion being peeled, an extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging... more
Recommended by David Bellos, Alina Varlanuta, and 2 others.

David BellosSome people love it for its cleverness but, behind the cleverness, there is something more, something deeply human. (Source)

Alina VarlanutaI don’t have [a favourite book]. But I do have favourite characters: [....] All inhabitants of the apartment block on 11Rue Simon-Crubellier who lived inside George Perec’s ‘Life. A user’s manual.’. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

4

The Sea, The Sea

Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI don’t have [a favourite book]. But I do have favourite characters: [....] The disturbing sea seen by Iris Murdoch. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

5

Blow-Up and Other Stories

A young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams . . . A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer's victim . . . In the fifteen stories collected here—including "Blow-Up," which was the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni's film of the same name—Julio Cortazar explores the boundary where the everyday meets the mysterious, perhaps even the terrible.

Axolotl
House taken over
Distances
Idol of the Cyclades
Letter to a young lady in Paris
Yellow flower
Continuity of parks
Night face up
more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI don’t believe in big impacts. I think that every book changed my way of seeing things one way or another. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. There is where I found the best writing learnings. But if I were to name a book that excited me most, it would definitely be ‘Blow-up and Other Stories’ by Julio Cortazar and actually everything written by him. When I first read the short stories... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

6
"A superb tutorial for anyone wanting to learn from pros how to polish fiction writing with panache."-- Library Journal

Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.

In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of...
more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaMy professional path – copywriting – somehow intertwines with my unprofessional (hahaha) path – writing so I would recommend reading literature for both. Somehow reading and writing are two ways of doing the same thing: storytelling (even when you read you tell yourself a story in your own voice, bringing your personal emotion and empathy to the story you’re reading). The only difference is that... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

7

Dust

Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Russia s leading founder of Language poetry, in his new collection of essays fuses seemingly disparate elements of poetry, philosophy, journalism, and prose in an attempt to capture the workings of memory. At stake is not what he writes about whether memory, Gertrude Stein, immortality, or a walk on Nevsky Prospect but how he writes it. Formally, Dragomoshchenko never tires of digression, creating playful games of patience and anticipation for his reader. In so doing, he pushes story and closure into the background arriving, finally, but not to a destination.... more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI dig a lot for experimental writings. Here are some of my findings: Dust – by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

8

Drunk by Noon

Did somebody say Jen Knox's poems "read like Richard Pryor with an MFA"? Yes, somebody did. (It was John Findura in Verse Magazine.) She's also been compared to comedian Sarah Silverman, artist Jeff Koons, a 10-year-old who can't keep her mouth shut, and cartoonist R. Crumb. None of these equations is quite right, however. Jennifer L. Knox's work is unmistakably her own: darkly hilarious, surprisingly empathetic, utterly original. DRUNK BY NOON is the eagerly awaited sequel to Knox's first book, A GRINGO LIKE ME, which is also available from Bloof in a new edition. Jennifer L. Knox is a... more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI dig a lot for experimental writings. Here are some of my findings: [...] Drunk by noon – by Jennifer L. Knox (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

9

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

The world's first Zen Buddhist paranormal romance?published to coincide with Halloween

One of the most progressive writers at work today, Victor Pelevin's comic inventiveness has won him comparisons to Kafka, Calvino, and Gogol, and Time has described him as a ?psychedelic Nabokov for the cyberage.? In The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, a smash success in Russia and Pelevin's first novel in six years, paranormal meets transcendental with a splash of satire as A Hu-Li, a two-thousand-year-old shape-shifting werefox from ancient China meets her match in Alexander,...
more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI dig a lot for experimental writings. Here are some of my findings: [...] The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

10
Loory's collection of wry and witty, dark and perilous contemporary fables is populated by people–and monsters and trees and jocular octopi–who are united by twin motivations: fear and desire. In his singular universe, televisions talk (and sometimes sing), animals live in small apartments where their nephews visit from the sea, and men and women and boys and girls fall down wells and fly through space and find love on Ferris wheels. In a voice full of fable, myth, and dream, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day draws us into a world of delightfully wicked recognitions, and... more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI’m currently reading ‘Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day’ by Ben Loory and I’m enjoying each very short-story. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read Alina Varlanuta's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
11
Can techniques traditionally thought to be outside the scope of literature, including word processing, databasing, identity ciphering, and intensive programming, inspire the reinvention of writing? The Internet and the digital environment present writers with new challenges and opportunities to reconceive creativity, authorship, and their relationship to language. Confronted with an unprecedented amount of texts and language, writers have the opportunity to move beyond the creation of new texts and manage, parse, appropriate, and reconstruct those that already exist.

In addition to...
more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI read it after I finished an MA in Writing and it was exactly what I needed to burst my bubble. I loved it because it questioned everything and it perfectly matched my skepticism towards creative writing courses. Regardless of my amazing experience within the creative writing masters, nobody can teach you how to write, but somebody can definitely teach you how to rewrite and how to read. In a... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

12

The White Book

From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian

Writing while on a residency in Warsaw, a city palpably scarred by the violence of the past, the narrator finds herself haunted by the story of her older sister, who died a mere two hours after birth. A fragmented exploration of white things - the swaddling bands that were also her shroud, the breast milk she did not live to drink, the blank page on which the narrator herself attempts to reconstruct the story - unfolds in a powerfully poetic distillation.

As she walks the unfamiliar,...
more
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI recently read it and it still flickers on my mind. It is an autobiographical writing reflecting on the narrator’s baby sister who died two hours after her birth. It is fragmented into different perspectives. Each opens a white dimension where mourning, frailty and death are dissolving word by word, in utter silence. I loved the structure as the author makes at the beginning a list of the white... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

13
A hilarious adventure with comical illustrations that will have audiences bursting with laughter! A badger kidnapped by two nasty sisters to fight a boxing match against three even nastier dogs, four depressed llamas about to become llama pies, and Uncle Shawn with a rescue plan? less
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta, and 1 others.

Alina VarlanutaI’m also finishing ‘Uncle Shawn and Bill and the almost entirely unplanned adventure’ by A.L. Kennedy & Gemma Correll (illustrations). It’s a book for children and it makes me laugh when nobody’s watching. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

14

Where the Wild Things Are

Max, a wild and naughty boy, is sent to bed without his supper by his exhausted mother. In his room, he imagines sailing far away to a land of Wild Things. Instead of eating him, the Wild Things make Max their king. less

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Barack ObamaDuring a trip to a public library in Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood in 2015, Obama shared some of his childhood favorites with a group of young students. He also read (and acted out) Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak to kids at the White House in 2014. (Source)

Martha StewartIn this photo, Jimmy Fallon and I enjoy slurping Eggs of Newt together for Season-5 of “The Martha Stewart Show." I am dressed as "Queen of the Wild Things" inspired by the beloved Maurice Sendak children's book, "Where the Wild Things Are." https://t.co/1ZBqXEW7dC (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

15
Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, Stephen King’s critically lauded, classic bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.

"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood...
more

Mark MansonI read a bunch of books on writing before I wrote my first book and the two that stuck with me were Stephen King’s book and “On Writing Well” by Zinsser (which is a bit on the technical side). (Source)

Jennifer RockIf you are interested in writing and communication, start with reading and understanding the technical aspects of the craft: The Elements of Style. On Writing Well. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. (Source)

Benjamin Spall[Question: What five books would you recommend to youngsters interested in your professional path?] On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft by Stephen King, [...] (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

16

The Elements of Style

You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. And now "The Elements of Style"-the most widely read and employed English style manual-is available in a specially bound 50th Anniversary Edition that offers the title's vast audience an opportunity to own a more durable and elegantly bound edition of this time-tested classic.
Offering the same content as the Fourth Edition, revised in 1999, the new casebound 50th Anniversary Edition includes a brief overview of the book's illustrious history. Used extensively by individual writers as well as...
more

Tobi Lütke[My] most frequently gifted book is [this book] because I like good writing. (Source)

Bill NyeThis is my guide. I accept that I’ll never write anything as good as the introductory essay by [the author]. It’s brilliant. (Source)

Jennifer RockIf you are interested in writing and communication, start with reading and understanding the technical aspects of the craft: The Elements of Style. On Writing Well. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read Alina Varlanuta's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.