Michael Rock’s Book List
My list is comprised of books I admire for diverse reasons: the structure of the sentences, narrative complexity, the relationship to other books, the use of genre, the singular voice of the author. I draw from them differently. Some I use as models for argument, others I read to refresh my ear when I have been stuck on something, still others remind me to be more daring or fearless. My list is heavily weighted toward novels as they are the most important to me.
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My favorite essayist, after Joan Didion. I draw so much from McPhee’s extremely human approach to his subjects and the structural elegance of his essays. His movement from subject to subject, in absolutely fluid transitions, is remarkable.
At Last and The Patrick Melrose Novels (also by St. Aubyn) together represent the most crystalline prose and concise observation I have read in a contemporary novelist. St. Aubyn has an alchemic ability to, in a single sentence, engage humor, pathos, and shockingly bad behavior: absolutely compelling and often hair-raising.
At once hilarious and pathetic. I prefer The Corrections slightly over Franzen’s Freedom. What both books accomplish is the superimposition of socioeconomic and familial politics, in that they are both highly political novels that take on and critique the dominant cultural logic of the moment. The trope of the large writ small is expertly handled and entirely woven into the plotting, which is complex and multivalent.
The only architecture book on my list and one that I admire immensely, along with S, M, L, XL. Koolhaas is a brilliant prose stylist and one of the funniest, most insightful of theorists. I aspire to his ability to encompass counterintuitive thinking in surprising, wildly entertaining sentences. The premise of Delirious New York is utterly unique and relentlessly rigorous. Everyone else pales by comparison.
An elegant essayist from the pages of The New Yorker, Malcolm is a fascinating analyst and intricate structuralist. While this book-length essay encompasses all her techniques, my favorite essay is her magazine profile of the artist David Salle composed entirely of possible first paragraphs from a potential profile.
The author I most turn to when in need of reinvigorating my sentences. No one composes better ones in English (nor in Russian, I suspect). In addition, Nabokov masters contemporary forms and vernaculars. Lolita combines, in an almost painful way, the hilarious and the unconscionable. I have read it five times over the years and each time I find more in it. His love of language is unequaled. (Also see Nabokov’s other novels, including Pnin, Pale Fire, and Ada.)
Another benchmark book I reread once every ten years or so and it never disappoints. I love Melville’s thoroughly modern assemblage of genres: jumping from adventure narrative to travelogue to anthropological treatise to natural history text. Plus it speaks to the New Englander in me.
Joan Didion is another brilliant sentence composer with a clear, unflinching approach to her subjects. The essays are almost perfectly structured and I often attempt her stirring combination of the autobiographical and the cultural. Didion is able to capture the essence of a specific moment in subtle but precise ways.
The most contemporary book on my list included primarily because I admire the complex structure of the narrative. Egan moves so deftly between time periods and genres that the intricacy of the interrelationships is almost not apparent at first. An extremely designed novel. (I had my students at Yale attempt to diagram it.)
An absolutely compelling combination of the blank and the fantastical. Murakami is a phenomenal plotter, but what I admire most in his books is the ability to generate affect—a very specific, almost palpable, atmosphere or mood. Plus his use of musical reference is fascinating.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
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Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP: by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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