"I spent many hours as a child and teenager digging into Tintin. Actually, it was a difficult choice between Tintin and “The Little Prince,” because that is another old favorite. Despite being classified as children’s books, I believe these can easily be read and enjoyed by adults."

"Baldwin is one of my favorite writers and cultural critics. His work always feels both relevant and revelatory. This book-long essay on film and moviegoing is part memoir, part homage to cinema, and also an exploration of the ways corrosive ideas seep into the collective imagination."

"John Huston had an incomparable late run—The Misfits, Fat City, Under the Volcano, Prizzi’s Honor—but Wise Blood is my favorite. William Hickey, Harry Dean Stanton, and Brad Dourif kill it with a baby Jesus; bent religious fervor second only to Ken Russell’s The Devils."

"My favorite Dickens. Raucous, caustic, tender and furious, uncontainably abundant. It careens around between every imaginable social class and institution of its contemporary London, including the Office of Circumlocution, which ensures that nothing whatsoever can possibly be done to benefit anyone in dire need. All too recognizable."

"Probably the greatest novel ever written for its psychological and sociological accuracy over a wide range of characters. My favorite scene occurs when Anna, the day after she meets Vronsky, gets out of her train at a country station in a snowstorm-and runs into Vronsky!"

"I am a big fan of work in any medium that can take on death — being dead, being a soul — in a new way. It shares something with my favorite aspects of George Saunders in its matter of fact dealings with what might be considered supernatural."

"When I was seventeen, I dressed like John Lurie and Tom Waits in Down by Law. They were the apex of cool in my book. This is my favorite Jim Jarmusch movie. The “I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream” scene is classic."

"This is perhaps my favorite movie in the entire world, and I have seen it so many times that I have it memorized. It is swooningly romantic, extremely funny, and beautifully shot; and, not for nothing, there’s a surplus of very welcome full-frontal male nudity."