"Any collection of John Cheever’s short stories. I’m not a big fan of much of what passes itself off as literary fiction, finding it to be insipid, self-indulgent, plotless, and pointless. However, Cheever could write about everyday life and make it fascinating. His psychological insights are deft, never heavy-handed, and sometimes, as in his story “The Enormous Radio,” he veers into some really strange territory."

"This is kind of a weird one. Well, not weird; just totally different from Star 80. I love 12 Monkeys. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. I love sci-fi, and I think Terry Gilliam is just a genius. That movie is just so fantastic. The whole tie-in with the Hitchcock movie. It’s just so smart; it’s such a smart science fiction film."

"Imagine being an 18-year-old girl, on holiday with two radical poets, and coming up with an idea for a Gothic horror novel which also more or less invents the genre of science fiction, which then goes on to become such a huge and enduring success, constantly open to reinterpretation and reimagining, that it still seems vivid and alive two hundred years later."

"Charles McCarry was an undisputed master of spy fiction. I love all his books, but The Miernik Dossier is possibly the most outstanding due to the sheer audacity of its form. There is no narrative in any traditional sense—instead the reader is presented with a series of documents "written" by the main characters, and must deduce the truth from the conflicting, self-serving accounts these contain."

"As modern as a film can be while still remaining highly romantic. It's part journalism, part fiction, part poetry… Based on the photos and relationships the late great Mary Ellen Mark developed with street kids in Seattle for a photo series for LIFE magazine. LIFE magazine photos have birthed great films like this one and Little Fugitive (kind of). I’ll never forget Dewayne, Tiny and Rat."

"Another ripping yarn, from 1933, turning on the fantasy of a perfect world in Shangri-La. The British hero, Hugh Conway, was the first seeker I encountered in fiction, so that element must have struck a chord in a teenage boy’s heart. The book is all fantasy, mystery, and the smoke-and-mirrors of the exotic East. I don’t care and still love it."