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Across a long career, London native Keith McNally has created many of New York City’s buzziest restaurants, including the Odeon, Balthazar, and Minetta Tavern. In his best-selling recent memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, he describes how books and films shaped him.<\/p>\n
‘Bel-Ami’ by Guy de Maupassant (1885)<\/p>\n I often gravitate to books with an amoral central character, and Bel-Ami contains one of the most compelling. Georges Duroy arrives in Paris<\/a> as an innocent but opportunistic young man from the provinces who ascends several rungs up the social ladder by exploiting his charm and good looks. Even shallow, uneducated men can succeed if they’re calculating enough. Buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Subscribe to The Week<\/p>\n Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \nSUBSCRIBE & SAVE\n<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Sign up for The Week’s Free Newsletters<\/p>\n From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n ‘Arabian Sands’ by Wilfred Thesiger (1959)<\/p>\n This is Thesiger’s account of his extraordinary journey<\/a>\u2014on foot and by camel\u2014through the scorched “Empty Quarter” of Arabia, the largest sand desert in the world. Written in clear, concise prose that reflects a life unhampered by possessions, Arabian Sands is an austere masterpiece. Buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n ‘The Good Soldier’ by Ford Madox Ford (1915)<\/p>\n The Good Soldier is the most intriguing book I’ve ever read. On the surface, it’s a novel about two couples who share similar traits and who have seemingly perfect marriages. Subtitled “A Tale of Passion,” it’s also an extraordinary story of broken hearts and betrayal. Buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n ‘Anna Karenina’ by Leo Tolstoy (1878)<\/p>\n Nabokov once said that people approach Tolstoy with mixed feelings: They love the artist in him but are bored by the preacher. I agree. That said, Anna Karenina is my absolute favorite book in the world, a monumental tale of doomed passion in which Tolstoy gives a panoramic view of Russia<\/a> in the 1870s, when the scent of revolution was already in the air. Buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’ by John le Carr\u00e9 (1963)<\/p>\n Graham Greene called this “the best spy story I’ve ever read.” Le Carr\u00e9’s groundbreaking espionage novel<\/a> created a shadowy, existential world never before portrayed. This absolutely brilliant book transcends its genre. Buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n ‘An American Tragedy’ by Theodore Dreiser (1925)<\/p>\n This classic novel explores the dark side of the American Dream<\/a>. Clyde Griffiths, the son of impoverished street preachers, has blistering aspirations that spiral tragically out of control. The book is an intensely detailed and closely observed novel of greed and ambition in early 20th-century America. Buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":178015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-178014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115097143143240856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}