The first would be Tolstoy's War and Peace. I believe that War and Peace is the greatest novel ever written. I have already given my reasons for that thinking to another guest spot who I don´t think would mind sharing those with you.
The second would be Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses. That’s a close call because McCarthy's The Road is as spectacular a display of sheer craftsmanship as any I’ve read. His description of the protagonist’s and his son’s bleak exodus with such few words and the absence of other characters and scenery is remarkable. But McCarthy deals with a variety of subjects and topics in All the Pretty Horses and does so extraordinarily well.
There's the oncoming loss of John Grady Cole's identity as a Texas cowboy. He flees into Mexico. His knowledge of and description of the campesinos and the landscape beauty of northern Mexico is admirable. John Grady falls in love with the heiress of Mexico´s new ruling class. McCarthy understands that new class but he also understands the old class who he leaves in the book as the girl´s aunt mother. The doomed love fails and John Grady lands in a Mexican prison which McCarthy accurately paints and returns to Texas. Cormac McCarthy is a genius and the last four sentences of All The Pretty Horses sustain my claim.
The third book I would want is Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo. (The University of Texas Press markets an English translation) This is a small 125-page novella about a ruthless Mexican land baron who owns and controls everything around him for miles and miles, except for the woman he loves who does not love him. It is the introduction of magical realism. I have read it five times in English and each time I have understood it a little more. It is a fascinating book. The story goes that in 1985 when Gabriel Garcia Marquez met Juan Rulfo in Mexico City, he hugged Rulfo and said that he so loved Pedro Paramo that he had memorized every line of it.
Born and raised in Fresno California - Educated at St. Mary´s College California, University of California Berkeley, University of San Francisco - Practiced law from !966 to 2003 as a Deputy District Attorney, a criminal defense attorney, and a Deputy Public Defender - Appointed to the California Agriculture Labor Relations Board by Governor Jerry Brown in 1974 and later served as the District Attorney of Santa Cruz County California.
Ronald L. Ruiz has published 5 novels and a memoir. Happy Birthday Jesus (1994), Giuseppe Rocco (1998), The Big Bear (2003), A Lawyer (2012), Jesusita(2015). and Life Long (2017).
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