What I’m Reading

What I’m Reading Now | Next on My List | All-Time Favorite Books

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

William Faulkner

What I’m Reading (or listening to) Now

  1. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
  2. There There, Tommy Orange

Next on My List

  1. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
  2. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

Books I’ve Enjoyed Since I Started Keeping Track (October 2015)
Note: if I didn’t enjoy a book, I didn’t add it to this list, which may explain why a title went from “What I’m Reading” to not on any list.

  1. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
  2. Deacon King Kong, James McBride
  3. Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl
  4. Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
  5. Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson
  6. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe
  7. Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell
  8. Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
  9. The Snakes, Sadie Jones
  10. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Togarczuk
  11. All the Names They Used for God, Anjali Sachdeva
  12. The River, Peter Heller
  13. The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides
  14. Dare to Lead, Brené Brown
  15. Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy
  16. Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
  17. Walking on the Ceiling, Ayşegül Savaş
  18. Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reichl
  19. Circe, Madeline Miller
  20. Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas
  21. The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  22. The Guest Book, Sarah Blake
  23. No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder
  24. Becoming, Michelle Obama
  25. Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls
  26. Safekeeping, Abigail Thomas
  27. The Red-Haired Woman, Orhan Pamuk
  28. The Overstory, Richard Powers
  29. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
  30. The Witch Elm, Tana French
  31. Leaving Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
  32. 10:04, Ben Lerner
  33. Destroyer, Victor Lavalle
  34. Warlight, Michael Ondaatje
  35. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  36. Florida, Lauren Groff
  37. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
  38. The Day the World Came to Town, Jim Defede
  39. Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
  40. Moonglow, Michael Chabon
  41. Autumn, Ali Smith
  42. Liar’s Club, Mary Karr
  43. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
  44. Outline, Rachel Cusk
  45. When It Grows Dark, Jorn Lier Horst
  46. The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  47. The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  48. My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent
  49. Voices, Arnaldur Indridason
  50. Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason
  51. Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason
  52. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil de Grasse Tyson
  53. The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni
  54. Miss Jane, Brad Watson
  55. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
  56. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
  57. A Really Big Lunch, Jim Harrison
  58. The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
  59. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
  60. South and West, Joan Didion
  61. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
  62. Hillbilly Elegy,  J. D. Vance
  63. Ordeal, Jorn Lier Horst
  64. Caveman, Jorn Lier Horst
  65. Mastering Leadership, Robert Anderson & William Adams
  66. The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
  67. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
  68. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
  69. Crusader’s Cross, James Lee Burke
  70. In the Kingdom of Ice, Hampton Sides
  71. Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
  72. The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff
  73. Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff
  74. Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp
  75. The Earth is Enough, Harry Middleton
  76. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  77. Can’t Not Do, Paul Shoemaker
  78. The Lake House, Kate Morton
  79. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
  80. The Nightingale, Kristen Hannah
  81. StandOut 2.0, Marcus Buckingham
  82. Etta and Otto and Russell and James, Emma Hooper
  83. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
  84. Fates & Furies, Lauren Groff
  85. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North
  86. Thunderstruck, Erik Larson
  87. Hold Still, Sally Mann
  88. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  89. The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
  90. The Swimmer, Joakim Zander
  91. Strengths-based Parenting, Mary Rechmeyer and Jennifer Robison

All-Time Top Favorites 

  1. The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
  2. Man’s Fate, Andre Malraux
  3. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
  4. A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean
  5. She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb
  6. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
  7. Rivers of Memory, Harry Middleton
  8. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
  9. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
  10. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  11. The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
  12. Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
  13. The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
  14. Sense & Sensibility, Jane Austen
  15. Grendel, John Gardner
  16. The Meadow, James Galvin

Favorite Books I Read with My Kids

  1. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankewiler, E. L. Konigsburg
  2. Magic Marks the Spot (and the entire Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates series), Caroline Carlson
  3. Gregor the Overlander (and other books in the same series), Suzanne Collins
  4. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
  5. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle
  6. The Borrowers, Mary Norton
  7. The Fairy Tale Detectives (and the entire Sisters Grimm series), Michael Buckley
  8. Looking for Alaska, John Green
  9. The Hunger Games (and series), Suzanne Collins
  10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban (and the entire series, but book 3 is my favorite), J. K. Rowling