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. Little Eyes, Samanta Schweblin
  2. The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson

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 Dutch House, Ann Patchett
  2. There There, Tommy Orange
  3. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
  4. Deacon King Kong, James McBride
  5. Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl
  6. Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
  7. Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson
  8. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe
  9. Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell
  10. Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
  11. The Snakes, Sadie Jones
  12. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Togarczuk
  13. All the Names They Used for God, Anjali Sachdeva
  14. The River, Peter Heller
  15. The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides
  16. Dare to Lead, Brené Brown
  17. Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy
  18. Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
  19. Walking on the Ceiling, Ayşegül Savaş
  20. Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reichl
  21. Circe, Madeline Miller
  22. Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas
  23. The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  24. The Guest Book, Sarah Blake
  25. No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder
  26. Becoming, Michelle Obama
  27. Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls
  28. Safekeeping, Abigail Thomas
  29. The Red-Haired Woman, Orhan Pamuk
  30. The Overstory, Richard Powers
  31. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
  32. The Witch Elm, Tana French
  33. Leaving Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
  34. 10:04, Ben Lerner
  35. Destroyer, Victor Lavalle
  36. Warlight, Michael Ondaatje
  37. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  38. Florida, Lauren Groff
  39. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
  40. The Day the World Came to Town, Jim Defede
  41. Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
  42. Moonglow, Michael Chabon
  43. Autumn, Ali Smith
  44. Liar’s Club, Mary Karr
  45. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
  46. Outline, Rachel Cusk
  47. When It Grows Dark, Jorn Lier Horst
  48. The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  49. The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  50. My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent
  51. Voices, Arnaldur Indridason
  52. Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason
  53. Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason
  54. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil de Grasse Tyson
  55. The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni
  56. Miss Jane, Brad Watson
  57. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
  58. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
  59. A Really Big Lunch, Jim Harrison
  60. The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
  61. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
  62. South and West, Joan Didion
  63. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
  64. Hillbilly Elegy,  J. D. Vance
  65. Ordeal, Jorn Lier Horst
  66. Caveman, Jorn Lier Horst
  67. Mastering Leadership, Robert Anderson & William Adams
  68. The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
  69. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
  70. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
  71. Crusader’s Cross, James Lee Burke
  72. In the Kingdom of Ice, Hampton Sides
  73. Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
  74. The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff
  75. Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff
  76. Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp
  77. The Earth is Enough, Harry Middleton
  78. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  79. Can’t Not Do, Paul Shoemaker
  80. The Lake House, Kate Morton
  81. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
  82. The Nightingale, Kristen Hannah
  83. StandOut 2.0, Marcus Buckingham
  84. Etta and Otto and Russell and James, Emma Hooper
  85. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
  86. Fates & Furies, Lauren Groff
  87. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North
  88. Thunderstruck, Erik Larson
  89. Hold Still, Sally Mann
  90. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  91. The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
  92. The Swimmer, Joakim Zander
  93. 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