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 Wall, Marlen Haushoferl
  2. Once There Were Wolves, Charlotte McConaghy

The Stack on My Bedside Table Includes…

  1. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottleib
  2. Light on Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar

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.

Audiobooks indicated with an *

  1. Afterlives, Abdulrazak Gurnah
  2. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan
  3. Midnight Riot, Ben Aaronovitch
  4. Sea of Tranquility*, Emily St. John Mandel
  5. The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
  6. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
  7. Connect, David Bradford and Carole Robin
  8. The Quiet American*, Graham Greene
  9. A Legacy of Spies*, John le Carré
  10. Thank You, Mr. Nixon, Gish Jen
  11. Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown
  12. Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart
  13. Intimacies, Katie Kitamura
  14. Connect, David Bradford & Carole Robin
  15. Silverview, John le Carré
  16. Matrix, Lauren Groff
  17. The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz
  18. The Innovation Stack*, Jim McKelvey
  19. Smiley’s People,* John le Carré (listening to the audiobook, having read the book-book in the 90s, was like an entirely new experience with this wonderful novel)
  20. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch, Rivka Galchen
  21. The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
  22. Heaven, Mieko Kawakami
  23. Broken Horses*, Brandi Carlile
  24. The Honourable Schoolboy*, John le Carré (listening to the audiobook – I read the book-book in the 90s)
  25. Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson
  26. The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
  27. Midnight Chicken, Ella Risbridger
  28. Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
  29. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carré*
  30. Caste, Isabel Wilkerson
  31. The Good Lord Bird, James McBride*
  32. Piranisi, Susanna Clarke*
  33. Squeeze Me, Carl Hiaasen
  34. Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy
  35. The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa
  36. Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell
  37. The entire Detective D.D. Warren series, by Lisa Gardner
  38. Still Life, Louise Penny*
  39. Little Eyes, Samanta Schweblin
  40. The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson*
  41. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
  42. There There, Tommy Orange
  43. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
  44. Deacon King Kong, James McBride
  45. Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl
  46. Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
  47. Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson*
  48. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe*
  49. Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell*
  50. Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
  51. The Snakes, Sadie Jones
  52. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Togarczuk
  53. All the Names They Used for God, Anjali Sachdeva
  54. The River, Peter Heller
  55. The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides*
  56. Dare to Lead, Brené Brown
  57. Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy
  58. Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
  59. Walking on the Ceiling, Ayşegül Savaş
  60. Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reichl*
  61. Circe, Madeline Miller*
  62. Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas
  63. The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  64. The Guest Book, Sarah Blake
  65. No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder
  66. Becoming, Michelle Obama
  67. Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls
  68. Safekeeping, Abigail Thomas
  69. The Red-Haired Woman, Orhan Pamuk
  70. The Overstory, Richard Powers
  71. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
  72. The Witch Elm, Tana French
  73. Leaving Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
  74. 10:04, Ben Lerner
  75. Destroyer, Victor Lavalle
  76. Warlight, Michael Ondaatje*
  77. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  78. Florida, Lauren Groff
  79. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
  80. The Day the World Came to Town, Jim Defede
  81. Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
  82. Moonglow, Michael Chabon*
  83. Autumn, Ali Smith
  84. Liar’s Club, Mary Karr
  85. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
  86. Outline, Rachel Cusk
  87. When It Grows Dark, Jorn Lier Horst*
  88. The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen*
  89. The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen*
  90. My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent
  91. Voices, Arnaldur Indridason*
  92. Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason*
  93. Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason*
  94. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil de Grasse Tyson
  95. The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni
  96. Miss Jane, Brad Watson
  97. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles*
  98. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
  99. A Really Big Lunch, Jim Harrison
  100. The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
  101. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
  102. South and West, Joan Didion
  103. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
  104. Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance
  105. Ordeal, Jorn Lier Horst
  106. Caveman, Jorn Lier Horst
  107. Mastering Leadership, Robert Anderson & William Adams
  108. The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney*
  109. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
  110. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
  111. Crusader’s Cross, James Lee Burke
  112. In the Kingdom of Ice, Hampton Sides
  113. Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
  114. The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff*
  115. Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff
  116. Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp
  117. The Earth is Enough, Harry Middleton
  118. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  119. Can’t Not Do, Paul Shoemaker
  120. The Lake House, Kate Morton
  121. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
  122. The Nightingale, Kristen Hannah*
  123. StandOut 2.0, Marcus Buckingham
  124. Etta and Otto and Russell and James, Emma Hooper
  125. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
  126. Fates & Furies, Lauren Groff*
  127. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North
  128. Thunderstruck, Erik Larson
  129. Hold Still, Sally Mann
  130. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  131. The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
  132. The Swimmer, Joakim Zander
  133. 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