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 Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet
  2. Caste, Isabel Wilkerson

Next on My List

  1. The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
  2. The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
  3. B E 2.0, Jim Collins and Bill Lazier
  4. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (I will try, for the third time….)

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 Good Lord Bird, James McBride
  2. Piranisi, Susanna Clarke
  3. Squeeze Me, Carl Hiaasen
  4. Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy
  5. The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa
  6. Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell
  7. The entire Detective D.D. Warren series, by Lisa Gardner
  8. Still Life, Louise Penny
  9. Little Eyes, Samanta Schweblin
  10. The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson
  11. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
  12. There There, Tommy Orange
  13. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
  14. Deacon King Kong, James McBride
  15. Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl
  16. Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
  17. Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson
  18. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe
  19. Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell
  20. Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
  21. The Snakes, Sadie Jones
  22. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Togarczuk
  23. All the Names They Used for God, Anjali Sachdeva
  24. The River, Peter Heller
  25. The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides
  26. Dare to Lead, Brené Brown
  27. Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy
  28. Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
  29. Walking on the Ceiling, Ayşegül Savaş
  30. Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reichl
  31. Circe, Madeline Miller
  32. Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas
  33. The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  34. The Guest Book, Sarah Blake
  35. No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder
  36. Becoming, Michelle Obama
  37. Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls
  38. Safekeeping, Abigail Thomas
  39. The Red-Haired Woman, Orhan Pamuk
  40. The Overstory, Richard Powers
  41. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
  42. The Witch Elm, Tana French
  43. Leaving Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
  44. 10:04, Ben Lerner
  45. Destroyer, Victor Lavalle
  46. Warlight, Michael Ondaatje
  47. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  48. Florida, Lauren Groff
  49. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
  50. The Day the World Came to Town, Jim Defede
  51. Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
  52. Moonglow, Michael Chabon
  53. Autumn, Ali Smith
  54. Liar’s Club, Mary Karr
  55. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
  56. Outline, Rachel Cusk
  57. When It Grows Dark, Jorn Lier Horst
  58. The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  59. The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  60. My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent
  61. Voices, Arnaldur Indridason
  62. Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason
  63. Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason
  64. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil de Grasse Tyson
  65. The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni
  66. Miss Jane, Brad Watson
  67. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
  68. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
  69. A Really Big Lunch, Jim Harrison
  70. The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
  71. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
  72. South and West, Joan Didion
  73. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
  74. Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance
  75. Ordeal, Jorn Lier Horst
  76. Caveman, Jorn Lier Horst
  77. Mastering Leadership, Robert Anderson & William Adams
  78. The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
  79. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
  80. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
  81. Crusader’s Cross, James Lee Burke
  82. In the Kingdom of Ice, Hampton Sides
  83. Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
  84. The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff
  85. Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff
  86. Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp
  87. The Earth is Enough, Harry Middleton
  88. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  89. Can’t Not Do, Paul Shoemaker
  90. The Lake House, Kate Morton
  91. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
  92. The Nightingale, Kristen Hannah
  93. StandOut 2.0, Marcus Buckingham
  94. Etta and Otto and Russell and James, Emma Hooper
  95. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
  96. Fates & Furies, Lauren Groff
  97. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North
  98. Thunderstruck, Erik Larson
  99. Hold Still, Sally Mann
  100. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  101. The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
  102. The Swimmer, Joakim Zander
  103. 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