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. While Justice Sleeps, Stacey Abrams
  2. The Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet

Next on My List

  1. Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson
  2. The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
  3. The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
  4. B E 2.0, Jim Collins and Bill Lazier
  5. 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.

Audiobooks indicated with an *

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