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. Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl

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