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. Intimacies, Katie Kitamura
  2. Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown
  3. The Quiet American*, Graham Greene

The Stack on My Bedside Table Includes…

  1. The Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet
  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.

Audiobooks indicated with an *

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