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. Smiley’s People, John le Carré (listening to the audiobook – I read the book-book in the 90s)
  2. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch, Rivka Galchen

The Stack on My Bedside Table Includes…

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