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. Sea of Tranquility*, Emily St. John Mandel
  2. The Candy House, Jennifer Egan

The Stack on My Bedside Table Includes…

  1. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottleib
  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, again, eventually….)

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. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
  2. Connect, David Bradford and Carole Robin
  3. The Quiet American*, Graham Greene
  4. A Legacy of Spies*, John le Carré
  5. Thank You, Mr. Nixon, Gish Jen
  6. Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown
  7. Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart
  8. Intimacies, Katie Kitamura
  9. Silverview, John le Carré
  10. Matrix, Lauren Groff
  11. The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz
  12. The Innovation Stack*, Jim McKelvey
  13. 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)
  14. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch, Rivka Galchen
  15. The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
  16. Heaven, Mieko Kawakami
  17. Broken Horses*, Brandi Carlile
  18. The Honourable Schoolboy*, John le Carré (listening to the audiobook – I read the book-book in the 90s)
  19. Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson
  20. The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
  21. Midnight Chicken, Ella Risbridger
  22. Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
  23. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carré*
  24. Caste, Isabel Wilkerson
  25. The Good Lord Bird, James McBride*
  26. Piranisi, Susanna Clarke*
  27. Squeeze Me, Carl Hiaasen
  28. Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy
  29. The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa
  30. Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell
  31. The entire Detective D.D. Warren series, by Lisa Gardner
  32. Still Life, Louise Penny*
  33. Little Eyes, Samanta Schweblin
  34. The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson*
  35. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
  36. There There, Tommy Orange
  37. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
  38. Deacon King Kong, James McBride
  39. Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl
  40. Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
  41. Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson*
  42. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe*
  43. Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell*
  44. Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
  45. The Snakes, Sadie Jones
  46. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Togarczuk
  47. All the Names They Used for God, Anjali Sachdeva
  48. The River, Peter Heller
  49. The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides*
  50. Dare to Lead, Brené Brown
  51. Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy
  52. Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
  53. Walking on the Ceiling, Ayşegül Savaş
  54. Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reichl*
  55. Circe, Madeline Miller*
  56. Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas
  57. The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  58. The Guest Book, Sarah Blake
  59. No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder
  60. Becoming, Michelle Obama
  61. Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls
  62. Safekeeping, Abigail Thomas
  63. The Red-Haired Woman, Orhan Pamuk
  64. The Overstory, Richard Powers
  65. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
  66. The Witch Elm, Tana French
  67. Leaving Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
  68. 10:04, Ben Lerner
  69. Destroyer, Victor Lavalle
  70. Warlight, Michael Ondaatje*
  71. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  72. Florida, Lauren Groff
  73. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
  74. The Day the World Came to Town, Jim Defede
  75. Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
  76. Moonglow, Michael Chabon*
  77. Autumn, Ali Smith
  78. Liar’s Club, Mary Karr
  79. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
  80. Outline, Rachel Cusk
  81. When It Grows Dark, Jorn Lier Horst*
  82. The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen*
  83. The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen*
  84. My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent
  85. Voices, Arnaldur Indridason*
  86. Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason*
  87. Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason*
  88. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil de Grasse Tyson
  89. The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni
  90. Miss Jane, Brad Watson
  91. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles*
  92. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
  93. A Really Big Lunch, Jim Harrison
  94. The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
  95. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
  96. South and West, Joan Didion
  97. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
  98. Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance
  99. Ordeal, Jorn Lier Horst
  100. Caveman, Jorn Lier Horst
  101. Mastering Leadership, Robert Anderson & William Adams
  102. The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney*
  103. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
  104. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
  105. Crusader’s Cross, James Lee Burke
  106. In the Kingdom of Ice, Hampton Sides
  107. Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
  108. The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff*
  109. Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff
  110. Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp
  111. The Earth is Enough, Harry Middleton
  112. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  113. Can’t Not Do, Paul Shoemaker
  114. The Lake House, Kate Morton
  115. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
  116. The Nightingale, Kristen Hannah*
  117. StandOut 2.0, Marcus Buckingham
  118. Etta and Otto and Russell and James, Emma Hooper
  119. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
  120. Fates & Furies, Lauren Groff*
  121. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North
  122. Thunderstruck, Erik Larson
  123. Hold Still, Sally Mann
  124. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  125. The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
  126. The Swimmer, Joakim Zander
  127. 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