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. Becoming, Michelle Obama
  2. The Red-Haired Woman, Orhan Pamuk

Next on My List

  1. Asymmetry, Lisa Halliday
  2. Circe, Madeline Miller

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. The Overstory, Richard Powers
  2. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
  3. The Witch Elm, Tana French
  1. Leaving Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
  2. 10:04, Ben Lerner
  1. Destroyer, Victor Lavalle
  2. Warlight, Michael Ondaatje
  3. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  4. Florida, Lauren Groff
  5. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
  6. The Day the World Came to Town, Jim Defede
  7. Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
  8. Moonglow, Michael Chabon
  9. Autumn, Ali Smith
  10. Liar’s Club, Mary Karr
  11. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
  12. Outline, Rachel Cusk
  13. When It Grows Dark, Jorn Lier Horst
  14. The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  15. The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen
  16. My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent
  17. Voices, Arnaldur Indridason
  18. Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason
  19. Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason
  20. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil de Grasse Tyson
  21. The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni
  22. Miss Jane, Brad Watson
  23. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
  24. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
  25. A Really Big Lunch, Jim Harrison
  26. The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
  27. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
  28. South and West, Joan Didion
  29. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
  30. Hillbilly Elegy,  J. D. Vance
  31. Ordeal, Jorn Lier Horst
  32. Caveman, Jorn Lier Horst
  33. Mastering Leadership, Robert Anderson & William Adams
  34. The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
  35. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
  36. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
  37. Crusader’s Cross, James Lee Burke
  38. In the Kingdom of Ice, Hampton Sides
  39. Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
  40. The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff
  41. Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff
  42. Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp
  43. The Earth is Enough, Harry Middleton
  44. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  45. Can’t Not Do, Paul Shoemaker
  46. The Lake House, Kate Morton
  47. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
  48. The Nightingale, Kristen Hannah
  49. StandOut 2.0, Marcus Buckingham
  50. Etta and Otto and Russell and James, Emma Hooper
  51. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
  52. Fates & Furies, Lauren Groff
  53. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North
  54. Thunderstruck, Erik Larson
  55. Hold Still, Sally Mann
  56. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  57. The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
  58. The Swimmer, Joakim Zander
  59. 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