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 Good Lord Bird, James McBride
  2. Caste, Isabel Wilkerson

Next on My List

  1. The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
  2. Squeeze Me, Carl Hiaasen

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