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 Overstory, Richard Powers
  1. Pieces of Her, Karin Slaughter

Next on My List

  1. 10:04, Ben Lerner

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