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. 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.

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