What I’m Reading
To keep track of what I’m reading, I’ll update this list as I go along. I’ll be sharing more elaborate thoughts on the books on this blog (sometimes), and sharing a few in Marginalia, a monthly (ish) newsletter.
2024:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
2023:
The Color of Water by James McBride
It’s a Shame About Ray by Jonathan Seidler
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
East West Street by Phillippe Sands
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
2022:
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
Transit by Anna Seghers
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Lost & Found by Kathryn Schultz
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
2021:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Still Life by Sarah Winman
Writers & Lovers by Lily King
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
Zaitoun by Yasmin Khan
Midnight Chicken by Ella Rishbridger
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flannagan
More Than A Woman by Caitlin Moran
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Upstream by Mary Oliver
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
2020:
Intimations by Zadie Smith
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Vesper Flights by Helen McDonald
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Sula by Toni Morrison
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan
Having and Being Had by Eula Biss
Just Like You by Nick Hornby
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
High Fidelity by Nick Horby
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Figuring by Maria Popova
The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power
Weather by Jenny Offill
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani
2019:
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Beloved by Toni Morrison
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Strangers Drowning by Larissa Macfarquhar
Stop Being Reasonable by Eleanor Gordon-Smith
Congratulations, by the way by George Saunders
Winter by Ali Smith
Autumn by Ali Smith
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Lanny by Max Porter
Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis
Stop Being Reasonable by Eleanor Gordon-Smith
The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli
Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
In The Distance by Hernan Diaz
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitzky and Daniel Ziblatt
The Tyranny of Choice by Renata Salecl
Night by Eli Wiesel
Happy Ever After by Paul Dolan
Fox 8 by George Saunders
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Milkman by Anna Burns
2018:
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Silence by Erling Kagge
Becoming by Michelle Obama
The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy
Things I Don’t Want To Know by Deborah Levy
The Accusation by Bandi
New Jerusalem by Paul Ham
Shell by Kristina Olsson
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Londoners: the days and nights of London now—as told by those who love it, hate it, live it, left it and long for it by Craig Taylor
300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso
Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso
Man Out of Time by Stephanie Bishop
The Children’s House by Alice Nelson
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings by Helen Jukes
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Ms. Ice Sandwich by Meiko Kawakami
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Rastrapi
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
The 78-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton (with my son)
Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay In 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli
The Line Becomes A River by Francisco Cantú
The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop
Evacuation by Raphael Jerusalmy
Tin Man by Sarah Winman
The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Lullaby by Leila Slimani
Look At Me by Mareike Krugel (reading copy, out in March)
Lost Connections by Johann Hari (reading copy, out in February)
The 65-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton (with my son)
Peach by Emma Glass (reading copy, out in February)
Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roal Dahl (with my son)
Esio Trot by Roald Dahl (with my son)
The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton (with my son)
The 39-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton (with my son)
2017:
I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
The 26-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton (with my son)
The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted by Mark Forsyth
The 13-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton (with my son)
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
Kneller’s Happy Campers by Etgar Keret
Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl (with my son)
Turtles All The Way Down by John Green
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by George Saunders
Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple
The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes
Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret
The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Devotion by Dani Shapiro
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Transit by Rachel Cusk
The Gifts of Reading by Robert Mcfarlane
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong (reading copy, out in June 2017)
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Night Swimming by Steph Bowe (reading copy, out in April 2017)
The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong by Kelly Wilson
2016:
On Reading, Writing and Living with Books
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Darkness Visible by William Styron
Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Andrew George
Dubliners by James Joyce
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcom
The Art of Reading by Damon Young
Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
A Sheltered Woman by Yiyun Li
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bricks That Built The Houses by Kate Tempest
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Stoner by John Edward Williams
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan
Levels of Life by Julian Barnes
The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
Matilda by Roald Dahl
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
M Train by Patti Smith
2015:
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein:
A beautiful memoir from the guitarist of the epic and pioneering band, Sleater-Kinney. A true deviation from the regular rock ‘n roll story of destruction, this book is a tale of losing, and then finding yourself, in music.
The White Album by Joan Didion
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke:
A phenomenal, illuminating read, even if you’re not into poetry. In this collection of ten letters, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke advises a nineteen year old fan on love, truth and how to experience the world around you. Some of my favourite bits:
On loving books:
“A world will come over you, the happiness, the abundance, the incomprehensible immensity of a world. Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be repaid you a thousand and a thousand times, and however your life may turn, — it will, I am certain of it, run through the fabric of your growth as one of the most important threads among all the threads of your experiences, disappointments and joys.”
On the benefits of living with mystery:
“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Hiroshima by John Hersey
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
How to Be Alone by Sara Maitland:
An interesting and illuminating cultural look at loneliness. Part of the School of Life’s stunning “toolkit for life” series, British author Sara Maitland writes on the benefits of going solo. This book is an important take down of one of society’s most unhelpful stories: that people who choose to be alone are doomed to a life full of misery. Through this book I also discovered other writers I fell in love with, particularly Alice Koller, who penned this gem: “Being solitary is being alone well: being luxuriously immersed in doing things of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your own presence rather than the absence of others.”
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh:
Tore through this in a few hours. So, so good. A few essays are absolutely laugh out loud hilarious (particularly one involving a wild and demented goose), and others are profound in that way only Allie Brosh can be (her pieces on depression represent one of the most human views on the topic I’ve ever encountered). Honestly, this book is perfect.
When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know She is Not Playing with Me? Montaigne and Being in Touch With Life by Saul Frampton
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion:
A stunningly written collection of meditations on a rich and wide array of topics, from John Wayne, to growing up in California, Joan Baez, Hollywood and the hippies of Haight-Ashbury. I enjoyed every essay more than I thought I would, due probably to Didion’s uncanny ability to make any topic interesting. Two particular pieces though stood out for me, and have been struggling to get them out of my mind since I finished the book: On Keeping A Notebook (a beautiful reflection on the benefits of writing things down) and On Self-Respect (a brave, illuminating essay on the importance of knowing who you are).
Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
Already having been a huge fan of Marquez, I was ecstatic when I found a used copy of a slim yet sublime collection of his short stories. While rummaging through tomes at a local used book stall, I stumbled upon this little volume I knew nothing of, began to read and was naturally hooked from the very first sentence. Titled Strange Pilgrims because of the long, wayward method in which the stories came to life, in this collection you’ll find fables of love, death, loneliness and the nagging power of the past.
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer by Sarah Bakewell:
The question of “how to live” completely obsessed Renaissance writers, but no one tackled it with such brilliance as Michel de Montaigne, a government worker, nobleman, and winegrower who lived in southwestern France from 1533 to 1592. He is considered the creator of the essay – the art of self-reflection on paper. And in the twenty years that he wrote his famous “essays” (107 of them), Montaigne covered everything from the existential to the mundane: how to endure the loss of a loved one, the benefits of thumbs, how to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to dress. In this biography, writer and philosophy scholar Sarah Bakewell chronicles Montaigne’s life through the answering of one question: how do you live? A truly enlightening, mind-expanding read on not just the man’s life, but on death and the art of living.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius:
I’ve picked it up countless of times since I first read it over a year ago — it is by far the best book of practical philosophy I have ever encountered. Written by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD,“Meditations” is a collection his private thoughts and ideas on how to be present, humble, and self-disciplined. Shelved in “books for life.”
Staring at the Sun by Irvin D. Yalom:
An encouraging and compassionate approach to our mortality. While it’s marketed as a primer on how to deal with death anxiety, to me this work is much more about how to live rather than how to die. It completely shifted my perspective on the choices we get to make every day: what we value, the stories we tell, how we spend our time. One question Yalom asks has never left my mind: If you were asked whether you would live your life all over again, would you? While the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death imbues us with life.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion:
Written in the only way Didion really knows how: hauntingly. This is a difficult book to get through, not because of the way in which it is written (it is a joy to travel through her sentences), but rather because of its topic. Written after her husband’s sudden death, The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion’s memoir recounting how she handled the loss of her partner. It is an exceptional meditation on grief (a topic, Didion notes, strangely absent in literature), love and the vicissitudes of fortune. One reviewer said he couldn’t imagine dying without this book. That is exactly how I feel.
The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer:
Finished this delightful, slim yet meaningful book in one sitting. Pico Iyer, the celebrated travel writer, extolls on the benefits of stillness, presence and finding the time to reflect on our human experience. I have yet to find a better description of stillness and its role in creating a rich and meaningful life: “To me, the point of sitting still is that it helps you to see through the very idea of pushing forward; indeed, it strips you of yourself, as of a coat of armour, by leading you into a place where you’re defined by something larger. If it does have benefits, they lie within some invisible account with a high interest rate, but very long-term yields, to be drawn upon at that moment, surely inevitable, when a doctor walks into your room, shaking his head, or another car veers in front of yours, and all you have to draw upon is what you’ve collected in your deeper moments.”
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman by Nora Ephron:
Impossible not love Nora Ephron. As funny as she is profound, this book of essays (on hating your neck, living in New York, parenting, illness, reading and more) is the kind of book you never want to finish. This thought, on reading, struck a chord: “Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh by Vincent Van Gogh:
This book is tremendous. A weighty tome (nearly 800 pages), it’s the truest inside look into the heart and mind of an artist. In his letters to his younger brother Theo (who supported Vincent throughout his entire life as a painter), Van Gogh reveals his views on love, art, creativity and what it means to be not only a good artist, but a good human being. What I found most astounding was just how hard Van Gogh worked to develop his talent as an artist. While he did seem to have a natural ability to observe the world that lay before him (his descriptions of scenery are as almost vivid as his paintings), Van Gogh spent years learning the techniques of both drawing and painting, becoming better as time passed. It wasn’t until he moved to the South of France, quite late in his short but prolific career (and where he was influenced by the already growing Impressionist movement), when he began to produce the paintings we know him for today.
Where I Lived, And What I Lived For by Henry David Thoreau:
A lovely, short excerpt from Thoreau’s longer work on his time living near Walden Pond. This small Penguin Great Ideas book includes only a few chapters, though it is bustling with timeless insight, strengthening my desire to read the whole work. There’s a treasure trove of quotable lines on many aspects of modern life: the ills of fashion trends, owning a large home, reading the news, technology. My favourite line, which can, in my opinion, be applied to some aspects of technology today: “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distracts our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end…”
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin:
A brilliant, touching and unforgettable memoir by one of the world’s most loved comedians. This book is so tremendous. Martin chronicles his early life and his rise to stardom with honesty and sharp wit, making the book an absolute joy to read. Heartbreaking and funny, this book is an inside look into not only the life of a comedian, but also a primer on life as a creative.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill:
A phenomenal novel about art, motherhood, marriage and loss. You will feel like you’ll never encounter anything like it again.
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca:
The simplest, most life-altering message I have ever come across: life is long if you know how to use it. In the Roman philosopher’s 2,000 year old mind stretching meditation on time you’ll find a profound and essential message:
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realise that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.”
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