2024
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Das Leben Eines Anderen, Keiichiro Hirano
The City of Good Death, Priyanka Champaneri
Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
2023
Brooklyn Crime Novel, Jonathan Lethem
The Testament, Margaret Atwood
Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
The Guide, R.K. Narayan
Circe, Madeline Miller
The Orphanage, Serhij Schadan
Everyone Know Your Mother’s a Witch, Rivka Galchen
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
2022
Matrix, Lauren Groff
Trust, Hernan Diaz
Olive, again, Elizabeth Strout
Dawn, Octavia Butler
I Hate the Internet, Jarret Kopek
Vintage Munro, Alice Munro
The Book of Form and Emptiness, Ruth Ozeki
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs
2021
Another Country, James Baldwin
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen
Fledgling, Octavia Butler
2666, Roberto Bolaño
Wayward, Dana Spiotta
Krabat, Ottfried Preußler
Normal People, Sally Rooney
In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado
White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami
A Natural History of Hell, Jeffrey Ford
The Divine Invasion, Philip K. Dick
Babel-17, Samuel R. Delany
Radetzkymarsch, Josef Roth (I’m determined to finally start reading more fiction in German).
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Italo Calvino
2020
(I found it so hard to read in 2020, especially novels (I generally don’t add the non-fiction stuff I’m reading to this list unless it’s something I really read cover to cover, something I tend not to do with those kinds of books, more pick and choose and read bits and pieces before moving on and going down some other rabbit hole). Terrible, since novels are something I love so, so much. 2021 is still going slow, but my concentration is better. Hope anyone who’s reading this is holding up ok, or that this damn pandemic is already over by then….)
Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart
The Arrest, Jonathan Lethem
The Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler (some of the parallels to our world these days in this book are uncanny…)
The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
My Life With The Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician, Lon Milo DuQuette (even if you have no interest in magic, this book will still be a funny, entertaining read).
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
Norwegian Wood, Harumi Murakami
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Chronic City, Jonathan Lethem
Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith
Kindred, Octavia Butler
Time Out of Joint, Philip K. Dick
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa
Little Big Man, Thomas Berger
This list includes the books I read to my daughters before bed (no longer true as of 2020. They are pre-teens now and far too cool to want to have mom read to them before bed. Sigh. The cliche is true: they grow up fast!)
2019
Friday at Enrico’s, Don Carpenter
Chelsea Girls, Eileen Myles
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
Magic: An Occult Primer, David Conway (even if you don’t believe in magic and/or have no interest in practising yourself, this book is still a very interesting read. Conway is a down-to-Earth writer and the book has plenty of humor not to mention fascinating historical accounts)
The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa
Revenge of the Lawn, Richard Brautigan
All the Things I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
Doxology, Nell Zink
The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
The Fisherman, Chigozie Obioma
Homesick for Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh
Confessions of a Crap Artist, Philip K. Dick
Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms, Michelle Tea, Amanda Verwey
Ariel, Sylvia Plath
Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, Philip K. Dick, David Streitfeld
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick
Just Kids, Patti Smith
In Our Mad and Furious City, Guy Gunaratne
Shadowbahn, Steve Erickson
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin
Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Muraka
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee
In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, Esmé Weijun Wang
A Time To Scatter Stones, Lawrence Block (I love the New York banter and quirky characters (TJ! Mick Ballou!) in Block’s Matthew Scudder detective novels. This novella is the first one he’s written in years and I have to say it’s kind of for fans only as I’m not sure you’d get much of what’s going on if you didn’t already know the characters. That said, I wish he would have brought the characters into the story rather than just mentioning them (TJ! Mick Ballou!) Block got his start writing lesbian erotica under a pen name and, at 80, the guy’s still got a dirty mind for sure. Hats off to you, Lawrence! Write another one soon and for crying out loud let us know what happened to TJ this time, why don’t you. 😉 )
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (just started reading the trilogy to my daughters and I’ll be at it for a while. Over a thousand pages. Yikes!).
Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan
2018
Martian Time Slip, Philip K. Dick
The Feral Detective, Jonathan Lethem
D’Aulaires Book of Norse Myths (dude, Loki is kind of an asshole 😉 )
The Innocent and Others, Dana Spiotta
Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell
The Isle of Youth, Laura Van Den Berg
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
Medea, Euripides
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths (a re-reading to my daughters)
Valencia, Michelle Tea
A Wind in the Door, Madeline L’Engle
A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben
Valis, Philip K. Dick
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Philip K. Dick
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
Ubik, Philip K. Dick
Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, David Sedaris
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
Doll Bones, Holly Black
The Bet and Other Stories, Anton Chekov
The Complete Stories, Flannery O’Connor
The Best American Short Stories, chosen by Meg Wolitzer
Ribsy, Beverly Cleary
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders
Tenth of December, George Saunders
Tschick, Wolfgang Herrendorf (German original)
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
Get in Trouble, Kelly Link
Little Town on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
These Happy Golden Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Buddenbrocks, Thomas Mann (German original, chipping away at it)
Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Roald Dahl
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
2017
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
Dissident Gardens, Jonathan Lethem
H is for Hawk, Helen McDonald
Blubber, Judy Blume
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Hard Rain Falling, Don Carpenter
Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists, Jeannine Atkins
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle
And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Philip K Dick
The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories, edited by Theodore W. Goossen
The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Ramona and Her Father, Beverly Cleary
The Best American Short Stories, chosen by Junot Díaz
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
The Donkey Prince, M. Jean Craig
Beezus and Ramona, Beverly Cleary
The Cricket in Times Square, George Selden
Chester Cricket’s New Home, George Selden
Patience, Daniel Clowes
Orfeo, Richard Powers
