I am a big believer that “you are what you read.” It’s always illuminating for me to learn what other people are reading, and to look back on my own reading over time.
I’ve read a lot less in the last five years or so. Looking forward to catching up this year.
2026 Reads:
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
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2024-25 Reads (in no particular order):
Note: I am linking to a few favorite independent bookstores. You can also support Yu & Me Books in Chinatown NYC, LitBar in the Bronx NY, Corner Bookstore in Manhattan NYC, and Loyalty Books in D.C. at their affiliate links at bookshop.org.
Over to You by John Berger and Yves Berger
Anagrams by Lorrie Moore
Clam Down by Anelise Chen
Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegül Savas
Monsters by Claire Dederer
Soil by Camille Dungy
Family Life by Akhil Sharma
Stories From the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana
Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy Hughes
Human Acts by Han Kang
Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Pearl by Sian Hughes
Get Honest or Die Lying by Charlemagne Tha God
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
The Dreamtime by Mstyslav Chernov
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson
Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
All Fours by Miranda July
The Power of Parting by Eamon Dolan
Figuring by Maria Popova
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
Who Is Government? by Michael Lewis
Becoming Trader Joe by Joe Coulombe
Aftermath by Rachel Cusk
There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Mercy by Joan Silber
American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
Yellow Notebook by Helen Garner
The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Likeability Trap by Alicia Menendez
Kindred by Octavia Butler
The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
Feel Free by Zadie Smith
Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson
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Reading List 2019-2023
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Breasts & Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke
The Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
Normal People by Sally Rooney
My Seditious Heart by Arundhati Roy
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter by Herta Müller
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen
Open City by Teju Cole
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
Seeing the Body by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
The Fisher King by Paule Marshall
LaRose by Louise Erdrich
How to Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
Parisian Lives by Deirdre Bair
Magical Negro by Morgan Parker
The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry
Remembering by Wendell Berry
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson
The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
The Widow’s Children by Paula Fox
That Distant Land by Wendell Berry
Faith Fox by Jane Gardam
If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
By Myself and Then Some by Lauren Bacall
I’m Telling the Truth But I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
All About Love by bell hooks
Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Human Acts by Han Kang
The White Book by Han Kang
Break of Day by Colette
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
St. Francis of Assisi by GK Chesterton
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
On Michael Jackson by Margo Jefferson
Lost Empress by Sergio de la Pava
Retreat from Love by Colette
A Handbook of Disappointed Fate by Anne Boyer
An Ant Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla
On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored by Adam Phillips
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman
Notes From No Man’s Land by Eula Biss
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
The Human Comedy by William Saroyan
White Dancing Elephants by Chaya Bhuvaneswar
Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach
The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola
Noonday by Pat Barker
Life Class by Pat Barker
A Stranger’s Pose by Immanuel Iduma
The Red and the Green by Iris Murdoch
At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
On Photography by Susan Sontag
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Márquez
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Old in Art School by Nell Irvin Painter
Walks With Men by Ann Beattie
Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown
The Man Who Walked Away by Maud Casey
Lucky Us by Joan Silber
There There by Tommy Orange
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Art of Mystery by Maud Casey
The Size of the World by Joan Silber
Fools by Joan Silber
Waylaid by Ed Lin
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker
What is the What by Dave Eggers
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Sula by Toni Morrison
Improvement Joan Silber
The Wilderness by Sandra Lim
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence by Judith Herman
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Destructors and Other Stories by Graham Greene
Emily L. by Marguerite Duras
New England White by Stephen L. Carter
Art on My Mind by bell hooks
The Dorothy Parker Audio Collection, read by Cynthia Nixon, Christine Baranski, Alfre Woodard, Shirley Booth
The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
Quartet, by Jean Rhys
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Communion by bell hooks
You Have the Wrong Man by Maria Flook
Divorce, Dog Style by Maria Flook
The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton , selected and introduced by Anita Brookner
The Reef by Edith Wharton
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Autobiography of a Wardrobe by Elizabeth Kendall
Hunger: A Memoir by Roxane Gay
The Touchstone by Edith Wharton
Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit
Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow by Peg Alford Pursell
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry
No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein
The Malady of Death by Marguerite Duras
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
It Occurs to Me That I Am America, editor Jonathan Santlofer
The Accomplished Guest by Ann Beattie
Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Waiting for God by Simone Weil
A Separation by Katie Kitamura
No One is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts
Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed edited by Megham Daum
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Revenge: Seven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa
The Pure and the Impure by Colette
NW by Zadie Smith
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Maharajan
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
The Nature of Blood by Caryl Phillips
Thérèse et Isabelle by Violette LeDuc
Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang
The Diaries of Anaïs Nin: Vol One
My reading lists from previous years can be found here at my old website/blog.