Reading List 2011

To read the review and comments about a specific book, note the number in parentheses after the author, click on the Book Journal button, and scroll to that number. You can also enter the book’s title in the Search box to the right.

Contemporary Fiction: 

  1. The Laying on of Hands, Alan Bennett
  2. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
  3. Selected Stories, William Trevor
  4. To the End of the Land, David Grossman
  5. Nemesis, Philip Roth
  6. Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
  7. Twilight of the Superheroes, Deborah Eisenberg
  8. Victor Halfwit: A Winter’s Tale, Thomas Bernhard
  9. Varieties of Disturbance, Lydia Davis
  10. Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins, Carlos Fuentes
  11. Apparations and Late Fictions, Thomas Lynch

Classic Fiction: 

  1. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
  2. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
  3. The Metamorphosis and other stories, Franz Kafka
  4. Dangling Man, Saul Bellow
  5. The Victim, Saul Bellow
  6. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow

Non-Fiction:

  1. Bird Cloud, Annie Proulx
  2. The Hare with the Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal
  3. The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist, Orhan Pamuk
  4. A Week at the Airport, Alain de Botton
  5. The Vermont Notebook, John Ashbery & Joe Brainard
  6. How to Read a Word, Elizabeth Knowles
  7. Just Kids, Patti Smith
  8. Moby Duck, Donovan Hohn
  9. Must you Go, Antonia Fraser
  10. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, Stanley Fish
  11. My Prizes, An Accounting, Thomas Bernhard
  12. On Turning Sixty-Five, John Jerome
  13. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax, Rebecca Skloot
  14. Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities, ed, Frank Jacob
  15. Atlas of Remote Islands, Judith Schalansky
  16. Maphead, Ken Jennings
  17. At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
  18. Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing, Roger Rosenblatt
  19. The Cello Suites, Eric Siblin
  20. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Christopher Hitchens
  21. Just my Type, Simon Garfield
  22. Boomerang, Michael Lewis
  23. The Elements, Theodore Gray

Essays:

  1. Best American Essays, 2010, ed. Kathleen Norris
  2. Best American Essays, 2004, ed. Louis Menand
  3. Best American Essays, 2003, ed. Anne Fadiman
  4. Best American Essays, 2002, ed. Stephen Jay Gould
  5. Best American Essays, 2001, ed. Kathleen Norris
  6. Changing my Mind, Zadie Smith
  7. Except When I Write, Arthur Krystal
  8. Arguably, Christopher Hitchens
  9. Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, Geoff Dyer

Poetry:

  1. Till I End My Song, Harold Bloom
  2. Walking Papers: Poems 1999-2010, Thomas Lynch
  3. Still Life in Milford, Thomas Lynch
  4. An Early Afterlife, Linda Pastan
  5. Pierce the Skin: Selected Poems, Henri Cole
  6. Fatherless Woman, June Beisch
  7. Where I Live, New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 Maxine Kumin
  8. Collected Poems, Philip Larkin
  9. Master of Disguises, Charles Simic
  10. Anterooms, Richard Wilbur
  11. The Complete Poems and Plays, T.S. Eliot
  12. The Back Chamber, Donald Hall
  13. Happy Life, David Budbill
  14. Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry, David Orr
  15. Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999 Philip Booth
  16. My Alexandria, Mark Doty
  17. The Best American Poetry, 2010, ed Amy Gerstler
  18. The Best American Poetry, 2011: Kevin Young, ed

Drama:

  1. A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
  2. The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
  3. The Birthday Party & The Room, Harold Pinter
  4. The Caretaker & The Dumb Waiter, Harold Pinter
  5. Betrayal, Harold Pinter

Gardening/Nature:

  1. The Outside Story, ed. Chuck Wooster
  2. In Season: A Natural History of New England,  Nona Bell Estrin
  3. The Rural Life, Verlyn Klinkenborg
  4. Countryman’s Year, Harold Pearson
  5. A Year at North Hill, Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd
  6. Sundial of the Seasons, Hal Borland

Art and Architecture:

  1. Fifty Works for Fifty States: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection
  2. Event Horizon: Madison Square Park Art, Antony Gormley
  3. Lawrence Goldsmith: A Life in Watercolor, Carl Little &Mel Gussow
  4. Collecting Contemporary Art: Andrea Bellini, ed
  5. The Perfect House, Witold Rybczynski
  6. The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton
  7. The Art of Buying Art, Paige West
  8. Edward Hopper’s Maine, Kevin Salatino, Steve Martin, et al
  9. The Soul of a Tree, George Nakashima
  10. The Art of Monhegan Island, Carl Little and Arnold Skolnick
  11. Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork, James Longwood, et al

Mystery:

  1. Outwitting Trolls, William Tappley
  2. A Question of Belief, Donna Leone
  3. The Fifth Witness, Michael Connelly
  4. Gone Tomorrow, Lee Child
  5. The Hard Way, Lee Child
  6. Worth Dying For, Lee Child
  7. Killing Floor, Lee Child
  8. 61 Hours, Lee Child
  9. Bad Luck and Trouble, Lee Child
  10. The Enemy, Lee Child
  11. The Affair, Lee Child
  12. Lullaby Town, Robert Crais
  13. Chasing Darkness, Robert Crais
  14. A. Requiem, Robert Crais
  15. The Dark Horse, Craig Johnson
  16. Tag Man, Archer Mayor
  17. A Death in Summer, Benjamin Black
  18. Sixkill, Robert B. Parker