Contemporary Fiction:

1. The Coast of Chicago, Stuart Dybek
2. The Quiet American, Graham Greene
3. The All of It, Jeanette Haien
4. Tinkers, Paul Harding
5. The Farmer’s Daughter, Jim Harrison
6. Solar, Ian McEwan
7. After the Quake, Haruki Murakami
8. After Dark, Haruki Murakami
9. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
10. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
11. Galatea 2.2, Richard Powers
12. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

Classic Fiction:

1. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
2. Light in August, William Faulkner
3. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
4. Beloved, Toni Morrison
5. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
6. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
7. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
8. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Non-Fiction:

1. Somewhere Toward the End, Diana Athill
2. The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught me about Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else, Christopher Beha
3. How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, Sarah Blakewell
4. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton
5. How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton
6. Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security, C. Farrell
7. Arch, Andy Goldsworthy & David Craig
8. Ill Fares the Land, Tony Judt
9. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, Eric Kandel
10. Superfreakonomics, S. Levitt and Dubner
11. The Big Short, Michael Lewis
12. Walking the Line, Richard Long
13. Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History, Margaret MacMillan
14. Speak Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
15. Living with Books, Alan Powers
16. The Healing of America, T.R. Reid
17. A Brief History of Japanese Civilization, Conrad Schirohauer
18. Listening to Stone, Dan Snow
19. Unpacking my Library: Architects and Their Books, ed Jo Steffins
20. Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton
21. Lives of the Artists, Calvin Tomkins
22. Japanese Art and Design: the Toshiba Gallery at the V&A
23. Role Models, John Waters

Essays:

1. Best American Essays, 2010, Ed. Christopher Hitchens
2. Best American Essays, 2009, Ed Mary Oliver
3. Best American Essays, 2008, Ed. Adam Gopnik
4. Best American Essays, 2007, Ed. David Foster Wallace
5. Best American Essays, 2006, Ed. Lauren Slater
6. Best American Essays, 2005, Ed. Susan Orlean
7. Where Books Fall Open, Bascove
8. And Even Now, Max Beerbohm
9. The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
10. In a Cardboard Belt, Joseph Epstein
11. Between Meals, A.J. Liebling
12. The Undertaking, Thomas Lynch
13. Bodies in Motion and at Rest, Thomas Lynch
14. A Reader on Reading, Alberto Manguel
15. Silk Parachute, John McPhee
16. How Beautiful it is and How Easily It Can be Broken, Daniel Mendelsohn
17. Lectures in Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov
18. The Braindead Megaphone, George Saunders

Poetry:

1. The Unfinished Poems of C.P. Cavafy, transl by Daniel Mendelsohn
2. Picnic, Lightning, Billy Collins
3. Sailing alone around the Room: Billy Collins
4. Nine Horses, Billy Collins
5. Ballistics, Billy Collins
6. Trapeze, Deborah Digges
7. What Goes On—Selected and New Poems 1995-2009, Stephen Dunn
8. Different Hours, Stephen Dunn
9. Versed in Country Things, Robert Frost
10. Where I Live—New and Selected 1990-2010, Maxine Kumin
11. News of the World, Philip Levine
12. Skating with Heather Grace, Thomas Lynch
13. Upgraded to Serious, Heather McHugh
14. Lament for the Makers, W.S.Merwin
15. The Mower, Andrew Motion
16. The Best of It—New and Selected Poems, Kay Ryan
17. The Dead, Alive and Busy, Alan Shapiro
18. Old War, Alan Shapiro
19. Tantalus in Love, Alan Shapiro
20. Container Gardening, Ellen Steinbaum

Drama: 

1. Henry IV, Part I, William Shakespeare
2. Henry IV, Part II, William Shakespeare
3. Oedipus the King, Sophocles
4. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
5. Antigone, Sophocles

Gardening/Nature:

1. Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Handbook, David Carroll
2. Living the Good Life, Scott and Helen Nearing

Mystery:

1. Elegy for April, Benjamin Black
2. Walking the Perfect Square, Reed Farrell Coleman
3. The Reversal, Michael Connelly
4. U is for Undertow, Sue Grafton
5. D is for Deadbeat, Sue Grafton
6. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Larsson
7. The Price of Malice, Archer Mayor
8. Mind’s Eye, Hakan Nesser
9. Split Image, Robert Parker
10. Blue Eyed Devil, Robert Parker
11. Painted Ladies, Robert B. Parker