Reading List 2014

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.

Fiction

  1. The Rivers Flow North, Howard Frank Mosher (#1690)
  2. Last Friends, Jane Gardam (#1693)
  3. Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes (#1702)
  4. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (#1703)
  5. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer (read by Simon Vance) (#1722)
  6. Old Filth, Jane Gardam (#1729)
  7. The Unlikely Pilgrimmage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce (#1742)
  8. The Unnamed, Joshua Ferris
  9. The Defense, Vladimir Nabokov (#1770)
  10. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
  11. Chess Story, Stefan Zweig (#1781)
  12. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimmage, Haruki Murakami (#1782)
  13. Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh (#1788)
  14. The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald (#1696)
  15. Vertigo, W. G. Sebald (#1814)
  16. Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald (#1801)
  17. Fup, Jim Dodge (#1812)

Short Stories:

  1. In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan (#1711)
  2. Bark, Lorrie Moore (#1739)
  3. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (#1761)
  4. Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad, Howard Norman (#1774)
  5. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel (#1791)
  6. The Lemon Table, Julian Barnes (#1800)
  7. Can’t and Won’t, Lydia Davis (#1807)

Classics:

  1. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (read by Simon Vance) (#1700)
  2. Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine Saint-Exupery (#1723)
  3. The Call of the Wild and Selected Short Stories, Jack London (#1749)
  4. Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas (#1804)
  5. The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (#1811)

Non-Fiction:

  1. One Summer, America 1927, Bill Bryson (#1688)
  2. My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead (#1707)
  3. Chasing Shackleton: Recreating the World’s Greatest Journey of Survival, Tim Jarvis (#1708)
  4. The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clark (#1712)
  5. Making Space: Creating a Home Meditation Practice, Thich Nhat Hanh (#1709)
  6. The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems, Ronald Siegel (#1714)
  7. The Thing about Life is that one Day you’ll be Dead, David Shields (#1712)
  8. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell (#1724)
  9. A Sense of Where you Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton, John McPhee (#1726)
  10. Levels of Life, Julian Barnes (#1727)
  11. Roth: A Writer and his Books, Claudia Roth Pierpoint  (#1731)
  12. Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt (#1735)
  13. The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen (#1737)
  14. Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding, Lynn Darling (#1738)
  15. Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of our Elders, Mary Pipher    (#1740a)
  16. Congratulations, By the Way, George Saunders (#1743)
  17. Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir, Penelope Lively (#1744)
  18. Philip Hoff, Samuel B. Hand, et al (#1752)
  19. Another Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George HW Bush, Geoff Dyer (#1758)
  20. Four Seasons in Rome: Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World, Anthony Doerr   (#1755)
  21. College of One, Sheilah Graham (#1759)
  22. Boutique Beer, Ben McFarland (#1764)
  23. The Critic in the Modern World, James Ley (#1771)
  24. The Shelf: Adventures in Extreme Reading, Phyllis Rose (#1775)
  25. Acheson: The Secretary of State who Created the American World, James Chace (#1776)
  26. Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, John Paul Stevens (#1784)
  27. Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation, Sharon Salzberg (#1789)
  28. World Order, Henry Kissinger (#1810)
  29. Being Mortal, Atul Gawande  (#1817)
  30. On the Natural History of Destruction, W.G. Sebald (#1820)
  31. Will Not Attend, Adam Resnick (#1821a)
  32. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm (#1822)
  33. A History of the 20th Century in 100 Maps, T. Bryars and T. Harper (#1827)

Essays:

  1. Madness, Rack, and Honey, Mary Ruefle   (#1692)
  2. Best American Essays of 2013, ed. Cheryl Strayed   (#1736)
  3. Best American Essays of 1998, ed. Cynthia Ozick (#1741)
  4. A Place in the Country, W.G. Sebald (#1803)
  5. Farmer Takes a Wife, John Gould (#1809)
  6. Intoxicated by my Illness, Anatole Broyard (#1815)
  7. Forty One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, Janet Malcolm   (#1818)

Art and Architecture:

  1. Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape,Bevridge and Rocheleau (#1686)
  2. Art Made from Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved, Transformed, L. Hyenga   (#1687)
  3. Charles Burchfield: Fifty Years as a Painter, ed. Bridget Moore (#1694)
  4. Glorious Slow Going: Maine Stories of Art, Adventure &Friendship, M. Robichaux, E. Peavy   (#1699)
  5. The Public Library: A Photographic Essay, Robert Dawson (and others) (#1745)
  6. Library: The Drama Within, Diane Asseo Griliches   (#1792)
  7. Man with the Blue Scarf, Martin Gayford (#1748)
  8. Secondary View: The Rephotographic Survey Project, Mark Klett, et al   (#1750)
  9. Dust Bowl Descent, Bill Ganzell (#1754)
  10. The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin In Arles, MartinGayford   (#1756)
  11. In the Footsteps of Van Gogh, Giles Plazy (#1821)
  12. How Architecture Works, Witold Rybczynski (#1762)
  13. Unbuilding, David Macaulay (#1765)
  14. ThePaintings of Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Cheryl Brutvan (#1816)
  15. Under Blue Cup, Rosalind Krauss (#1823)

Science, Nature, and Gardening:

  1. Four Fish, Paul Greenberg   (#1740)
  2. The Galapagos: A Natural History, Henry Nicholls (#1757)
  3. Our Life in Gardens, Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd (#1763)
  4. Longitude: The True Story of the Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Dava Sobel (#1766)
  5. A Window on Eternity: A Biologist’s Walk through Gorongosa National Park, Edward O. Wilson   (#1779)
  6. Animal Architecture, Ingo Arndt (#1796)
  7. The Copernican Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities, Caleb Scharf    (#1799)
  8. The Cows, Lydia Davis (#1805)
  9. Gardens in Detail: 100 Contemporary Designs, Emma Reuss   (#1819)

Shakespeare plays read for English 124d, Stephen Greenblatt’s spring semester course at Harvard:

  1. Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare (#1689)
  2. The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare (#1697)
  3. Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare (#1701)
  4. Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare (#1705)
  5. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare (#1706)
  6. Hamlet, William Shakespeare (#1716)
  7. Othello, Moor of Venice, William Shakespeare (#1718)
  8. King Lear, William Shakespeare (#1719)
  9. Macbeth, William Shakespeare (#1730)
  10. Anthony and Cleopatra, William Shakespeare (#1732)
  11. The Tempest, William Shakespeare (#1734)

Poetry and Drama:

  1. Belmont, Stephen Burt (#1695)
  2. Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings, ed M. Werner & J. Bervin (#1704)
  3. The Best American Poetry: 2013, ed. Denise Duhamel (#1710)
  4. Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems, William Stafford  (#1715)
  5. The Fourth Dimension of a Poem, M. H. Abrams (#1720)
  6. Headwaters, Ellen Bryant Voigt (#1721)
  7. Jose Marti: Major Poems, bilingual edition, Jose Marti  (#1725)
  8. Baudelaire: Selected Poems, edited and translated by Lawrence Lerner (#1733)
  9. Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems, Billy Collins (#1747)
  10. Coming into Eighty, May Sarton (#1753)
  11. The Earth Avails, Mark Wunderlich (#1772)
  12. Once in the West, Christian Wiman (#1783)
  13. Upgraded to Serious, Heather McHugh (#1785)
  14. Caribou, Charles Wright (#1790)
  15. Gabriel, Edward Hirsch (#1798)
  16. Across the Land and Water, WG Sebald (#1824)
  17. Kicking the Leaves, Donald Hall (#1826)

Mysteries:

  1. W is for Wasted, Sue Grafton (#1691)
  2. Gods of Guilt, Michael Connelly (#1698)
  3. The Burning Room, Michael Connelly (#1825)
  4. Police, Jo Nesbo (#1717)
  5. The Son, Jo Nesbo (#1760)
  6. A Stained White Radiance, James Lee Burke (#1728)
  7. Maigret on the Riviera, Georges Simenon (#1746)
  8. Pietr the Latvian, Georges Simenon (#1751)
  9. The Methods of Maigret, Georges Simenon (#1768)
  10. Madame Maigret’s Own Case, Georges Simenon (#1769)
  11. Maigret and the Loner, Georges Simenon (#1797)
  12. Maigret Rents a Room, Georges Simenon (#1787)
  13. Maigret and the Young Girl, Georges Simenon
  14. Maigret’s Little Joke, Georges Simenon  (#1806)
  15. Maigret and the Old Lady, Georges Simenon (#1808)
  16. Maigret’s First Case, Georges Simenon (#1813)
  17. The Heist, Daniel Silva (#1774)
  18. By Its Cover, Donna Leon (#1780)
  19. Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot: A Spenser Novel, Ace Atkins (#1778)
  20. The Black Eyed Blonde, Benjamin Black/John Banville (#1786)
  21. Proof Positive, Archer Mayor (#1793)
  22. Malice, Keigo Higoshino (#1794)
  23. Personal, Lee Child    (#1795)