Contemporary Fiction:

1. Embers, Sandor Marai
2. The Parisian, Isabella Hammand
3. Olive, Again, Elizabeth Strout
4. There There, Tommy Orange
5. Outline, Rachel Cusk
6. A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul
7. God on the Rocks, Jane Gardam
8. The Red Lotus, Chris Bohjalian
9. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mendel
10. The End of October, Lawrence Wright
11. Upstate, James Wood
12. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
13. Less, Sean Greer
14. The Mating Season, P.G. Wodehouse
15. Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Ivan Doig
16. The Searcher, Tana French
17. Afterlife, Julia Alvarez
18. When Will There Be Good News, Kate Atkinson

Short Stories:

1.  Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, Alice Munro
2. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories, Carson McCullers
3. The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories, Penelope Lively
4. Servants of the Map, Andrea Barrett

Classic Literature:

1. Last September, Elizabeth Bowen
2. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
3. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
4. The Plague, Albert Camus
5. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
6. Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow

Non-Fiction:

1.  Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, Yossi Klein Halevi
2. Witness Tree, Lynda V. Mapes
3. How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollen
4. The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson
5. Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson
6. Catch 67, Micah Goodman
7. Stars in Our Pockets, Howard Axelrod
8. Make Trouble, John Waters
9. Here is New York, E.B. White
10. This is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay
11. Good Prose, Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd
12. Comfortable with Uncertainty, Pema Chodron
13. Oranges, John McPhee
14. The Pine Barrens, John McPhee
15. The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography, Philip Roth
16. Everyday Zen, Charlotte Beck
17. Life Work, Donald Hall
18. Levels of the Game, John McPhee
19. The Crofter and the Laird, John McPhee
20. The Road Washes Out in the Spring, Baron Wormser
21. The Groucho Letters, Groucho Marx
22. The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed, John McPhee
23. Burning the Days, James Salter
24. Marsh, Billings, Rockefeller in Woodstock, Glenn Suokko
25. On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner
26. One Hundred Autobiographies, David Lehman
27. The Long Thaw, David Archer
28. Books and Mortar, Gibbs M. Smith
29. The Education of an Idealist, Samantha Power
30. Real Change, Susan Salzberg
31. The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson
32. Caste: The Origin of our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
33. Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, Daniel Mendelsohn
34. Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature,  Daniel Evan Becker

Essays:

1. Where Have You Been: Selected Essays, Michael Hofmann
2. Best American Essays: 2019, ed. Rebecca Solnit
3. The Nearest Thing to Life, James Wood
4. Cultural Cohesion, Clive James
5. George Steiner at the New Yorker, George Steiner
6. Ecstasy and Terror, Daniel Mendelsohn
7. Meditations from a Movable Chair, Andre Dubus
8. A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles, John McPhee
9. How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom
10. Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, A.J. Liebling
11. Don’t Save Anything, James Salter
12. Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
13. The Story Begins: Essays on Literature, Amos Oz

Poetry/Drama:

1. Where Your House is Now, Louis Jenkins
2. Cairns, Bill Brown
3. The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Kay Ryan
4. Picnic, Lightning, Billy Collins
5. Dunce, Mary Ruefle
6. Up Country, Maxine Kumin
7. An Introduction to Haiku, Harold Henderson
8. Winter Morning Walks, Ted Kooser
9. In the Clearing, Robert Frost
10. A Soldier’s Play, Charles Fuller
11. The House on Marshland, Louise Gluck
12. A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Willliams
13. The Next Tenderness, Ellen Steinbaum

Art/Architecture:

1.  Keeping an Eye Open, Julian Barnes
2. World’s Edge: The Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity , Thomas Joshua Cooper
3. On Kawara, Glenstone
4. Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau
5. Anni Albers, ed.  A. Coxon
6. Hopper, Mark Strand
7. Japanese Zen Buddhism and the Impossible Painting, Yukio Lippit
8. The Labyrinth, Saul Steinberg

Science/Nature/Gardening:

1.  Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee
2. Until the End of Time, Brian Greene
3. Stones of Aran: Pilgrimmage, Tim Robinson
4. Spirit of Place, Bill Noble
5. To Eat, Joe Eck and Wayne Witnterrowd
6. Windcliff, Dan Hinkley
7. In the Company of Stone, Dan Snow
8. A Natural History of Tinmouth, NH, George LeBoutillier
9. The Well-Gardened Mind, Sue Stuart-Smith

Mysteries:

1. Firebreak, Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)
2. Slow Horses, Mick Herron
3. Maigret, Georges Simenon
4. Ask the Parrot, Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)
5. Dirty Money, Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)
6. A Small Town, Thomas Perry
7. Trace Elements, Donna Leon
8. One Step Behind, Henning Mankell
9. Dead Lions, Mick Herron
10. Real Tigers, Mick Herron
11. Maigret’s Patience, Georges Simenon
12. The Chicago Way, Michael Harvey
13. Maigret Stonewalled, Georges Simenon
14. Maiget Meets a Milord, Georges Simenon
15. Save Me From Dangerous Men, S.A. Lelchuk
16. Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets, Georges Simenon
17. Mind’s Eye, Hakan Nesser
18. Fair Warning, Michael Connelly
19. Maigret and the Yellow Dog, Georges Simenon
20. The Honjin Murders, Sashi Yokomizo
21. Night at the Crossroads, Georges Simenon
22. Maigret in Holland, Georges Simenon
23. Live Wire, Halan Cobin
24. The Grand Banks Cafe, Georges Simenon
25. The Law of Innocence, Michael Connelly