I am often asked what I’m reading and what are my favorite books. The following is a somewhat random list in no particular order. It’s also woefully incomplete, though I will add to it as I remember what I’ve forgotten and as I continue to read.
- Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn
- The Known World, Edward P. Jones
- Middle Passage, Charles Johnson
- Wemberly Worried, Kevin Henkes
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- I’ve Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, Susan Straight
- The Vintner’s Luck, Elizabeth Knox
- Bridge to Terebithia, Katherine Paterson
- Alan and Naomi, Myron Levoy
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
- Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
- Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Soer
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, Michael Chabon
- Elsie Dinsmore, Martha Finley
- Old Filth, Jane Gardam
- Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel
- Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
- Songmaster, Orson Scott Card
- Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
- The Brothers Lionheart, Astrid Lindgren
- Go and Come Back, Joan Abelove
- Blue Suburbia, Laurie Lico-Albanese
- I am an Evil Genius and I Want to be Class President, Josh Lieb
- The World According to Garp, John Irving
- A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
- Into Thin Air, Jon Kraukauer
- Mandy, Julie Andrews
- A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
- The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Alive, Piers Paul Reid
- The Help, Kathryn Stockett
- Fortunes’ Rocks, Anita Shreve
- Firestarter, Stephen King
- Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
- The Children of the Company, Kage Baker
- Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
- The Lottery Rose, Irene Hunt
- Regeneration, Pat Barker
- Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand
- Bloodbrothers, Richard Price
- Otis Spifford, Beverly Cleary
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
- The Odyssey, Homer
- The Iliad, Homer
- The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
- Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, Nathaniel Frank
- Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- Watership Down, Richard Adams
- The Passage, Justin Cronin
- Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Judy Blume
- A Mango Shaped Space, Wendy Mass
- To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb
- Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
- What Girls Learn, Karin Cook
- The Gate to Women’s Country, Sheri S. Tepper
- The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wou, Junot Diaz
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
- The Giver, Lois Lowry
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
- The Facts Speak for Themselves, Brock Cole
- Summer of My German Soldier, Bette Green
- The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
- Always Running, Luiz Rodriguez
- Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead George
- Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
- The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
- Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
- Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink
- Room, Emma Donoghue
- The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
- Love Story, Erich Segal
- The Road, Cormac McCarthy
- The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
- Fifth Child, Doris Lessing
- We of the Never Never, Jeannie Gunn
- Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
- Lying, Lauren Slater
- Lying on the Couch, Dr. Irvin Yalom
- Oil, Upton Sinclair
- The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
- Me and My Little Brain, John D. Fitzgerald
- The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Beverly Cleary
- What is the What, Dave Eggers
- Bless the Beasts and Children, Glendon Swarthout
- Emma, Jane Austen
- Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
- Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
- State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
- The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
- Ish, Peter H. Reynolds
- The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
- Wonder, R.J. Palacio
- In One Body, John Irving
- Book of Jonas, Stephen Dau
- Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain
- Girls Like Us, Rachel Lloyd
- The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
- Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell
- The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
- All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
- Walking Prey, Holly Austin Smith