Reading List

“There are worse crimes than burning books.
One of them is not reading them.”
- Ray Bradbury

Current

• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
• Pump: A Natural History of the Heart by Bill Schutt

2021

• To Live by Yu Hua *
• Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle *
• Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
• Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair by Sarah Schulman
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd *
• Fat City by Leonard Gardner
• Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
• This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin
• A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
• Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot by Masha Gessen
• History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund *
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life by David Sim
• The Professional by W.C. Heinz *
• Sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs : a low culture manifesto by Chuck Klosterman
• Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles R. Cross
• Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life by John Sellers (unfinished, less about Indie Rock & life-saving & more about being inexplicably snotty)
• Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin *
• Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
• Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants by Ann Hui *
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph *
• Brother by David Chariandy
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

2020

• The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
• Just Kids by Patti Smith *
• Power games: a political history of the Olympics by Jules Boykoff
• The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel *
• In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje *
• From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way by Jesse Thistle
• How Music Works by David Byrne
• Swan Song (play) by Anton Chekhov
• How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde *
• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
• Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic by Hugh Sinclair
• Superpower, Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World by Michael Schuman
• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen
• Railsea by China Miéville
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
• The Artist At Work (short story) by Albert Camus *
• Axolotl (short story) by Julio Cortázar
• All My Darling Daughters (short story) by Connie Willis
• Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison (unfinished for now, slowly working through the exercises in the book!)
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare
• The Lottery (short story) by Shirley Jackson
• In the Penal Colony (short story) by Franz Kafka
• Lemon by Cordelia Strube
• On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light by Cordelia Strube
• I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom *
• The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3) by N.K. Jemisin
• The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2) by N.K. Jemisin
• Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family by Amanda Jette Knox
• The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) by N.K. Jemisin

2019

• Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer *
• A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick *
• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
• City of Glass by Paul Auster
• Detroit City Is The Place To Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis by Mark Binelli
• Think Like a Cat: How to Raise a Well-Adjusted Cat–Not a Sour Puss by Pam Johnson-Bennett
• Statistics in Plain English: 4th Edition by Timothy C. Urdan (unfinished - decided I was happy enough with after Chapt 8)
• No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail our Private Needs by Lezlie Lowe *
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure by Shawn Micallef
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry by Joseph M. Gabriel (unfinished due to boredom)
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Gods of Tango by Carolina De Robertis *
• Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto
• The City & the City by China Miéville
• Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
• Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
• Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector (unfinished due to density)
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
• Kinder than Solitude by Yiyun Li
• Between Friends by Amos Oz *
• Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams
• How to Cure a Fanatic by Amos Oz
• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• Transit by Rachel Cusk
• Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
• Outline by Rachel Cusk *
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2018

• A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Stephen R. Covey
• The Responsibility of Intellectuals by Noam Chomsky
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• 9-11: Was There an Alternative? by Noam Chomsky
• The Little Buddhist Monk / The Proof by César Aira
• Ema, the Captive by César Aira
• Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord
• Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
• A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Márquez
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy by Raj Patel
• The End of Growth by Jeff Rubin
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro *
• The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro *
• A Short History of Southeast Asia by Peter Church
• Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman *
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino
• A Superior Man by Paul Yee
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi *
• Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

2017

• Shantytown by César Aira
• The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
• Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
• Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help Make You Make a Difference by William MacAskill
• Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software by Michael T. Nygard
• Wenjack by Joseph Boyden
• Alcatraz From Inside: The Hard Years, 1942-1952 by Jim Quillen
• Assignment Alcatraz by Patrick Mahoney
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver *
• Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard
• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut *
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut