Reading List
“There are worse crimes than burning books.
One of them is not reading them.”
- Ray Bradbury
I read a lot. I read as much as I can. I read in an attempt to truly understand how the world and the beings within it work, which - given that nothing is mutually exclusive - means that I try read everything.
Current
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Canada in Africa - 300 Years of Aid and Expoitation by Yves Engler
2021
- 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
- Pendragon #4: The Reality Bug by D.J. MacHale
- Pendragon #3: The Never War by D.J. MacHale
- Pendragon #2: The Lost City of Faar by D.J. MacHale
- Pendragon #1: The Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHale
- 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