I Recommend These Books
Novel, Story, Poetry, Memoir, Comics, Crime, History, Politics, Science, Technology
I track the books I read in a spreadsheet.
I have read 88 books per year for the past twenty years.
In the past five years, since I stopped teaching, I’ve read 700 books.
Last year, I read 191 books. I read over 100 novels, 50 books of nonfiction, 16 books on writing, 8 books of poetry, 8 story collections, 7 graphic novels, and a few plays, screenplays, and art books.
The list that follows is not a list of all the books I’ve read.
This is only a list of the books, by category, that I recommend.
COMICS & ART
Making Comics and Syllabus, by Lynda Barry
Anything by Roz Chast
Anything by Tom Gauld
Anything by Kate Beaton
Anything by Adrian Tomine
Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave, by Chauvel, Deschamps, Hillaire
SPY NOVELS
Every novel by Alan Furst
The novels of Martin Cruz Smith
The Right Hand, by Derek Haas
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carre
CRIME NOVELS
Any book by Don Winslow
Any book by Walter Mosely
The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, by Tom Lin
The Killing Hills, Shifty’s Boys, Code of the Hills, and The Reluctant Sheriff, by Chris Offutt
Blacktop Wasteland, Razorblade Tears, and All the Sinners Bleed, by SA Cosby
May the Wolf Die, by Elizabeth Heider
The Line That Held Us, by David Joy
The novels of Chester Himes
The novels of Tony Hillerman
NOVELS
Several People Are Typing, by Calvin Kasulke
Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher
Welcome to Lagos, by Chibundu Onuzo
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Suskind
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
SHORT FICTION
White Cat, Black Dog, by Kelly Link
Friday Black, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Bloodchild, by Octavia Butler
Gryphon: New and Selected Stories, by Charles Baxter
The Collected Stories, by Amy Hempel
The Most of Nora Ephron, by Nora Ephron
Women! In! Peril! by Jessie Ren Marshall
Rare and Endangered Species, by Richard Bausch
Liberation Day, by George Saunders
Afterparties, by Anthony Veasna So
Gorilla, My Love, by Toni Cade Bambara
Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine, by Kevin Wilson
The Ghost Variations: 100 Ghost Stories, by Kevin Brockmeier
Japanese Ghost Stories, by Lafcadio Hearn
POETRY
Ecstasy, by Alex Dimitrov
Gabriel, by Edward Hirsch
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, by Franny Choi
Goldenrod, by Maggie Smith
Good Bones, by Maggie Smith
Tough Luck, by Todd Boss
Come Closer & Listen, by Charles Simic
The Stuff of Hollywood, by Niki Herd
With My Back to the World, by Victoria Change
Finna, by Nate Marshall
Night Sky with Exit Wounds, by Ocean Vuong
The Best 100 African-American Poems, edited by Nikki Giovanni
Couplets, by Maggie Millner
Selected Poems, by Donald Hall
New & Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver
Dunce, by Mary Ruefle
A Distant Center, by Ha Jin
How to Communicate, by John Lee Clark
Real Phonies & Genuine Fakes, by Nicky Beer
Woman Without Shame, by Sandra Cisneros
One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Saving Daylight, by Jim Harrison
American Melancholy, by Joyce Carol Oates
Book of Hours, by Kevin Young
Domestic Violence, by Eavan Boland
NONFICTION
Born to Be Hanged: The Epic Story of the Gentlemen Pirates Who Raided the South Seas, Rescued a Princess, and Stole a Fortune, by Keith Thomson
Follow This Thread: A Maze Book to Get Lost In, by Henry Eliot
10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-tech World, by Jean M. Twenge
The Art of Small Business Social Media, by Peg Fitzpatrick
Lead Like a Marine, by John Warren and John Thompson
Range, by David Epstein
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Look Alive Out There, by Sloane Crosley
The Uncollected David Rakoff, by David Rakoff
For Fuck’s Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude, & Fun, by Rebecca Roache
Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, by Jim Ruland
The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series, by Jessica Radloff
Black Nerd Problems, by William Evans & Olmar Holmon
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, by Emmanuel Acho
NONFICTION: CRIME
The Monsters We Make, by Rachel Corbett
Anatomy of a Con Artist, by Johnathan Walton
Billion Dollar Whale, by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright
American Kingpin, by Nick Bilton
The Spider Network, by David Enrich
Life Sentence, by Mark Bowden
The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, by Mark Bowden
She Kills, by Skip Hollandsworth
The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston
Life Undercover, by Amaryllis Fox
Billion Dollar Spy, by David Hoffman
Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, by Paul Holes
The Old Man & The Gun, by David Grann
Mindhunter, by John Douglas
NONFICTION: POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, by Casey Michel
This America: The Case for the Nation, by Jill Lepore
The Great Wave, by Michiko Kakutani
The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, by Michiko Kakutani
The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World—And What We Can Do, by Steven Brill
Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War, by Phil Klay
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad
The Utopia of Rules, by David Graeber
Countdown, by Sarah Scoles
Standpipe: Delivering Water in Flint, by David Hardin
Boomerang, by Michael Lewis
The Premonition, by Michael Lewis
The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives, by Jesse Eisinger
NONFICTION: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
Thinking Fast & Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
Will the Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty
Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us, by Dan Lyons
12 Bytes: How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Way We Live and Love, by Jeanette Winterson
The Long History of the Future: Why Tomorrow’s Tech Still Isn’t Here, by Nicole Kobie
Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness, by Patrick House
The River of Consciousness, by Oliver Sacks
The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI, by Ray Kurzweil
Natural Causes, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The End of the End of the Earth: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen
Mindmasters: the Data-driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior, by Sandra Matz
Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe, by Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson
Billions & Billions, by Carl Sagan
Pillars of Creation: How the James Webb Telescope Unlocked the Secrets of the Cosmos, by Richard Panek
Secrets of the Octopus, by Sy Montgomery
The Hummingbird’s Gift, by Sy Montgomery
NONFICTION: MEMOIR
Art Work, by Sally Mann
Joyride, by Susan Orlean
Working, by Robert A. Caro
Reporter, by Seymour Hersh
Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama, by Bob Odenkirk
Horror Stories, by Liz Phair
Shockaholic, by Carrie Fisher
Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, by Brian Cox
Life’s Work, by David Milch
Hunger, by Roxane Gay
The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy
One Friday in April, by Donald Antrim
Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
The Unit, by Adam Gamal
Gratitude, by Oliver Sacks
Freedom, by Sebastian Junger
In My Time of Dying, by Sebastian Junger
My Brief History, by Stephen Hawking
Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist, by Jane Rosenberg
Iron & Silk, by Mark Salzman
Double Down, by Fred and Steve Barthelme
Half a Life, by Darin Strauss
Heavy, by Kiese Laymon
The Thing About Life is that One Day You’ll Be Dead, by David Shields
Playing with Myself, by Randy Rainbow
The World’s Worst Assistant, by Sona Movsesian
What in the World? by Leanne Morgan
Is It Hot in Here? by Zach Zimmerman
True Gretch, by Gretchen Whitmer
We’ve Decided to Go in a Different Direction, by Tess Sanchez
Keep Moving, by Maggie Smith
