This page contains a list of books I have read. They aren’t listed in any particular order except roughly chronologically based on when I finished them. If a book left an exceptional impression (usually positive), I will mark its entry with a + and sometimes a link to a summary or review. If I didn’t finish a book the entry will be marked with DNF. I try to engage with a book for ~100 pages or half its length (whichever is shorter) before DNF-ing.
This page exists mainly so I can remember what I’ve read over time, and so friends can check if I’ve read something without spoiling the surprise of a book they want to gift me. But, maybe you’ll find a new book to read or see one you’ve read before and want to talk about. Or maybe it will remind you of a book you think I might like. In all of those cases I hope you’ll let me know!
Currently Reading
- High Maintenance by Jennifer Belle
- The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
- Human Transit by Jarrett Walker
2024
- Sam the Cat and Other Stories by Matthew Klam DNF
- Who Is Rich? by Matthey Klam
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver DNF
- Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore +
- Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
- A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark DNF
- Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power by Susan Page DNF
- Republican Leader: a Political Biography of Senator Mitch McConnell by John David Dyche DNF
- Symposium by Muriel Spark +
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro +
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
- Yellow Street by Veza Canetti
- Meet Me at the Lighthouse by Dana Gioia
- Going Places by Leonard Michaels (A Green Thought and City Boy are hilarious)
- The Looking Glass War by John Le Carré DNF
- Call for the Dead by John Le Carré DNF
- The Spy Who Came in From The Cold by John Le Carré
- Silverview by John Le Carré
- Swing Time by Zadie Smith
- Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro +
2023 and Earlier
- The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
- Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
- Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
- Exhalation by Ted Chiang
- The Old Woman With The Knife by Gu Byeong-mo
- A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
- The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area by Malcom Margolin
- Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Free Justice: A History of the Public Defender in Twentieth-Century America by Sara Mayeux
- The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler
- Generations: A Memoir by Lucille Clifton
- Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall
- The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World by Lewis Hyde
- A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past by Lewis Hyde
- Back from the Land by Eleanor Agnew
- Down the Rabbit Hole: A Novel by Juan Pablo Villalobos
- Foundry by Eliot Peper
- Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow
- The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow
- The Night Manager by John le Carré
- Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
- Death of the Great Man by Peter D. Kramer
- Winter Love by Suyin Han
- Death Comes For the Archbishop by Willa Cather +
- The Professor’s House by Willa Cather +
- My Antonia by Willa Cather +
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
- Stoner by John Williams +
- Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams +
- Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
- The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
- Harrow by Joy Williams
- The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind
- Objects of Desire by Clare Sestanovich
- Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
- Normal People by Sally Rooney
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
- Ernesto by Umberto Saba
- In the Heart of the Country by William H. Glass
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshimazu Kawaguchi
- How It All Began by Penelope Lively
- City of the Mind by Penelope Lively
- Mrs Palfrey At the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor +
- Sylvia by Leonard Michaels
- Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro
- Working by Robert A. Caro
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson +
- The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois +
- Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
- Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
- A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
- Captial in The Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
- Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
- Palaces For The People by Eric Klinenberg
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber +
- The Affordable City by Shane Phillips +
- House Divided by Alex Bozikovic, Cheryll Case, John Lorinc, and Annabel Vaughan
- Neighborhood Defenders by Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick, and Maxwell Palmer
- Inequality: What Can Be Done? by Anthony B. Atkinson
- Boston: a Novel (Vol. 1) by Upton Sinclair +
- Boston: a Novel (Vol. 2) by Upton Sinclair +
- Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse