Reading Log

2025

January

Charles Dickens, Bleak House*

Han Kang, Greek Lessons (Korean), trans. Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won

Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

Raynor Winn, The Salt Path

February

Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?**

Niall Williams, This is Happiness

March

Sally Carson, The Crooked Cross

Ali Smith, Gliff

Tove Jansson, Sun City (Swedish), trans. Thomas Teal 

Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red

Ali Smith, Public Library and Other Stories

April

Ali Smith, Artful

Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees (Ukrainian), trans. Boris Dralyuk

May

Sally Wen Mao, Ninetails

Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey

June

Seichō Matsumoto, Inspector Imanishi Investigates (Japanese), trans. Beth Cary

Gayl Jones, The Unicorn Woman**

Maria Reva, Endling

George Huntington, Kings and Cupbearers

July

Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (Japanese), trans. Stephen Snyder

Kate O'Brien, The Flower of May

Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls

James Joyce, Dubliners

August

Donald Niedekker, Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost (Dutch), trans. Jonathan Reeder

September

Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

Patrick Ryan, Buckeye

Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

Claire Keegan, Antarctica

October

Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune

Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Beatriz Serrano, discontent (Spanish), trans. Mara Faye Lethem

Claire Keegan, Walk the Blue Fields

Ian McEwan, What We Can Know

Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

December

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

Mariana Enriquez, Somebody is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys (Spanish/Argentina), trans. Megan McDowell

2024

January

Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Polish), trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones

February

Lauren Markham, A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging

May

Angela Thirkell, The Brandons

June

Christopher N. Phillips, The Hymnal: A Reading History

Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock

Angela Thirkell, High Rising

C.S. Forester, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower

July

Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club

Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

August

Percival Everett, James**

Angela Thirkell, August Folly

O.E. Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth (Norwegian)

Tanja Maljartschuk, Forgottenness (Ukrainian), trans. Zenia Tompkins

September

Isabella Hammad, Enter Ghost

Carolyn Kuebler, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable

Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

Angela Thirkell, Before Lunch

Richard Osman, We Solve Murders

October

Yoko Ogawa, Mina's Matchbox (Japanese), trans. Stephen B. Snyder**

November

Bodil Stenseth, Muus Vs. Muus: The Scandal That Shook Norwegian America (Norwegian), trans. Kari Lie Dorer and Torild Homstad

Yael Van Der Wouden, The Safekeep

Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

Ali Smith, Like

December

Patsy Dew, Out of Focus: A Caregiver's Search for Clarity

Samantha Harvey, Orbital**

Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn

Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World 

Angela Thirkell, Wild Strawberries

2023

January

María José Ferrada, How to Turn into a Bird (Spanish/Chile), trans. Elizabeth Bryer

V. V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night

Pico Iyer, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

Ferit Edgü, The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales (Turkish), trans. Aron Aji

Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children (Russian), trans. Nicholas Pasternak Slater, Maya Slater

Allegra Goodman, Sam

February

Martin Riker, The Guest Lecture

Konstantin Paustovsky, The Story of a Life (Russian), trans. Douglas Smith

Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton

Alejandro Zambra, Chilean Poet (Spanish/Chile), trans. Megan McDowell

James Schuyler, Alfred and Guinevere

March

Judith Mackrell, The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II

Stanley Cloud & Lynne Olson, The Murrow Boys

April

Martha Gellhorn, A Stricken Field

Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander and the Birth of Science

Ben Goldfarb, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

May

Lynne Olson, Empress of the Nile

Chris Moorey, A History of Crete

Cathy Gere, Knossos & the Prophets of Modernism

June

Barry Unsworth, Crete

July

Veronica Roth, Arch-Conspirator

September

Xan Fielding, The Stronghold

October

Elizabeth Rush, The Quickening

Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store**

November

Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

December

Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape

Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto

Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

Nicola Griffith, Menewood

Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Corner That Held Them*

2022

January

Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels

Mark Prins, The Latinist

February

Rob Wesson, Darwin's First Theory: Exploring Darwin's Quest to Find a Theory of the Earth

Rose Macaulay, The World My Wilderness*

March

Dorothy Canfield, The Deepening Stream

April

Carolyn Chalmers, The Don't Want Her There: Fighting Sexual and Racial Harassment in the American University

Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

May

Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This

Ali Smith, Companion Piece

Diane Wilson, The Seed Keeper

June

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness**

Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda*

Natalie Jenner, The Jane Austen Society

Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind (poems)

Natalie Jenner, Bloomsbury Girls

James Welch, Winter in the Blood

July

Nancy Spain, Death Goes on Skis

Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey

Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

Marina Warner, Esmond and Ilia

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors*

Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

David Rhodes, Driftless

August

Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

Clare Pollard, Delphi

Becky Chambers, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek

David Malouf, Ransom

Elizabeth Strout,  Olive Kitteridge

Nicola Griffith, Spear

John Williams, Augustus

September

Lucia Perillo, I've Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature

John Williams, Butcher's Crossing

E.H. Young, Miss Mole

Daniel Mendelsohn, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate

Rabih Alameddine, The Wrong End of the Telescope

Maggie O'Farrell, The Wedding Portrait

Julian Aguon, No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay

Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia

October

Michael Frank, One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World

Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding

Richard Osman, The Bullet That Missed

November

Elif Batuman, The Idiot

Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

December

Alethea Hayter, A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846

2021

Pekka Hämäläinen, Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

Diane Johnson, The First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives

Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Julia Fine, The Upstairs House

Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club

Barbara Comyns, Sisters by a River

Samanth Subramanian, A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane

Russell Hoban, Turtle Diary

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life

Martha Gellhorn, Liana

Barbara Pym, A Few Green Leaves

J.G. Farrell, Troubles

J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur*

Betty Miller, On the Side of the Angels

Cynthia Ozick, Antiquities

Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights

Lauren Groff, Matrix 

J.G. Farrell, The Singapore Grip

Rivka Galchen, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

Helen Humphreys, Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium

Lucille Clifton, Generations: A Memoir

Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice

James Rebanks, Pastoral Song: A Farmer's Journey

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois

2020
Jean Toomer, Cane
Ann Petry, The Street
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
...
Charles Portis, True Grit
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Robin Diangelo, White Fragility (nonfiction)

Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing (nonfiction)

Leila Chatti, Deluge (poems)

Jane Kenyon, The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon (poems)

Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (nonfiction)

Sheila Kaye-Smith, Joanna Godden

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (nonfiction)

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, World of Wonders (nonfiction)

Ali Smith, Summer

Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift

James Welch, Fools Crow

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing

2019
Ali Smith, Spring
Ann Patchett, The Dutch House
Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
Victoria Hislop, The Island
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Kathleen Jamie, Surfacing (nonfiction)
Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe (nonfiction)
Isabella Tree, Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm (nonfiction)

Books in Translation

2022

Yūko Tsushima, Woman Running in the Mountains (Japanese) trans. Geraldine Harcourt

Benjamín Labutut, When We Cease to Understand the World (Spanish/Chile), trans. Adrian Nathan West

Alexandros Papadiamantis, The Murderess (Greek), trans. Peter Levi

Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon (Italian), trans. Jenny McPhee

Hiroko Oyamada, The Hole (Japanese), trans. David Boyd

Faysal Khartash, Roundabout of Death (Arabic/Syria), trans. Max Weiss

2021

Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon) trans. Maria Dahvana Headley

Yamen Manai, The Ardent Swarm (Tunisia/French) trans. Lara Vergnaud

María José Ferrada, How to Order the Universe (Chile/Spanish) trans. Elizabeth Bryer

Véronique Tadjo, In the Company of Men (Côte d'Ivoire/French)

Inès Cagnati, Free Day (French) trans. Liesl Schillinger

Andreas Karkavitsas, The Archeologist (Greek) trans. Johanna Hanink

2020
Magda Szabó, Iza's Ballad (Hungarian)
Perumal Murugan, The Story of a Goat (Tamil)
Tom Kristensen, Havoc (Danish)

Dezső Kosztolányi, Skylark (Hungarian)
...

Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina (Bosnia/Serbo-Croatian)
Magda Szabó, Abigail (Hungarian)
Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Italian)*

Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters (Japanese)

Mercè Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves (Spain/Catalan)

Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police (Japanese)

Magda Szabó, Katalin Street (Hungarian)

Linda Boström Knausgård, The Helios Disaster (Swedish)

2019
Nikos Kazantzakis, Freedom or Death (Greek)
Margarita Liberaki, Three Summers (Greek)
Olga Tokarczuk, Flights (Polish)
Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev (French)
Maria Dermoût, The Ten Thousand Things (Dutch)

Book Group

2022

David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

Claire Keegan, Foster

2021

Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

Colum McCann, Apeirogon

Lisa Napoli, Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR

Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter (Senegal/French)

2020
Cory Doctorow, Radicalized
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

Kira Jane Buxton, Hollow Kingdom

Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Brazil/Portuguese)

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Gore Vidal, 1876

Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder

2019
Tommy Orange, There There
Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch
Esi Edugyan, Washington Black
Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (Russian)
Naguib Mahfouz, Karnak Café (Egypt/Arabic)
Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate



*re-read 

**Book Group