Laura Fraser

Writer / Editor / Content Expert

  • Home
  • Books
  • Articles
  • Classes, coaching, and workshops
  • Narrative Solutions
  • Booklists
  • About Laura

2001-2005

My 2005 Reading List

Revolutionary Road*
Richard Yates

Coming to our Senses*
Jon Kabat-Zinn

Continental Drift*
Richard Yates

Oracle Night*
Paul Auster

Playing House
Patricia Pearson

Dear Mrs. Lindbergh
Kathleen Hughes

Lying Awake
Mark Salzman

In Sunburned Country*
Bill Bryson

Clockers*
Richard Price

The Log of the Sea of Cortez
John Steinbeck

Appointment in Samarra*
John O’Hara

The Kite Runner
Khalid Husseini

South of the Clouds: Exploring the Hidden Realms of China*
Seth Faison

The Lost Continent
Bill Bryson

My Name is Red
Orhan Pamuk

Cloudstreet*
Tim Winton

Jesusland*
Julia Scheeres

Nora Jane
Ellen Gilchrist

My Journey to Lhasa*
Alexandra David-Neel

Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice
A.S. Byatt

Elizabeth Costello
JM Coetzee

The Years*
Virginia Woolf

The Adventures of Augie March*
Saul Bellow

Casalinga a Hollywood
Stefania Barzini

Bad Times in Buenos Aires
Miranda France

A Very Good Year: The Journey of a California Wine from Vine to Table
Mike Weiss

The Emperor of Wine
Erin McCoy

The Confessions of Max Tivoli*
Andrew Sean Greer

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
Jorge Amado

Kafka on the Shore*
Haruko Murakami

The Known World*
Edward P. Jones

The Time Traveler’s Wife
Audrey Niffenegger

Blabbermouth
Anonymous

The Hummingbird’s Daughter*
Luis Alberto Urrea

The Path of Minor Planets*
Andrew Sean Greer

When We Were Orphans*
Kenzuo Ishiguro

Death in the Andes
Mario Vargas Llosa

The Storyteller
Mario Vargas Llosa

Tales of a Female Nomad†
Rita Golden Gelman

Florida
Christine Schutt

The Effect of Living Backwards
Heidi Julavitz

The Green House
Mario Vargas Llosa

Falling Palaces
Dan Hofstadter

The Curse of the Appropriate Man
Lynn Freed

Atonement*
Ian McEwan

My 2004 Reading List

Middlesex*
Jeffrey Eugenides

Living to Tell the Tale*
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Speaking with the Angel†
Nick Hornby, ed.

Versailles
Kathryn Davis

Atonement
Ian McEwan

Crescent
Diana Abu-Jaber

The Stone Raft*
Jose Saramago

Disgrace*
J.M. Coetzee

The Emigrants
W.G. Sebold*

Down by the River*
Edna O’Brien

All the Names
Jose Saramago

The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides

Plainsong*
Kent Hanuf

The Death of Vishnu
Manil Suri

The Art of Fiction*
David Lodge

After the Quake*
Haruki Murakami

Other People’s Weddings
Noah Hawley

A Moveable Feast*
Ernest Hemingway

On Becoming a Novelist*
John Gardner

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook*
Gary Shteyngart

Eventide
Kent Haruf

A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
Amy Bloom

Man Walks Into a Room
Nicole Krauss

The Life of Pi*
Yann Martel

My Year of Meats*
Ruth Ozeki

The Devil Wears Prada
Lauren Weisberger

The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell*
Joe Loya

Brick Lane
Monica Ali

Loving-Kindness*
Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness in Plain English*
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

Faith*
Sharon Salzberg

Reading Lolita in Tehran*
Azar Nafisi

A Quiet Life
Kenzeburo Oe

Glory
Nabokov

Mattanza
Theresa Maggio

Where I Was From
Joan Didion

The Book Doctor†
Esther Cohen

Visits from the Drowned Girl†
Steven Sherrill

Chronicles I*
Bob Dylan

Sea of Tears
Nani Power

Old School
Tobias Wolf

Cosmopolis†
Don Delillo

Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris

The Reef
Edith Wharton

Case Histories
Kate Atkinson

My 2003 Reading List

Three Junes *
Julia Glass

La Cucina
Lily Porter

Carter Beats the Devil
Glen David Gold

The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold

The Fatal Englishman
Sebastian Faulks

At Home at the End of the World
Michael Cunningham

The Remains of the Day *
Kazuo Ishiguro

Another World
Pat Barker

The Last Good Chance*
Tom Barbash

The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Phoebe Gloeckner

Bridget Jones:
The Edge of Reason†

Helen Fielding

The Fourth Hand
John Irving

Fortune’s Daughter
Isabel Allende

The Doctor’s House
Ann Beattie

Strong Motion†
Jonathan Franzen

Sputnik Sweetheart **
Haruko Mirakami

The Fan Man
William Kotzwinkle

She’s Not There:
A Life in Two Genders*

Jennifer Finney Boylan

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere *
Z.Z. Packer

A Thousand Bells at Noon
Franco Romagnoli

Conclave*
Roberto Pazzi

Night Over Day Over Night
Paul Watkins

Brunelleschi’s Dome
Ross King

The Marble Faun *
Nathaniel Hawthorne

They Came Like Swallows *
William Maxwell

The Human Stain
Philip Roth

Stiff: The Curious Lives
of Human Cadavers *

Mary Roach

A Multitude of Sins*
Richard Ford

When We Were Orphans*
Kazuo Ishiguro

The Fifth Book of Peace
Maxine Hong Kingston

The Book of Illusions**
Paul Auster

Snow Mountain Passage
James Houston

Boonville
Robert Mailer Anderson

The Darts of Cupid*
Edith Templeton

Jamesland*
Michelle Hunevan

The Fortress of Solitude
Jonathan Lethem

The Good Men: A Novel of Heresy*
Charmaine Craig

The Global Soul
Pico Iyer

Up in the Air
Walter Kirn

Choke
Chuck Palahniuk

The Red Notebook*
Paul Auster

A Cook’s Tour†
Anthony Bourdain

How Late it Was, How Late*
James Helman

A Month in the Country**
J.L. Carr

Elsewhere in the Land of Parrots†
Jim Paul

The Only Girl in the Car*
Kathy Dobie

My 2002 Reading List

Look at Me
Jennifer Egan

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
Brady Udall

Scoop
Evelyn Waugh

Perfect Recall
Ann Beattie

All We Know of Love
Katie Schneider

Means of Escape
Penelope Fitzgerald

The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup
Susan Orlean

Lessico Famigliare
Natalia Ginzburg

The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver

How to Travel with a Salmon (essays)
Umberto Eco

The Bridegroom and other stories
Ha Jin

Sap Rising
Christine Lincoln

The Mystic Masseur
V.S. Naipaul

Step-Ball-Change
Jeanne Ray

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Alice Munro

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Anne Fadiman

The Doctor
Patricia Duncker

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley

The Deadly Space Between
Patricia Duncker

How to be Good
Nick Hornby

Housewrights
Art Corriveau

Women of the Silk
Gail Tsukiyama

Whiteout
Ted Conover

Fall on Your Knees
Anne-Marie Mcdonald

Trans-sister Radio
Chris Bohalian

The Girl at the Lion d’Or
Sebastian Faulks

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Michael Chabon

The Tartar Steppe
Dino Buzzati

Disobedience
Jane Hamilton

After Hannibal
Barry Unsworth

Romeo and Julia
Jeanne Ray

Lost in Place
Mark Salzman

The Solace of Open Spaces
Gretel Ehrlich

Newjack: Guarding Sing-sing
Ted Conover

Wonder Boys
Michael Chabon

Darkness
Dacia Maraini

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank
Thad Carhart

Casa Rossa
Francesca Marciano

The Crazed
Ha Jin

Chasing Che
Patrick Symmes

The Gate of Angels
Penelope Fitzgerald

The Huntsman
Whitney Terrell

On Writing
Stephen King

Medea and her Children
Ludmila Ulitskaya

The Hiding Place
Trezza Azzapardi

In the River Sweet
Patricia Henley

More Like Wrestling
Danyel Smith

The Little Friend
Donna Tartt

Thinks
David Lodge

Bel Canto
Ann Patchett

My 2001 Reading List

Waiting
Ha Jin

Blood Washes Blood
Frank Viviano

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers

Lili: A Novel of Tianneman
Annie Wang

The Dark Room
Rachel Seiffert

Face-Time
Erik Tarkoff

The Mistress
Phillippe Tapon

The Russia House
John Le Carre

The Last Life
Claire Messud

Sister Crazy
Emma Richler

A Sky So Close
Betool Khedairi

The Map of Love
Adhaf Soueif

Amy and Isabelle
Elizabeth Strouit

Indian Killer
Sherman Alexie

Flesh and Blood
Michael Cunningham

Martin Dressler
Stephen Millhouse

The Palace of Tears
Alev Lytle Croutier

At Freddie’s
Penelope Fitzgerald

Offshore
Penelope Fitzgerald

Tender at the Bone
Ruth Reichl

Such a Long Journey
Rohinton Mistry

Comfort Me With Apples
Ruth Reichl

The Toughest Indian in the World
Sherman Alexie

Kitchen Confidential
Anthony Bourdain

Angels in America
Tony Kushner

The Pleasing Hour
Lily King

Nobody’s Fool
Richard Russo

Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem

The Bear’s Embrace
Patricia Van Tighem

Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier

The Salt Dancers
Ursula Hegi

The Red Tent
Anita Diamant

White Teeth
Zadie Smith

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Michael Chabon

Seta
Alessandro Barrico

Norweigian Wood
Haruki Murakami

About a Boy
Nick Hornby

A Room with a View
E.M. Forster

Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

The Botany of Desire
Michael Pollan

Eve’s Apple
Jonathan Rosen

The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

Empire Falls
Richard Russo

Astronauts and Other Stories
Mathew Iribarne

Copyright © 2023 Laura Fraser · Site Design: Ilsa Brink · Illustration by Wendy MacNaughton