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