☰

Books Not to be Forgotten: 2010—2019

(inspired by Sandy)

This ongoing list is a collection of books, fiction and non-fiction, I have read over the past decade. Inspired by Sandy McAdams, owner of Daedalus Books in Charlottesville, VA, who keeps a hand-written list of books that are 'Not necessarily recommendations, but are not to be forgotten.' Featured up top in name only is The New Yorker magazine, which I have continually subscribed to since April 2018.

"(x)"s mark re-reads.

Reviews are linked.

• Scroll to Fiction
• Scroll to Non-Fiction

Magazines

• The New Yorker (April 2018—Present)

Fiction

Scroll to Top

• Attar, Farid Ud-Din: Conference of the Birds
• Austen, Jane: Mansfield Park, Persuasion
• Baldwin, James: Go Tell It on the Mountain
• Ballard, JG: The Crystal World
• Beatty, Paul: The Sellout
• Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot
• Bradbury, Ray: The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451
• Breton, Andre: Nadja
• Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights (x2)
• Brosh, Allie: Hyperbole and a Half
• Bukowski, Charles: Post Office, Women, Ham on Rye, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
• Burroughs, William S.: Junky
• Butler, Octavia E.: Kindred
• Butler, Blake :300000000
• Caldwell, Erskine: Tobacco Road
• Camus, Albert: A Happy Death, The Stranger
• Capote, Truman: Other Voices, Other Rooms
• Casteen, John: Free Union, For the Mountain Laurel
• Cather, Willa: O Pioneers!
• Chabon, Michael: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
• Chesnutt, Charles: The Conjure Stories
• Coetzee, J. M: Elizabeth Costello
• Coelho, Paulo: The Alchemist
• Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay
• Delillo, Don: White Noise
• Diaz, Junot: This Is How You Lose Her
• Dick, Philip K: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Dickinson, Emily: Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
• Doyle, Larry: I Love You, Beth Cooper
• Edugyan, Esi: Washington Black
• Eggers, Dave: The Circle
• Eliot, T.S: The Waste Land and Other Poems
• Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man (x2)
• Ellis, Bret Easton: Less Than Zero
• Everett, Percival: Erasure
• Faulkner, William: Flags in the Dust, The Sound and the Fury (x3),As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Unvanquished, Go Down, Moses, Intruder in the Dust, Collected Stories, Faulkner in the University
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott: This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby (x2)
• Fowles, John: The Collector
• Franzen, Jonathan: The Corrections
• Freudenberger, Nell: Lost and Wanted
• Gainza, Maria: Optic Nerve
• Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
• Ginsberg, Allen: Howl
• Griggs, Sutton: Imperium in Imperio
• Hamid, Mohsin: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
• Hawkins, Paula: The Girl on the Train
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlett Letter
• Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises (x3), A Moveable Feast, The Snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro, A Farewell to Arms
• Hogan, Linda: Solar Storms
• Hopkins, Pauline: Of One Blood
• Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
• July, Miranda: The First Bad Man
• Kafka, Franz: The Metamorphosis
• Kawabata, Yasunari: Snow Country
• Kenan, Randall: Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
• Kerouac, Jack: On the Road
• Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• King, Stephen: Carrie
• Kumarasamy, Akil: Half Gods
• Larsen, Nella: Passing
• Larsson, Stieg: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
• Lightman, Alan: Einstein’s Dreams
• Liu, Cixin: The Three-Body Problem
• Mandel, Emily St. John: Station Eleven
• Matheson, Richard: The Box
• McLaughlin, James: Bearskin
• McCarthy, Cormac: The Orchard Keeper, Child of God, Suttree, No Country for Old Men
• Miller, Arthur: Death of a Salesman (x2)
• Milikin (Raymond), Claire: Television
• Milton, John: Paradise Lost
• Morrison, Toni: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, A Mercy, Home, God Help the Child
• Murakami, Haruki: Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, 1979, A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• Nelson, Maggie: Bluets
• Nin, Anais: Little Birds
• O’Brien, Tim: The Things They Carried
• O’Connor, Flannery: The Complete Stories
• Ondaatje, Michael: The English Patient
• Orr, Gregory: River Inside the River, How Beautiful the Beloved
• Orwell, George: 1984, Animal Farm
• Palahniuk, Chuck: Fight Club, Lullaby, Choke
• Parker, John L.: Once a Runner
• Passos, John Dos: The Big Money
• Payne, C. D.: Youth in Revolt
• Percy, Walker: The Moviegoer
• Petry, Ann: The Street
• Philip, M. NourbeSe: Zong!
• Pierce, Thomas: The Afterlives
• Pirsig, Robert M.: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Poe, Edgar Allan: The Complete Stories
• Porter, Katharine Anne: Pale Horse, Pale Rider
• Punke, Michael: The Revenant
• Pynchon, Thomas: V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Vineland, Inherent Vice, Bleeding Edge
• Rand, Ayn: Anthem
• Rankine, Claudia: Citizen
• Remarque, Erich Maria: All Quiet on the Western Front
• Roth, Philip: Goodbye, Columbus
• Salinger, J. D.: The Catcher in the Rye (x3)
• Saunders, George: Lincoln in the Bardo
• Satrapi, Marjane: Persepolis (Volumes 1 and 2)
• Schweblin, Samanta: Mouthful of Birds
• Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
• Steinbeck, John: Of Mice and Men, Travels with Charley
• Stevenson, Robert Louis: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Stoker, Bram: Dracula
• Tartt, Donna: The Goldfinch
• Thompson, Hunter S.: Hell’s Angels
• Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
• Toomer, Jean: Cane
• Tosches, Nick: Cut Numbers, In the Hand of Dante, The Last Opium Den, Dino
• Twain, Mark: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Viramontes, Helena Maria: Under the Feet of Jesus
• Vonnegut, Kurt: Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, A Man Without A Country, Look at the Birdie
• Wells, Rebecca: Little Altars Everywhere
• West, Nathanael: Miss Lonelyhearts, The Day of the Locust
• White, Sharr: The Other Place
• Whitehead, Colson: The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys
• Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass (x2)
• Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest
• Williams, William Carlos: Spring and All
• Woolf, Virginia: The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway
• Yamashita, Karen Tei: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
• Zafon, Carlos Ruiz: The Shadow of the Wind

Non-fiction

Scroll to Top

• Abel, Jessica: Out on the Wire
• Abram, David: Becoming Animal
• Allwood, Julian: Sustainable Materials
• Angelou, Maya: Letters to My Daughter
• Barrat, James: Our Final Invention
• Barthes, Roland: Camera Lucida
• Beard, Mary: Women & Power
• Bennett, Jeffrey, et al: Life in the Universe, The Cosmic Perspective
• Berardi, Franco: The Soul at Work
• Bernard, Andre: Now All We Need is a Title
• Bishop, Matthew and Green, Michael: Philanthrocapitalism
• Borges, Jorge Luis: On Writing
• Bryson, Bill: A Walk in the Woods
• Byrne, David: How Music Works
• Carnegie, Dale: Public Speaking and How to Influence Men in Business, How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Carr, Nicholas: The Glass Cage
• Carson, Rachel: Silent Spring
• Casey, John: Beyond the First Draft
• Cash, Johnny: The Autobiography of Johnny Cash
• Chittick, William: The Sufi Path of Love
• Coates, Ta-Nehisi: The Beautiful Struggle, Between the World and Me
• Cohen, Susie: Coming of Age at the End of Nature
• Crawford, Matthew: Shop Class as Soulcraft
• Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
• Danesi, Marcel: Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things
• Delbanco, Andrew: College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be
• Dewey, John: Individualism Old and New
• Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself
• Du Bois, W. E. B.: The Souls of Black Folk
• Ehrenreich, Barbara: Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo: The Viking Portable Emerson
• Ernst, Carl: Sufism
• Eyal, Nir: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
• Felski, Rita: Uses of Literature
• Foer, Franklin: World Without Mind
• Foer, Jonathan Safran: Eating Animals
• Foster, Thomas C.: How to Read Literature Like a Professor, How to Read Novels Like a Professor
• Frank, Anne: The Diary of Anne Frank
• Frank, Thomas: Listen, Liberal: Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?
• Franzen, Jonathan: The End of the End of the Earth
• Garfield, Simon: Just My Type, On the Map
• Ghosh, Amitav: The Great Derangement
• Giridharadas, Anand: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
• Gordon, Kim: Girl in a Band
• Gore, Al: An Inconvenient Truth
• Graeber, David: Bullshit Jobs
• Grayling, A.C.: Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction
• Greenblatt, Stephen: The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volumes A, B, C), The Norton Shakespeare
• Grogan, John: Marley & Me
• Guevara, Ernesto “Che”: The Motorcycle Diaries
• Gwyn, Frederick and Joseph Blotner: Faulkner in the University
• Haley, Alex: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Harari, Yuval Noah: Homo Deus
• Harbach, Chad: MFA vs. NYC
• Harford, Tim: The Undercover Economist
• Hawking, Stephen: A Briefer History of Time
• Hawley, John: Foundations of Modern Cosmology
• Heilbroner, Robert: The Worldly Philosophers
• Hicks, David V.: Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education
• Huxley, Aldous: The Doors of Perception
• Jackson, Tim: Prosperity Without Growth
• Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
• Kaku, Michio: The Future of the Mind
• Kant, Immanuel: The Critique of Pure Reason
• Kern, Jonathan: Sound Reporting
• Kincaid, Jamaica: A Small Place
• King Jr., Martin Luther: Why We Can’t Wait
• King, Barbara J: Personalities on the Plate
• King, Stephen: On Writing
• Klein, Naomi: The Shock Doctrine: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need
• Klosterman, Chuck: But What If We’re Wrong?
• Kovach, Bill: The Elements of Journalism
• Krakauer, Jon: Into the Wild, Under the Banner of Heaven
• Kuhn, Thomas S.: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Kuznick, Peter: The Untold History of the United States
• Lanier, Jaron: Who Owns the Future?, Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
• Larson, Erik: The Devil in the White City
• Law, Stephen: Philosophy
• Leopold, Aldo: A Sand County Almanac
• Lepore, Jill: Joe Gould’s Teeth
• Le Guin, Ursula K: No Time To Spare
• Lynd, Staughton: Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism
• Maron, Marc: Attempting Normal
• Maslin, Mark: Climate Change
• Max, D.T: Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story
• McKay, Brett: Heading Out on Your Own
• McNamara, Michelle: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
• Menand, Louis: The Metaphysical Club
• Miles, Barry: Hippie
• Morrison, Toni: Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
• Murakami, Haruki: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
• Nasr, Seyyed Hossein: The Garden of Truth
• Nestor, James: Deep
• Okasha, Samir: Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction
• Orwell, George: Books vs. Cigarettes
• Passman, Donald S.: All You Need to Know About the Music Business
• Perry, John: Personal Identity
• Pieper, Josef: Leisure the Basis of Culture
• Polanyi, Karl: The Great Transformation
• Pollan, Michael: The Omnivore’s Dilemma
• Prole.info: Abolish Work
• Prose, Francine: Reading Like a Writer
• Rachels, Stuart: The Elements of Moral Philosophy
• Rinpoche, Sogyal: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
• Roach, Mary: Bonk
• Ronson, Jon: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
• Rorty, Richard: Achieving Our Country
• Rosenthal, David M.: The Nature of Mind
• Russell, Bertrand: A History of Western Philosophy
• Schlosser, Eric: Fast Food Nation
• Shroder, Tom: Acid Test
• Sheffield, Rob: Love is a Mixtape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Turn Around Bright Eyes
• Shugart, Hank H: Foundations of the Earth
• Simmons, Alan J.: Political Philosophy
• Sixx, Nikki: The Heroin Diaries
• Skidelsky, Edward and Skidelsky, Robert: How Much Is Enough?
• Smith, Patti: Just Kids
• Smith, Zadie: Changing My Mind
• Snider, Todd: I Never Met a Story I Didn’t Like
• Solnit, Rebecca: Wanderlust, Men Explain Things to Me, Call Them By Their True Names
• Sontag, Susan: On Photography
• Srinivasan, Bhu: Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
• Stern, Jerome: Making Shapely Fiction
• Strunk, William and E.B. White: The Elements of Style
• Terkel, Studs: Working
• Thompson, Ahmir “Questlove”: Mo’ Meta Blues
• Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
• Tolentino, Jia: Trick Mirror: Reflections on self-delusion
• Troost, J. Marteen: The Sex Lives of Cannibals
• Tzu, Lao: Tao Te Ching
• Vance, J.D: Hillbilly Elegy
• Vowell, Sarah: Radio On: A Listener’s Diary
• Wallace, David Foster: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
• Walter, Richard: Essentials of Screenwriting
• Weber, Max: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
• Welty, Eudora: One Writer’s Beginnings
• West, Cornel: Race Matters
• Wideman, John Edgar: Brothers and Keepers
• Wiseman, Alan: The World Without Us
• Wolff, Michael: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
• Wolff, Robert Paul: In Defense of Anarchism
• Woodward, Bob: Fear: Trump in the White House
• Woolf, Virginia: A Room of One’s Own
• Wright, Richard: Black Boy
• Zakaria, Fareed: The Post-American World
• Zinsser, William: On Writing Well