Book List (2002-present)
Links go to my reviews. I’m no longer indicating e-books with an asterisk, but in the older lists, that’s what it means. # indicates a book read with my online book group.
2026
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
Postwar Polish Poetry, Czeslaw Milosz, editor
A Room with a View, E. M. Forster
2025
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf#
Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan
Terra Nostra, Carlos Fuentes (partial; postponed until later)#
Pompeii, Robert Harris
The Moment of Caravaggio, Michael Fried
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway (in progress)
To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway
The Torrents of Spring, Ernest Hemingway
By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolano
Picasso and Truth: from Cubism to Guernica, T. J. Clark
The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell#
Ake: The Tales fo Childhood, Wole Soyinka#
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway#
Lies and Sorcery, Elsa Morante#
Dora Bruder, Patrick Modiano
Intimacies, Katie Kitamura
The Captive Mind, Czeslaw Milosz
Electric Light, Seamus Heaney
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles #
Separation, Katie Kitamura
Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck (DNF)
Doctor Copernicus, John Banville
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Jose Saramago #
The Promised Party, Jennifer Clement
The City and its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami #
2024
The Pole and other stories, J.M. Coetzee
The Properties of Thirst, Marianne Wiggins
The Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway (selections)
The Complete Poems, Louise Glück
Death in Venice and Other Stories, Thomas Mann
La pentre de batailles, Arturo Perez-Riverte (translated from Spanish to French)
The Essential W.S. Merwin, W.S. Merwin
Kukum, Michel Jean
The Magic Mountain, Thoman Mann #
The Magician, Colm Toíbín
James, Percival Everett #
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain #
This Strange Eventful History, Claire Messud (DNF)
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Vergese #
Don Quixote, Cervantes #
Pharmakon, Teju Cole
Violets, Kyung Sook Shin REVIEW in CHA: an Asian Literary Journal
The Fraud, Zadie Smith #
Why Christianity Must Change or Die, John Shelby Spong
Once in Europa, John Berger #
The Abyss, Marguerite Yourcenar
2023
Roumeli, Patrick Leigh Fermor (rereading)
Pig Earth, John Berger #
Tremor, Teju Cole
A Recipe for Daphne, Nektaria Anastasiadou REVIEW in CHA: An Asian Literary Journal
*Greek Lessons, Han Kang
*Moby Dick, Herman Melville #
The War that Killed Achilles, Caroline Alexander
The Tentmaker, Michelle Blake
Three Short Works, Gustav Flaubert #
*A Shared Silence, Lalla Romano #
The Sleeping Car Porter, Suzette Mayr #
Just a Mother, Roy Jacobsen (Barroy Chronicles 4) #
Nights of Plague, Orhan Pamuk #
Woman at Point Zero, Nahwal el Saadawi
House of Names, Colm Toibin
District and Circle, Seamus Heaney
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier #
*The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk#
The Other Side of the Mountain, Journals of Thomas Merton Vol 7., Fr. Thomas Merton
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
The Innocent, Ian McEwan
2022
The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk#
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
Color Creates Light: Studies with Hans Hofmann, Tina Dickey
The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100 – 480 BC, Jeffrey M. Hurwit
The Eye of the Rigal, Roy Jacobsen (Barroy Chronicles 3) #
White Shadow, Roy Jacobsen (Barroy Chronicles 2)#
The Unseen, Roy Jacobsen (Barroy Chronicles 1)#
A Time of Gifts: on Foot to Constantinople (Book 1 of a trilogy), Patrick Leigh Fermor
How I Became a Nun, Cesar Aira #
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Cesar Aira (rereading) #
Several short stories, Borges #
The Reluctant Gaucho, Roberto Bolaño #
Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Recitatif, Toni Morrison #
The Birds, Aristophanes #
Intimacies, Katie Kitamura
Feline Philosophy, John Grey
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (rereading with my book group) #
The Journey to the East, Hermann Hesse
Hamnet & Judith, Maggie O’Farrell
2021
We Are All Equally Far From Love, Adania Shibli
The Unseen, Roy Jacobsen
Arturo’s Island, Elsa Morante #
Shifting the Silence, Etel Adnan
Time, Etal Adnan
Black Paper, Teju Cole
The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse#
Beowulf, Seamus Heaney, trans.#
Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje#
Unwinding Anxiety, Judson Brewer
Real Presences, George Steiner
The Lowlands, Jhumpa Lahiri
Golden Apple of the Sun, Teju Cole
Fernweh, Teju Cole
The Laexdal Saga (from Sagas of Icelanders)#
The Interior Circuit, Francisco Goldman
The Little Red Chairs, Edna O’Brien
Under the Glacier, Haldor Laxness#
Clive Hicks-Jenkins, a monograph by various authors
The Hostage, Brendan Behan
Milkman, Anna Burns#
The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Dante
Faithful and Virtuous Night, Louise Gluck
O Pioneers, Willa Cather #
Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes
Agamemnon, Aeschylus #
The Death of Virgil, Hermann Broch
Travels with Epicurus, Daniel M. Klein
The Elephants Have Been Singing All Along, Ren Powell
The Return, Hisham Matar
A Month in Siena, Hisham Matar
Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami
The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante
Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, Luisa A. Igloria
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky #
2020
A Legacy of Spies, John le Carré
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky # (in process)
A Time for Silence, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Make Ink, Jason Logan
The Road to Santiago, Cees Nooteboom
Inés of My Soul, Isabel Allende (dnf)
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez #
Scorpionfish, Natalie Bakopoulos
The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf #
Asymmetry, Lisa Halliday
The Emissary, Yoko Tawada
This is Water, David Foster Wallace
2666, Roberto Bolaño #
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
The Four, Scott Galloway
False Spring, Darren Bifford
How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi
Moonlight Shadow, Banana Yoshimoto
Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
The Frolic of the Beasts, Yukio Mishima (rereading)
When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron (rereading)
Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata
The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata
The Woman of Porto Pim, Antonio Tabucchi
1Q84, Haruki Murakami (rereading) #
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Stout
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie # (rereading)
Coventry, Rachel Cusk
Roumeli, Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Writer and the World, V.S. Naipaul
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
Mani, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Beloved, Toni Morrison #
Flights, Olga Tokarczuk
Normal People, Sally Rooney
Pond, Claire Louise Bennett
2019
Drink Time! In the Company of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Dolores Payás
Greek to Me, Mary Norris
Electric Light, Seamus Heaney
The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Jose Saramago
The Year of the Death of Ricardoi Reis, Jose Saramago (rereading)
The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester (audiobook, dnf)
For Isabel: A Mandala, Antonio Tabucchi
The Lives of Things, Jose Saramago
Helen, Euripedes
The Women of Troy, Euripedes
Ion, Euripedes
Falling Upward, Richard Rohr
The Proper Study of Mankind, Isaiah Berlin (bits and pieces, mainly the essay on Tolstoy “The Hedgehog and the Fox”)
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (rereading)
Human Archipelago, Fazal Skeikh and Teju Cole
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
The Frolic of the Beasts, Yukio Mishima
O Sing Unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music, Andrew Gant
4 3 2 1, Paul Auster (DNF)
Pereira Maintains, Antonio Tabucchi
Warlight, Michael Ondaatje (second reading, for book club)
Requiem: an Hallucination, Antonio Tabucchi
What is Not Yours is Not Yours, Helen Oyeyemi
The Tiny Journalist, Naomi Shihab Nye
The Lisbon Poets (anthology)
Five-Minute Sketching: Architecture, Liz Steel
The Book of the Red King, Marly Youmans
Seamus Heaney, Helen Vendler
The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (3rd and 4th books, Mountolive, Clea)
Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami
The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (First two books: Justine, Balthazar)
The Relic Master, Christopher Buckley (DNF)
Immigrant, Montana, Amitava Kumar
Compass, Mathias Enard
2018
Fire from Heaven (Alexander the Great trilogy, Vol 1), Mary Renault
**Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
A Sort of Life, Graham Greene
**From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, William Dalrymple
Artificial Respiration, Ricardo Piglia
**The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, Vol 1: The Formative Years, Ricardo Piglia
The Sense of Sight, John Berger
Transit, Rachel Cusk
**The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira, Cesar Aira
Quarantine, Jim Crace
**Warlight, Michael Ondaatje
Memorial, Alice Oswald
In the Night of Time, Antonio Munez Molina
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
Unreasonable Behavior, Don McCullin
**Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
An Odyssey, Daniel Mendelssohn
No Time to Spare, Ursula LeGuin
**Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie
Aeneid Book VI, Seamus Heaney
The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney
The Foliate Head, Marly Youmans
**Burial at Thebes, Seamus Heaney
**The Odyssey, Robert Fagles, translator (rereading with friends, each a different translation)
2017
Les cent plus beaux poemes quebecois, Editions Fides, with art by René Derouin
A Disappearance in Damascus, Deborah Campbell
The Nautical Chart, Arturo Perez-Reverte*
Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, John Julius Norwich
Suspended Sentences, Patrick Modiano
Stand up Straight and Sing, Jessye Norman
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (re-read)
The Stone Boudoir: Travels Through the Hidden Villages of Sicily, Theresa Maggio
Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett
Dancing in the Dark, (My Struggle, Book 4), Karl Ove Knausgaard
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (re-read)
A Death in the Family (My Struggle, Book 1), Karl Ove Knausgaard
Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit
Boyhood Island (My Struggle, Book 3), Karl Ove Knausgaard
A Man in Love (My Struggle, Book 2), Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff
Blind Spot, Teju Cole
Incontinent on the Continent, Jane Christmas
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
Treatises on Friendship and On Aging, Marcus Tertullius Cicero
S.P.Q.R. A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard
One Art (Letters of Elizabeth Bishop), Robert Giroux, Editor
One Indian Girl, Chetan Bhagat (horrible!)
Saving Rome, Megan K. Williams
G, John Berger*
The Golden Bough, James George Frazer (in progress)*
Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, J. W. N. Sullivan (in progress)
The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante*
The Poetry of Derek Wolcott 1948-2013
2016 (year-end commentary here)
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector*
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante*
A Most Wanted Man, John le Carre
The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante*
The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante*
The Whole Field Still Moving Inside It, Molly Bashaw
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Conversations with a Dead Man, Mark Abley
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante*
Outline, Rachel Cusk
The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit*
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (re-read)
Known and Strange Things, Teju Cole
Ice Mountain, Dave Bonta
Lunch with a Bigot, Amitava Kumar*
The Inugami Mochi, Jessamyn Smyth*
Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber*
Traveling Mercies, Anne LaMott
A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler*
Monster, Jeneva Burroughs Stone
A Strangeness in My Mind, Orhan Pamuk** (dnf)
Poems, Michael Ondaatje
M Train, Patti Smith
Just Kids, Patti Smith*
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Horrors, J. K. Rowling
Thesaurus of Separation, Tim Mayo
Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Cesar Aira*
The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata*
Leaving Berlin, Joseph Kanon*
The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano
The Japanese Lover, Isabel Allende*
2015
Thirteen Ways of Looking, Colum McCann (in progress)*
Wind/Pinball, Haruki Murakami*
New and Collected Poems, Wislawa Szymborska
Beauty and Sadness, Yasunari Kawabata
1Q84, Haruki Murakami
I Curse the River of Time, Per Petterson*
Complete Poems of George Sefaris
Place of the Heart, Sigrun Sigursdottir*
On the Cold Coasts, Vilborg Davidsdottir*
Beneath the Ice: an Anthology of Contemporary Icelandic Poetry
Half a Life, V.S. Naipaul*
In a Free State, V.S. Naipaul*
A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul*
Man, Kim Thuy*
Hausfrau, Jill Alexander Essbaum*
The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist, Orhan Pamuk*
What I Think About When I Think About Running, Haruki Murakami**
Living with a Wild God, Barbara Ehrenrich**
Glimmerglass, Marly Youmans
Night Fishing at Antibes, B. Anderson, T. Gilman, E. McNeal, and M. Sickler
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami*
DNFs:
Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
Bell of the Desert, Alan Gold
2014
North, Seamus Heaney
Dark Voyage, Alan Furst*
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene (rereading)
The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
All Hallow’s Eve, Charles Williams
Ways of Seeing, John Berger**
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez** (rereading in progress)
The View From Lazy Point, Carl Safina
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life, Gerard Martin*
The Lost Painting, Jonathan Harr**
The Upstairs Wife: an Intimate View of Pakistan, Rafia Zakaria*
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie*
Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle, Francisco Goldman*
In This Place, Tom Montag
Rise the Euphrates, Carol Edgarian*
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou*
Town and Country, Alice and Martin Provensen
Mexican Muralists, Rochfort,Desmond
The Swerve, Stephen Greenblat
Strange Pilgrims, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (re-read)
Montreal Stories, Mavis Gallant
Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation, Richard Rohr*
Mexico and modern printmaking : a revolution in the graphic arts, 1920 to 1950
The Art of Mesoamerica: from Olmec to Aztec, Mary Ellen Miller
Baltics, Tomas Transtromer
Out of Arizona, Roderick Robinson
City of Palaces, Michael Nava
The Deleted World, Tomas Transtromer
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse*
The System, Claudia Serea
2013
Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes (in progress)* (dnf)
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
The Saints of Streets, Luisa Igloria
Lifelines, Philip Booth
Selected Early Poems, Charles Simic
Falling Upward, a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Fr. Richard Rohr**
Gorgon Times, Roderick Robinson*
Gate of Angels, Penelope Fitzgerald
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
Klingsor’s Last Summer (with Klein and Wagner and A Child’s Heart) Hermann Hesse
Peter Camenzind, Hermann Hesse
Rosshalde, Hermann Hesse*
Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih
Gertrude, Hermann Hesse*
Demian, Hermann Hesse
Narcissus and Goldmund, Hermann Hesse*
Ami Underground: Drawings from the NY Subway, Ami Plasse
Drape, Drape, Hisako Sato
The Beaded Edge, Midori Nishida
Pitch Dark, Renata Adler
Confusion, Stefan Zweig
John Singer Sargent Watercolors, Erica E. Hirshler & Teresa A. Carbone
The Granta Book of Irish Short Stories
The Empty Family, Colm Toibin
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin
The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987
The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
Imperium, Ryszard Kapusinski
Mogador, Alberto Ruy Sanchez
A Rosario Castellanos Reader, Maureen Ahern and others, translators
Bolero, Angeles Mastretta
First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century, David Lida
The Orange Tree, Carlos Fuentes
The Traveler’s Companion to Mexican Literature, C.M.Mayo, ed.
The Life of Pi, Yann Martel **
The Beloved Returns, Thomas Mann
Mission to Paris, Alan Furst
The Sea, John Banville
Himalaya Poems, Ko Un
White Egrets, Derek Walcott
Word into Silence, John Main, OSB
Istanbul Passage, Joseph Kanon **
2012
Descriptive blog post about my 2012 reading.
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Bleak House, Charles Dickens*
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen**
Richard II, William Shakespeare (reread)
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens*
The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places, Bernie Krause
Chorister at the Abbey, Lis Howell**
Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools through Fearless Leadership, Yvette Jackson and Veronica McDermott
Van Gogh Up Close, Cornelia Homburg, editor
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce*
History of Butoh, Khadija Anderson (full-length poetry collection)
Worlds Apart, Dorothee Lang and Smith Murthy
I Stand Here Shredding Documents, Kristin Berkey Abbott (poetry chapbook)
Balance, Robbi Nestor (poetry chapbook)
Saga of the People of Laxardal (from Sagas of Icelanders)
What the Twilight Says (essays), Derek Walcott
A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Marly Youmans *
Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Naht Hahn
Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti *
Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental journey Through Quebec, Taras Grescoe
Roads to Santiago, Cees Nooteboom
The Common Reader, First Series, Virginia Woolf *
The Most Beautiful Thing, Fiona Robyn *
The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht *
Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal, Rob Rieman
That Woman, Tom Montag (poetry chapbook)
Hundreds and Thousands, The Journals of Emily Carr
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, Tamim Ansary
2011 (Links go to my reviews) (* indicates books read as e-books)
Descriptive blog post about my 2011 reading.
Letters from Iceland, W.H.Auden and Louis MacNeice
Fight the Wild Island, Ted Edwards
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes (audio book read by Richard Morant)
The Wide, Wide World, Susan Bogert Warner
Vatnsdœla saga, from The Sagas of Icelanders
Egil’s Saga, from The Sagas of Icelanders
Opening the World, Dale Favier (poetry chapbook)
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (audio book)
Open City, Teju Cole (rereading)
Ice and Gaywings, Ken Pobo (poetry chapbook)
The Book of Ystwyth, six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
Triplicity, Kristin McHenry (poetry chapbook)
Paper Covers Rock, Chella Courington (poetry chapbook)
Phaedrus, Plato
The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde*
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf*
I Stand Here Shredding Documents, Kristin Berkey Abbott (poetry chapbook)
Possession, A.S. Byatt
The Years, Virginia Woolf*
The Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett*
The Throne of Psyche, Marly Youmans
Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy. Adaptation for the stage by Mark Healy.
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (reread on its centennial)*
The Children’s Book, A.S. Byatt
Errata, George Steiner
Dark and Like a Web, Nic Sebastian* (poetry chapbook)
De Niro’s Game, Rawi Hage
How I Became a Nun, César Aira
The Death of Tragedy, George Steiner
Phédre, Jean Baptiste Racine
Broken, Karin Fossum
The Redbreast, Jo Nesbo
The Sign of Jonas, Thomas Merton (rereading)
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis
To the Wedding, John Berger
The Jewel Box Garden, Thomas Hobb
Under the Glacier, Halldor Laxness
The Stone Raft, José Saramago
Home is Where We Meet, John Berger (rereading)
Human Chain, Seamus Heaney
Val/Orson, Marly Youmans
Independent People, Halldor Laxness
Open City, Teju Cole
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Hakiro Murakami
Lords of the Sea: Athenian Naval Power in the 5th century, John Hales
2010
Descriptive blog post about my 2010 reading
Helen, Euripides
“You have your sorrows, I know it well. But it were best
to bear your life’s constraints as lightly as you may.“
Mary’s Wedding, Stephen Massicotte (play)
The Shadow of the Sun, Rysard Kapuscinski
The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk
All Souls’, Javier Marias
The Blind Contessa’s New Machine, Carey Wallace
Ivon Hitchens (his art and life), Peter Khoroche
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Light in August, William Faulkner
A Writer’s Diary, Virginia Woolf
The year of the death of Ricardo Reis, José Saramago
Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
The bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak
South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami
The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
Champlain’s Dream (a biography of Samuel de Champlain) David Hackett Fischer
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
A Mind at Peace, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernieres
Non-Adhesive Binding, Books Without Paste or Glue, Volume I, Keith A. Smith
English, August: An Indian Story, Upamanyu Chatterjee
Brücke: The Birth of Expressionism in Dresden and Berlin, 1905-1913
The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe
Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Henry V, William Shakespeare
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
The Gargoyle, Andrew Davidson
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh
Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, Jonathan Gould
2009
Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad
Grandfather Stories, Stephen Hopkins Adams
A Mixture of Frailties, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, III)
Leaven of Malice, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, II)
Tempest Tossed, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, I)
The Pragmatist and his Free Spirit, Susan Chan Egan and Chih-p’ing Chou
World of Wonders, Robertson Davies(The Deptford Trilogy, III)
The Manticore, Robertson Davies(The Deptford Trilogy, II)
An Outcast of the Islands, Joseph Conrad
Thirty-Two films About Glenn Gould (screenplay), Francois Girard and Don McKellar
Fifth Business, Robertson Davies(The Deptford Trilogy, I)
The Ni—- of the ‘Narcissus’, Joseph Conrad
Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad
The Arrow of Gold, Joseph Conrad
Une Vie, Guy de Maupassant
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Fresco, Luljeta Lleshanaku
Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare
Complete Poems, C.P. Cavafy (Daniel Mendelsohn, translator)
Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks
Other Colors, Orhan Pamuk
The Black Tulip, Alexandre Dumas
Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje
In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier
The Suppliant Maidens, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus
Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonnus, Antigone, Sophocles
The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton
Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. 1, Werner Jaeger
The Demons, Heimito von Doderer
Philoctetes, Sophocles
Elektra, Sophocles
Iphegenia in Taurus, Elektra, Hippolytus, Euripides
En Relisant les Evangiles, Arnaud Desjardins
Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
His Excellency, a biography of George Washington, John Ellis
2008
Division of the Spoils, Paul Scott (Raj Quartet #4)
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa
Dragon Thunder: My Life With Chogyam Trungpa, Diana Mukpo
Poems of Paul Celan
Les Aurores Montreales, Monique Proulx
The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald
Essays on The Iliad, Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff
War Music, Christopher Logue
Every Day is for the Thief, Teju Cole
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
The Aesthetics of Resistance, Peter Weiss
Un Grain de Sagesse, Arnaud Desjardins
The Places that Scare You, Pema Chodron
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
Daughter of Persia, Sattareh Farman Farmaian
The Great Enigma, New Collected Poems, Tomas Transtromer
Pour une mort sans peur, Arnaud Desjardins
The Republic, Plato
Maria Chapdelaine, Louis Hemon
Myth and Metamorphosis: A Study of Picasso’s Classical Prints of the 1930s, Lisa Florman
The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir
Metamorphoses, Ovid
The Age of Reason, Jean-Paul Sartre
Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, Michael Baxandall
View with a Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szymborska (re-reading)
Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories, Italo Calvino
The Silent Cry, Dorothee Soelle
The Oresteia, Aeschylus
The Gift, Lewis Hyde
I don’t seem to have notes for 2005-2007. Here are the years before that.
2004:
THE NEW LIFE
Orhan Pamuk
BEYOND BELIEF
Elaine Pagels
THE WINTER QUEEN
Boris Akunin
THE CAVE
Jose Saramago
SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
Gustave Flaubert
GATHERING THE NEXT GENERATION
Essays on the Formation and Ministry of GenX Priests
Nathan Humphrey, Ed.
DISGRACE
J. M. Coetzee
THE ROAD TO SAN GIOVANNI
Italo Calvino (re-reading)
THE DA VINCI CODE
Dan Brown
GOD’S BANQUET: Food in Classical Arabic Literature
Geert Jan Van Gelder
BRANCHING STREAMS FLOW IN THE DARKNESS
Shunryu Suzuki
LIVING BUDDHA, LIVING CHRIST
Thich Naht Hanh
THE COURAGE TO BE
Paul Tillich
PICASSO AND MATISSE
Francoise Gilot
MATISSE AND PICASSO
Yves-Alain Bois
PICASSO: LITHOGRAPHS
Felix Reuse, Henri Duchamps, Erich Franz, Ulrike Gauss
THE NEW CHINESE PAINTING
Joan Lebold Cohen
ANIL’S GHOST
Michael Ondaatje
50 POEMS
Boris Pasternak
Polish Poetry:
ELEGY FOR THE DEPARTURE and other poems
REPORT FROM THE BESIEGED CITY
SELECTED POEMS
THE BARBARIAN IN THE GARDEN
Zbigniew Herbert
THEY CAME TO SEE A POET
Tadeusz Rozewicz
VIEW WITH A GRAIN OF SAND, Selected Poems
Wislawa Szymborska
NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS 1931-2001
THE CAPTIVE MIND (essays)
Czeslaw Milosz
TWO CITIES
MYSTICISM FOR BEGINNERS
Adam Zagajewski
TALKING TO MY BODY
Anna Swir (Swirszcynska)
THE MATURE LAUREL: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry
Adam Czerniawski, editor
MAGNETIC POLES: Essays on Modern polish and Comparative Literature
George Gomori
POLISH POETRY OF THE LAST TWO DECADES OF COMMUNIST RULE
An anthology edited by Stanislaw Baranczek and Clare Cavanaugh
2003
MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY
Abraham Joshua Heschel
FLOWER HERDING ON MOUNT MONADNOCK
Galway Kinnell
RECITATIVE
James Merrill
BEGIN AGAIN, New and Collected Poems
Grace Paley
CONJECTURES OF A GUILTY BYSTANDER
Thomas Merton
CRESCENT
Diana Abu-Jaber
PORTS OF CALL
BALTHAZAR’S ODYSSEY
THE ROCK OF TANIOS
Amin Maalouf
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: Comparative Perspectives
Winston Davis, ed.
An academic but enlightening series of essays by different authors that look at the origins of the concept of responsibility (response � ability) in Western democracy, and how responsibility is interpreted, or not, in non-Western societies.
PORTRAIT IN SEPIA
Isabel Allende
I keep waiting for her to write a book that is up to the stature of House of the Spirits; this one doesn�t make it � Allende is so deft it feels like she�s just tossing off page after page — but it�s entertaining and has an occasional beautiful descriptive passage.
WHAT DO WE KNOW: Poems and Prose Poems
Mary Oliver
I generally admire Oliver very much, and if that�s like admitting you like a modern-day Frost, well, OK. There are some gems here; I like the prose poems less than the others.
SILK DRAGON (Chinese poetry)
Arthur Sze (trans.)
Wonderful poems, an overview of the tradition.
Drinking Wine (II)
T�ao Ch�ien
I built my house near where others live
but without noise of horse or carriage.
You ask, how can this be?
A distant mind leaves the earth around it.
I pick chrysanthemums below the eastern fence,
then gaze at mountains to the south.
The mountain air is fine at sunset,
flying birds go back in flocks.
In this there is a truth;
I wish to tell you, but lose the words.
BAROMETER RISING
Hugh MacLennan
A romance set against WWI and the Halifax explosion of December 6, 1917. I�m trying to read more Canadian fiction� was more fascinated by the history in the book than by the novel�s storyline, which was a little too pat; MacLennan�s style, though, is impressive for a first novel.
RAY OF DARKNESS
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Dense essays that reveal Willams� complicated thinking and theology; often very moving and profound. I�m banking on him to help rescue the Anglican church and mainline Christianity from the conservatives and from a long period of attrition due to the failure to speak to modernity, and was happy with what I found here.
THE MANTLE OF THE PROPHET: RELIGION AND POLITICS IN IRAN
Roy Mottahedeh
Amazing book that weaves together an inside look at the rigorous education of Shiite clerics and the history of Iran. One of my top choices for this year.
THE NOISE OF TIME
Osip Mandelstam
Mandelstam was one of the greatest Russian poets of the early 20th centuty; he died in one of Stalin�s death camps. This is a book of his luminous and sometimes difficult prose, of which the best are the title essay, a memoir of childhood in St. Petersburg; and Journey to Armenia.
THE RAFT IS NOT THE SHORE
Conversations with Thich Naht Hahn and Daniel Berrigan
ONE, NO ONE & ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND
Luigi Pirandello
The Italian existentialist proves he is everyone in the title�
HAMLET
William Shakespeare
Well, it�s something to read this again. A different book now — and it has to be the source of more quotations in the English language than anything escept the Bible. About one per page. I was dumbfounded.
MALLOY, MALONE DIES (parts 1&2 of Beckett�s Trilogy)
Samuel Beckett
Strangely comforting. Yikes, what does that say about me? Beckett rises to the top of my esteem.
HENRY IV PART 1
RICHARD I
RICHARD II
William Shakespeare
I haven‘t read all the histories and after re-reading Richard II thought I’d start back at the beginning. Immediately bailed on King John, loved Richard I and Bolingbroke�s ascent to the throne, then got bogged down � bored? — in Henry IV Part II. But the above are compelling and fresh: how little has changed in the lives of kings.
ISRAEL/PALESTINE: HOW TO END THE WAR OF 1948
Tanya Reinhart
Reinhart is right. Is anybody listening?
ULYSSES
James Joyce
No, I didn’t finish but I want to list it so I can whine. Bailed out for the second time in my life, this time on page 247, and on the recommendation of a friend picked up Beckett”s Trilogy and the Pirandello instead. A good move, in my estimation, but you can argue of course.
COOKBOOKS!
A friend asked, “What do you read for fun?” Well, actually, I read all of the above for pleasure, if not exactly “fun”. But to relax, I read (and use)… cookbooks. The best new acquisitions of 2003:
A TASTE OF PERSIA: An Introduction to Persian Cooking
Najmieh K. Batmanglij
Everything I’ve made out of this book so far has been delicious, and has even met with the approval of my Iranian friend who is the best cook on the planet. Especially good are the many recipes for khoresh, or various Persian stews with vegetables and meat.
THE MOROCCAN COLLECTION
Hilaire Walden
Beautiful pictures and easy-to-follow recipes for tagines, couscous, chermoula…
AUTHENTIC VIETNAMESE COOKING
Corinne Trang
Authentic means not only terrific recipes for lemongrass chicken and summer rolls, but also for frogs legs, snails, and a treatise on dogs…
THE BOOK OF JEWISH FOOD: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
Claudia Roden
An astounding book, divided into Ashkenazi and Sephardic sections, that not only gives family recipes with many variations, but tells the story of the people and their migrations. Winner of the James Beard cookbook of the year award, deservedly so. This is really a history of the Jewish people told through food.
FLATBREADS AND FLAVORS
Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Wonderful book with recipes for breads and stews and other foods to go with them, as well as stories of the couple’s world travels. The recipe for Afghani bread is worth the price of the whole book.
A NEW BOOK OF MIDDLE EASTERN FOOD
Claudia Roden
An update of Claudia Roden’s previous Penguin classic; the indispensible “Joy of Cooking” for Middle Eastern food.
2002 (notes to come)
THE CAIRO TRILOGY
Naguib Mahfouz
RELIGION AND COMMUNITY
Keith Ward
SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH
Tayib Saleh
THE NAUTICAL CHART
THE FENCING MASTER
Arturo Perez-Reverte
ZEN AND THE ART OF KNITTING
Bernadette Murphy
NINE PARTS OF DESIRE: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
Geraldine Brooks
MY NAME IS RED
Orhan Pamuk
ARABY
Eric Ormsby
INTERPRETER OF MALADIES
Jhumpa Lahiri
WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE
John Shelby Spong
THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
WE BELONG TO THE LAND
Elias Chacour
GRANTA 77 / SPRING 2002
What We Think of America
A CONFESSION AND OTHER RELIGIOUS WRITINGS
Leo Tolstoy
WAITING
Ha Jin