My Book List

I am often asked, “What are you reading?”  Here is a partial list of books by topics. It is in no way inclusive of everything I’ve read, nor a list of all my books!  This is a very informal list in no particular order!                                                     (* = Highly recommend)

Novels & Memoirs I Recommend:
2020
The Vineyards of Champagne, Blackwell
*Olive, Again, Stroud (Such lovely storytelling.)
*Alternate Side, Quindlen (A pleasure to read these two starred books back to back where "place" plays a major character.)
A Well Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts, Fowler (Interesting to compare and contrast the daughter in American Duchess, and now the mother.)
Cartier's Hope, Rose (I do love my historical fiction!)
The Only Woman in the Room, Benedict (Had no idea about Hedy Lamar.)
Long Bright River, Moore (A very modern mystery.)
Night of Miracles, Berg
Love Lettering, Clayborn
Evvie Drake Starts Over, Holmes
The Clockmaker's Daughter, Morton, (Just no!)
Tight Rope, Quick

2019
The Dutch House, Patchett (* for first half of the book only.)
The Flatshare, O'Leary (Too cute.)
Starless Sea, Morganstern, (Made it half way through.)
The Improbability of Love, Rothschild
*Meet Me in Monaco, Gaynor & Webb (Lovely)
American Duchess, Harper
The Chelsea Girls, Davis
The Only Story, Barnes (Such rich writing and he makes the changing POV acceptable.)
*Save the Plums, Reichl (Again, she knocks it out of the kitchen!)
*Park Avenue Summer, Rosen (It was fun to read two books about the world of magazines 30 years apart.)
*There, There, Orange (Wonderful storytelling and writing, love the changing POVs, but the guns and bullets don't add up.)
Greek to Me, Norris
Fleishman is in Trouble, Brodesser-Akner (Not a bestseller by any means.)
Red, White & Royal Blue, McQuiston
Gingerbread (Oh lord, no one finished this one!)
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Moshfegh (Why, why, why?)
Washington Black, Edugyan
Beyond the Point, Gibson (Note to author/editor: people: who; things: that.)
The Age of Light, Scharer
The Night Tiger, Choo (An author to keep an eye on. Lovely imagery.)
Pachinko, Lee
Not Our Kind, Zeldis
The Last Book Party, Dukess
Tiffany Blues, Rose
The Coral Thief, Stott
Luckiest Girl Alive, Knoll (Better than expected.)
The Flight Attendant, Bohjalian (What a hot mess!)
The Dress Lodger, Holman
No Earls Allowed, Galin (Oh, my...)
Dockside, Wiggs
The Season, MacLean
Lady Derring Takes a Lover, Long
The Other Miss Bridgerton, Quinn
The Wallflower Wager, Dare
Swampoodle, St. Claire (Local author set in DC)

2018
*Sing, Unburied Sing, Ward
*Ties, Starnone (The forward is as good as the novella.)
*The Mothers, Bennett
The Gown, Robson
French Exit, DeWitt (Shame on whomever put this on the Best of the Year list.)
The Bookshop of Yesterday, Meyerson (I'm done with bookstores as the setting.)
The Music Shop, Joyce (So I guess record shops are the new bookstore for settings.)
The Collectors Apprentice, Shapiro
The Perfect Nanny, Slimani
*Dear Committee Members, The Shakespeare Requirement, Schumacher (Fun reads. My book club loved both!)
The Little Stranger, Waters (Confession: I read 250 pages and didn't care enough to read the next 250 pages...)
Etta and Otto and Russel and James, Hooper
The Masterpiece, Davis (UGH-Don't change the POV from 3rd person limited to 3rd person multiple in last 30 pages!)
Education, Westover
The Italian Teacher, Rachman
The Stars are Fire, Shreve
High Season, Blundell
How to Stop Time, Haug (Clever.)
Manhattan Beach, Egen
Sunburn, Lippman (I read so you don't have to....)
Women in Sunlight, Mayes
The Woman in the Window, Finn (Quite the thriller.)
Letters from Paris, Blackwell
Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, Halpren
* White Houses, Bloom
Mrs. Osmond, Banville (Like Henry James, he leaves the ending for the next author to pick up. Brilliant.)
*Give a Girl a Knife, Thielen (Minn. author, great writing & storytelling)
The Dark Lady's Mask, Sharratt (One of my fave authors.)
The Other Einstein; Carnegie's Maid, Benedict (Enjoyed the first more.)
America's First Daughter, Dray & Kamoie
Jane Steele, Faye
Turtles All the Way Down, Green
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan
Women in the Castle, Shattuk (While I'm tired of WWII novels this one is worth the time.)
Foreign Tongue, Marsot
My Italian Bulldozer, McCall Smith (Ridiculous)
The Royal Runaway, Emory
A Daring Arrangement, Shupe

2017
Where, or where, were the good books this year??
Trains and Lovers, McCall Smith
Smile, Doyle (Really liked this book, but ending was a cop out.)
The Little Paris Bookshop (Middle third too long.);  & The Little French Bistro, George
The Magician's Lie, Macallister
*Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure, Bosker (Learned a lot.)
Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders (I was so lost for first 80 pages.)
The Dollhouse; The Address, Davis
Flight Behavior, Kingsolver
The Burning Girl, Messud (I had high hopes...)
How to Find Love in a Bookshop, Henry
The Piano Shop of the Left Bank, Carhart
Less, by Greer, (Shame on the reviewer who said it was LOL.)
Golden Hill, Spufford (Really, two page sentences?)
Modern Lovers, Straub (Forgot about it already.)
Men Without Women, Murakami
Lighthousekeeping, Winterson (Love her writing.)
*Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, LaMott
Into the Water, Hawkins (Better than the reviews said.)
The Woman in Cabin 10, Ware (Meh.)
Commonwealth, Patchett
*Chez Moi, Desarthe (Lovely writing)
Ordinary Grace, Krueger
Unless, Shields (One of my all time fave authors.)
To Capture What We Cannot Keep, Colin (100 pages too long.)
A Cup of Tea, Ephron
A Cup of Tea, Mansfield (Read this short story first, then Ephron's short novel.)
A Window Opens, Egan
Beautiful Ruins, Walter (Falls apart half way through.)
Fasting, Feasting, Desai
A Gentleman in Moscow, Towles
The Shell Collector, Doerr
Rococo, Trigiani
I See You Everywhere, Glass
The Bookshop on the Corner, Colgan
The Trespasser, In the Woods, French
All Grown Up, Attenberg
The Art Thief, Charney (Still not sure who ended up with which painting...)
The House of Mirth, Wharton
Ghostwalk, Stott (Gave up half way through.)
Sundays at Tiffany's, Patterson & Charbonnet
Falling for Trouble; The Undateable: Practice Makes Perfect; Snowed In, Title
The Book of Speculation, Swyler

2016
The Last Days of Night, Moore (Great historical fiction.)
*My Name is Lucy Barton, Strout
*The Stockholm Octavo, Engelmann
The Ice Queen, Hoffman
Today will be Different, Semple
*By Nightfall, Cunningham
When the Emperor was Divine, Otsuka
The Darkest Secret, Marwood (OMG ending!)
*Salt to the Sea, Sepetys
In Other Words, Lahiri
Four Seasons in Rome, Doerr
*The Invitation, Foley
*The Muse, Burton
Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move, Lanpher
The House We Grew Up In, Jewell
Jesus Cow, Perry (But only if you are from the Midwest!)
The Nightingale, Hannah
Nine Women, One Dress, Rosen
Rules of Civility, Towles
The Last Bookaneer, Pearl
*Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, Sharratt
The Other Story, de Rosnay
Breakfast at Tiffany's, Capote
Rare Objects, Tessaro
Sweetbitter, Danler
A Half Forgotten Song, Webb
Frog Music, Donoghue (Read the research notes first!)
H is for Hawk, Macdonald (3 books in one)
The Nest, Sweeney (Better than the reviews.)
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, Bivald
Lydia's Party, Hawkins
The Last Chinese Chef, Mones
Noah's Compass, Tyler
How it All Began, Lively
*The 6:41 to Paris, Blonde
A Little Life, Yanaghara (A very difficult read.)
*Queen of the Night, Chee
The Diamond Caper, Mayle
The Dream Lover, Berg
Mademoiselle Chanel, Gortner
Fates and Furries, Groff (Not sure what the hype is all about.)
Furiously Happy, Lawson (Still LOL.)
The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories, Marra
Freezing, Evans
Bookends, Green
A Tenured Professor, Galbraith
The Misalliance, Brookner
Between the World and Me, Coates
Cooking with Fernet Branca, Hamilton-Paterson
Mrs. Poe, Cullen
Case Histories, Atkinson
The Vermeer Conspiracy, Halaban
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, Gilman
New Uses for Old Boyfriends; Cure for the Common Breakup, Kendrick
The Hating Game, Thorne
The Gates of Rutherford, Cooke

2015
*Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny Lawson (LOL!)
The Story of the Lost Child (the Fourth and Final), Ferrante
*The Gracekeepers, Logan
Pretty Baby, Kubica (please get an editor, cut every third word and create a timeline - it doesn't work)
The Invention of Wings, Kidd
The Year of Wonders, Brooks
The Wife, The Maid and the Mistress, Lawhon
Black Chalk, Yates
The Happiness Project; Happier at Home, Rubin
The Boston Girl, Diamant
The Art of Crash Landing, DeCarlo (No way I believe this story would take place in 5 days, please...)
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase, Walters
Crossing on the Paris, Gynther
The Vacationers, Straub (Was there one redeeming character?)
Maybe in Another Life, Reid
The Last Days of Dogtown, Diamant
Music and Silence, Tremain
Arcadia, Groff
The Rosie Project, Simsion
A Week in Winter, Binchy
Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, Buchan
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Prose
The Paris Key, Blackwell
Telling the Bees, Hesketh
The Other Typist, Rindell
*The Girl on a Train, Hawkins (Be sure to read a nice, light, fluffy book between this book and Her.)
*Her, Lane. (When I say I judge a book by its ending, I mean books like this.)
The Last Girl, Evans (One of the best character studies I've ever read: how did a young woman write about such a crotchety old man?)
Everything I Never Told You, Ng
The Seduction Series, Jennifer McQuiston
The Strange Library, Murakami
Odd Woman and the City, Gornick
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, Cahalan
Yes, Please, Poehler
The Objects of her Affection, Cobb
The Ladies' Lending Library, Keefer

2014
The Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. Ferrante
*All the Light We Cannot See, Doerr (IMHO-Best book of 2014)
Searching for Grace Kelly, Callahan
The Signature of All Things (First half only, see below), Gilbert
*Bitter in the Mouth, Truong (Write more!)
Orphan Train, Kline
The Kitchen House, Grissom
*House in the Sky, Lindhout
*The Miniaturist, Burton
The Transcriptionist, Rowland
The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, Rachman
The Perfume Collector, Tessaro
The Children Act, McEwan (Pay attention to the coffee cup scene, exquisitely written.)
Lucky Us, Bloom
*Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Boo (Amazing reporting/writing)
The Fever Tree, McVeigh
Delicious!, Reichl (Her autobiographies are better than fiction)
Riding Lessons; Water for Elephants, Gruen
The Snow Queen; The Hours, Cunningham
The Aviator’s Wife, Benjamin
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Marra
The Map of the Lost Memories, Fay
The Glassblower of Murano; The Botticelli Secret, Fiorato
The Witch’s Daughter, Brackston
Belle Epogue, Ross
Born of Illusion, Brown
Her Fearful Symmetry, Niffenegger
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Gaiman
The Woman Upstairs, Messud (Not a cliche in the book.)
The Silent Wife, Harrison (WHO DID IT??)
The Interestings, Wolitzer
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Fowler
The Paris Wife, McLain
The Maytrees, Dillard
The Lowland, Lahiri

Previous Years
The Imperfectionists, Rachman
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Riggs
The Fault in our Stars, Green
Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamotte (My go to meditation/prayer book)
People of the Book, Brooks
The Secrets of Mary Bowser, Leveen
Gone Girl, Flynn
*Stoner, Williams
Fever, Keane
The Dinner, Koch
The Orphan Master’s Son, Johnson
American Wife, Sittenfeld
*Night Circus, Morgenstern (Lovely colorful imagery)
That Woman, Sebba
The Greater Journey, McCullough
Sarah's Key; A Secret Kept, de Rosnay
1Q84, Murakami
*The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Sklott (Great research/ reporting/writing)
Girl in Translation, Kwok
Someone, McDermott
Creation of Eve; Lit, Karr
The Commitment, Gilbert
The Uninvited Guest, Jones
An Object of Beauty, Martin
Summer at Tiffany’s, Hart
The Forgery of Venus, Gruber
The Shadow of the Wind; The Angel's Game, Ruiz Zafon
The Crimson Petal and the White, Faber
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Niffenegger
*The Things They Carried, O’Brien
*The Book of Salt, Truong
*The Professor and the Madman; The Man Who Loved China; etc. Winchester
Out of the Flames, Goldstones
Restoration, Tremain

Books I endured, but don't recommend...
One Good Turn, Atkinson
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses, Biringham (I wanted historical fiction and got a research paper)
The Goldfinch, Tartt (Needed to go to rehab afterwards)
How to be Both, Smith
The Bookstore, Myler
The Signature of All Things, Gilbert (second half can go away; stop reading at the closet scene)
Wolf Hall, Mantel
NW, Smith

Non-fiction I Refer to & Learned from:
*Mrs. Ambassador: The Life and Politics of Eugenie Anderson (My BFF wrote it!), Dupont
*The Library Book, Orlean (A mystery, historical and memoir.)  
Dreyer's English, Dreyer
Maybe You Need to Talk to Someone, Gottlieb
Our Towns: A 100,000-mile Journey Into the Heart of America, the Fallows (For anyone from a "small town.")
Art Held Hostage, Anderson
Dreyer's English, Dreyer
21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari
The Empath's Survival Guide, Orloff (Explains a lot about myself.)
Origin Story, Christian
iGen, Twenge
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Junger
Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, Warner
Being Mortal, Gawande
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of NYC's Greatest Female Detective, Ricca
Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, Christensen, etc.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Stevenson
Hillbilly Elegy, Vance
The Craft of Research, Booth, etc
The War of Art, Pressfield
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Sacks
Lean In, Sandberg
*The Ghost Map, Johnson
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Gilbert
The Hidden Brain, Vedantam
Real Women, Real Leaders, Hurley & Shumway
*The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown, Taylor
*Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking, Cain
Strengthfinder 2.0 (Strategic, Input, Learner, Activator, Maximizer)
What to Expect When No One is Expecting, Last
Naked Statistics: Stripping the dread from the data, Wheelan
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics, Wheeler
The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction, Silver
Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, Hines and Bishop
Generations: The History of America's Future, Strauss & Howe
Crucial Conversations, Patterson, et al
Sixteen Trends; 21 Trends for the 21st Century, Marx
Reading Educational Research: How to avoid getting statistically snookered, Bracey
How to Lie With Statistics, Huff
DIY U, Kamenetz
Change.edu, Rosen
Disrupting Class, Christensen
Leading in a Culture of Change, Fullan
Chief Culture Officer, How to create a living, breathing corporation, McCracken
The Tipping Point; Blink; Outliers; What the Dog Saw; David and Goliath, etc. Gladwell
The World is Hot, Flat and Crowded; etc, Friedman
Proofiness, Seife
How the Mind Works, Pinker
Made to Stick; Switch: How to change things when change is hard; Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work, Chip and Dan Health
Where good ideas come from; Everything bad is good for you, Emergence, Steven Johnson
The Great Reset; The Rise of the Creative Class; Who’s Your City?, Richard Florida
Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; The World until Yesterday, Jared Diamond
Futurist author George Friedman
The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less, Schwartz
Stumbling on Happiness, Gilbert
Snark: It’s mean, it’s personal, and it’s ruining our conversations, Denby
Bowling Alone, Putnam
Freakonomics, etc. Levitt and Dubner
The Long Tail, Anderson
The Whole New Mind; Drive, To Sell is Human; The Wisdom of Crowds, Pink
How to be a Brilliant Thinker, Exercise your mind and find creative solutions, Sloane
Thinkertoys, Michalko

Arm Chair Travel & Books about Food/Eating/Cooking/Wine/Hotels/etc
*Give a Girl a Knife, Thielen
*Cork Dork, Bosker
Kitchens of the Great Midwest, Stradal
The Harvest: An Adventure into the Heart of America’s Family Farms, Horan
Nose, Conaway
Heads in Beds, Tomsky
Hotel Babylon: Inside the Extravagance of a Luxury Five-star Hotel, Anonymous
Hay Fever, Miller
The End of Food, Roberts
Cakewalk, Moses
Spoon Fed: How eight cooks saved my life, Severson
Traveling With Pomegranates, Kidd & Taylor
The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Woman's Adventures in the Oldest City on Earth, Steil
Blood, Bones & Butter, Hamilton
Eat, Pray, Love: One woman’ search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, Gilbert
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of food life, Kingsolver
Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl, McCorkindale
Spiced, Jurgensen
The Billionaire’s Vinegar, Wallace
Too Much Tuscan Sun, Castagno
Last Night at the Lobster, O’Nan
My Brother’s Farm: Reflections on life, farming, and the pleasures of food, Jones
The Lost Girls, Baggett, Corbett & Pressner
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, McNamee
The Best of Food Writing and Travel Writing – annual editions
The Best Women’s Travel Writing – annual editions

Favorite authors from this genre
Barbara Holland
Alice Steinbach
Laura Fraser
Marlena BeBlasi
Michael Perry (Wonderful storyteller from small town America)
Rita Golden Gelman
Peter Mayle
Frances Mayes
Bill Bryson
Calvin Trillion
M.F.K. Misher
Anthony Bourdain
Laurie Colwin
Jeffery Steingarten
Deborah Madison (My go to cookbook author)
James McNair

Books about Books or Bookstores, Libraries  or Reading
The Bookshop on the Corner, Colgan
The Bookshop, Fitzgerald
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, Bartlett 
The Little Bookstore in Big Stone Gap, Welch
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore, Sloan
How Reading Changed my Life, Quindlen
So Many Books, So Little Time, Nelson
The Secret of Lost Things, Hay
The trilogy by the Goldstones on how they got into collecting books.
Sixpense House: Lost in a town of books, Paul Collins
Shelf Life: Romance, mystery, drama, and other page-turning adventures from a year in a bookstore, Shea
An Alphabetical Life: Living it up on the world of books, Werris
Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Library, Douglas
Book Lust, More Book Lust, Pearl

Books about art and the art world
Provenance, Salisbury & Sujo
The Painted Girls, Buchanan
The Art Forger, Shapiro
Seven Days in the Art World
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, Thompson
Sunflowers, Bundrick

My all time favorite fiction authors and their oeuvres; I’ve read them all, well almost all!
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale is the book that changed my reading life)
Carol Shields
A.S. Byatt
Ann Patchett
Anna Quindlen
Jeanette Winterson
Lorrie Moore
Sarah Waters
Lisa See (Read her Chinese historical novels in order, skip her private investigator books)
Tracy Chevalier
Susan Vreeland
Mary Sharratt
Elizabeth Berg
Marge Piercy
Anita Shreve
Ruth Reichl  (Read her autobiographical trilogy in order)
Anne Tyler

Books on Writing and the Process of Writing
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, Pressfield
The Art of Memoir, Karr
Publishing, Godwin
Between You and Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen, Norris
On Writing, King (I've never read his fiction, but thoroughly enjoyed this book; great reading list!)
Writing is my Drink, Nestor
On Writing Well, Zinsser
bird by bird, Lamott
Negotiating with the Dead, Atwood
Escaping into the Open, Berg
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Patchett (While not necessarily a book about the craft of writing, I really connected with her personal style of writing.)
The Elements of Style, Strunk & White (I re-read every few years, but it needs to be brought into the 21st C. to remain relevant)