list
My friends think I'm obsessive, but I have a list of every book I've read since I was ten years old. This simple document, in its worn gilt-edged black book, is my most cherished possession. More than a record of what I've read over the past thirty years, it's a journal of who I've been. Photo books give me snapshots of people and places I've visited, diaries recall my feelings at different points, but my book list is an album of the life of my mind.
It started, over 30 years ago, with a library contest to see who could read the most books over the summer. As a child who never won gymnastics or swimming ribbons, it was my big opportunity. That summer, I consumed books like popscicles--by the pool, after bedtime in secret, and on car trips in the backseat. I can't remember where we went on vacation, because I was too busy being transported to other worlds. I won the contest, but the real prize was my new list.
I've kept the list in different ways. At first, I numbered the books, so I could try to improve last year's record. In 1976, at age 15, I read 73 books--beating the 55 I'd read the year before--starting with "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and finishing, New Year's Eve, with "The Magus," by John Fowles. I stopped numbering the books in 1980--around the time, not coincidentally, I discovered the lengthy pleasures of Tolstoy, Mann, and Proust. I've had a few personal controversies about the list: Do I write down audiobooks? (only unabridged, with a notation). Half-finished books? (no, but it means I've wasted time on a few I should've put aside). Books I've read before? (yes). Diet books? Absolutely not. Am I obsessive? Well...yes.
Some years, I would scribble comments in the margin of the list, most of them relating to my nascent sense of myself as a writer. In 1982, I jottted down a quote from Virginia Woolf, which I've kept on my desk ever since: "I want to make the reader my accomplice: I write in such a way as to evoke an answering response." With Nabokov's "Lolita," I noted, "Ideal, simple English, maybe only possible from a foreigner." Sometimes I'd capture simple images that stuck in my mind--the ashtray perched in the hollow of a woman's back in Margaret Atwood's "Edible Woman"--or write a quick comment. "Lovely," is all I said about Hermann Hesse's "Beneath the Wheel," "sometimes a great book," about Ken Kesey's "Sometimes a Great Notion," and "enough!" after Anais Nin's fourth, increasingly narcissistic diary. Sometimes I'd just scribble, "trash," and other times--with George Eliot's "Middlemarch," and Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera"--five stars would say what words couldn't possibly express.
My book list has made me picky about what I read, because seeing the titles line-by-line brings home the realization that the number of books one can read in a lifetime--maybe 5000?-- is finite, and there are so many wonderful writers left to explore. I can see, in my list, how I read with a sense of urgency, discovering authors and then bingeing on their books. I have all of Jean Rhys's books listed in a row, as well as those of Wallace Stegner, Tobias Wolff, and Richard Russo.
Like a photo album, my book list jogs my memory about moments I might have otherwise forgotten. When I see "A Suitable Boy," by Vikram Seth, I remember three days holed up in a snowy cabin, luxuriating in the time to read a juicy, 1000-page tome. "Swann's Way" brings back my dear Aunt Florence, who, almost blind at the end of her life, loved to have me read Proust aloud to her--and always caught me when I'd skipped ahead, reading on my own. Milan Kundera's "Laughable Loves" makes me remember how much one ex-boyfriend really did love me. When I see all the books I read by Robertson Davies, Paul Auster, and William Kennedy--authors my ex-husband introduced me to--I realize my marriage wasn't a complete waste of time.
The list makes me recall places, too. Reading is about taking a journey in the imagination, and books are perfect travel companions. I love to pack books about places I visit, so seeing Robert Hellenga's "The Sixteen Pleasures" and George Eliot's "Romola" remind me of the cobblestones and alleyways of Florence. Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo triology takes me back to mysterious, chaotic Egypt, and Washington Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra" transports me to the gypsy caves of Spain. Other books make me long to travel--The Makiota Sisters, by Tanazaki, gave me the urge to book a flight to Japan, and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance took me, vicariously, to India. Over time, I can see how my book list has opened up internationally and culturally, from American, British and French authors, to the treasures of Africa, Latin America, India, and Asia.
I love to surround myself with books at home, feeling secure in the company of friends. I'll never be lonely with Alice Munro, John Cheever, John Irving, Ha Jin, Haruko Mirakami, and Toni Morrison at hand. But my book list saves me shelf space, because I can give books away while knowing that they're never really gone.
My list has been the best, inadvertent gift I've ever given myself. And it's easy for anyone to start: simply find a beautiful journal, date it at the top, write down the name and author of the last book you read, and you've got the start of a book list for the rest of your life.
A couple of quick recommendations:
Night Train to Lisbon
Pascal Mercier
(This is everything a novel should be: humane, mysterious, full of the Big Questions, by a Swiss philosopher.)
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
Vendela Vida
(Quiet, restrained, beautiful.)
Forgetfulness
Ward Just
(Just a great read.)
The Spectator Bird
Wallace Stegner
(Never read this one of his; loved every line. )
My 2008 reading list
* Loved
this one.
†I
wouldn't recommend this one. My recommendations are more or less vis-a-vis the authors' other books, so that while Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies may be a good read, for instance, it doesn't rate, in my book, with his other work, so I didn't especially recommend it.
Divisadero
Michael Ondaatje
Anil's Ghost
Michael Ondaatje
The Unlikely Lavender Queen
Jeannie Ralston
Until I Find You
John Irving
The Spectator Bird*
Wallace Stegner
A Long Way Down
Nick Hornby
Imagining Argentina
Lawrence Thornton
Any Place I Hang My Hat
Susan Isaacs
The Double Bind
Chris Bohjalian
Summer*
Edith Wharton
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name*
Vendela Vida
Ten Days in the Hills
Jane Smiley
Summer
Edith Wharton
Emma*
Jane Austen
Eleven Minutes
Paolo Coehlo
Night Train to Lisbon*
Pascal Mercier
The Bright Forever
Lee Martin
Lush Life*
Richard Price
My 2007 reading list
Saturday*
Ian McEwan
On Mexican Time
Tony Cohan
Broken for You*
Stephanie Kallos
Social Intelligence
Daniel Goleman
Devil's Highway*
Luis Alberto Ullea
The Tender Bar*
JR Moehdringer
The Wonder Spot
Melissa Bank
The Inheritance of Loss*
Kiran Desai
The Emperor's Children*
Claire Messud
The Elephant Vanishes
Haruki Murakami
Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabeth Gilbert
No Direction Home*
Marisa Silver
Oil on the Brain*
Lisa Margonelli
The History of Love*
Nicole Krauss
The View from Castle Rock
Alice Munro
I Feel Bad About My Neck
Nora Ephron
Lost City Radio*
Daniel Alarcón
The Diviners†
Rick Moody
You Don't Love Me Yet†
Jonathan Lethem
The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell
Special Topics in Calamity Physics*
Marisha Pessl
What is the What*
Dave Eggers
Rise and Shine
Anna Quindlen
The Magician's Assistant
Ann Patchett
Testimone Inconsapevole*
Gianrico Carofiglio
The Jane Austen Book Club†
Karen Joy Fowler
Year of Wonders
Geraldine Brooks
Five Skies
Ron Carlson
Ad Occhi Chiusi
Gianrico Carofiglio
The Lay of the Land*
Richard Ford
No One Belongs Here More than You*
Miranda July
Midwives*
Chris Bohjalian
Covergirl†
Maura Moynihan
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
The Descendants*
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs
Ordinary Love and Good Will
Jane Smiley
The Whole World Over
Julia Glass
Audrey Hepburn's Neck
Alan Brown
Magical Thinking
Augusten Burroughs
The Lost Night*
Rachel Howard
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
The Law of Similars
Chris Bohjalian
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
Suite Francaise*
Irene Nemirovsky
Nice Work
David Lodge
Forgetfulness*
Ward Just
My 2006 reading list
Interesting Women
Andrea Lee
The White Masai
Corinne Hofmann
Cold Comfort Farm*
Stella Gibbons
The Ha-ha*
Dave King
The Lives of the Muses
Francine Prose
Among the Missing*
Dan Chaon
Lunar Park*
Bret Easton Ellis
On Beauty*
Zadie Smith
A Sense of the World*
Jason Roberts
The Accidental
Ali Smith
Intelligence in Nature*
Jeremy Narby
Gilead*
Marilynne Robinson
Ex Libris*
Anne Fadiman
War by Candlelight*
Daniel Alarcón
Last Night*
James Salter
Out of Africa and
Shadows in the Grass
Isak Dineson
West with the Night*
Beryl Markham
The Snows of Kilimanjaro*
Ernest Hemingway
North of South
V.S. Naipaul
Prep
Curtis Settenfeld
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families*
Philip Gourevitch
Conspiracy of Murder: The Rwandan Genocide
Linda Melvern
The Sad Truth About Happiness†
Anne Giardini
Never Let Me Go*
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unsettling
Peter Rock
Dusk and Other Stories*
James Salter
At the Jim Bridger*
Ron Carlson
The Brooklyn Follies
Paul Auster
The Return of Mavala Shikongo*
Peter Orner
Indecision*
Benjamin Kunkel
Everyman*
Philip Roth
Veronica*
Mary Gaitskill
Lightning Field*
Dana Spiotta
Devil's Teeth
Susan Casey
Vietnam Now: A Reporter Returns
David Lamb
The Quiet American*
Graham Greene
The Things They Carried*
Tim O'Brien
How to be Good
Nick Hornby
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain*
Robert Olen Butler
Over the Moat*
James Sullivan
Happy Baby*
Stephen Elliott
The River King
Alice Hoffman
Garlic and Sapphires
Ruth Reichl
Dispatches*
Michael Herr
The Omnivore's Dilemma*
Michael Pollan
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Rebecca Solnit
King Leopold's Ghost*
Adam Hochschild
The House on Dream Street*
Dana Sachs
Fire in the Lake*
Frances Fitzgerald
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 form 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
FortuneÕs
Daughter
Isabel Allende
The
DoctorÕs 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