Here’s the list of every book I finished since I began college in the autumn of 1989. If you want the Excel version of the list for some reason, enjoy.
You want gigantic writeups about all these books? Here you go!
–Gil
Note: (r) means it’s a re-read.
2024
Bleeding Edge – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Remotely: Travels in the Binge of TV – David Thomson • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2022 podcast)
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss – Amy Bloom
Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor – Donald J. Robertson • Listen to our podcast
The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice – Elizabeth Flock • Listen to our podcast
Plastic – Scott Guild • Listen to our podcast
Underworlds: A Compelling Journey Through Subterranean Realms, Real and Imagined – Stephen Ellcock
My Struggle: Book 1 – Karl Ove Knausgaard
Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring – Brad Gooch • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2015 and 2017 podcasts)
Facing Down The Furies: Suicide, The Ancient Greeks, and Me – Edith Hall • Listen to our podcast
My Struggle: Book 2 – Karl Ove Knausgaard
Reading Shakespeare Reading Me – Leonard Barkan • Listen to our podcast
Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse” – Emily Raboteau • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2014 podcast)
My Struggle: Book 3 – Karl Ove Knausgaard
There’s Going To Be Trouble – Jen Silverman • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2021 podcast)
Winging It: Improv’s Power & Peril in the Time of Trump – Randy Fertel • Listen to our podcast
Deaths of Artists – Jim Moske • Listen to our podcast
My Struggle: Book 4 – Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing – Adam Moss • Listen to our podcast
I Love Dick – Chris Kraus • maybe we’ll record a podcast sometime? A mutual friend introduced us, and we seemed to hit it off, but she didn’t respond after I emailed her and now I’ve written 250 letters that I haven’t sent yet . . .
I Want You More – Swan Huntley • Listen to our podcast
Feh: A Memoir – Shalom Auslander • Listen to our podcast
My Struggle: Book 5 – Karl Ove Knausgaard
Pilobolus: A Story of Dance and Life – Robert Pranzatelli • Listen to our podcast
Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century – Laura Beers • Listen to our podcast
Pedigree: A Memoir – Patrick Modiano
The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch – Konrad Bercovici • Listen to my podcast with his granddaughter & editor, Mirana Comstock
The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing – Sven Birkerts • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2017 and 2021 podcasts)
One Friday in April: A Memoir of Suicide and Survival – Donald Antrim
Still Life at Eighty: A Memoir – Nicholas Delbanco • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2017 and 2022 podcasts.)
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style – Benjamin Dreyer • Listen to our podcast
Salinger’s Soul: His Personal & Religious Odyssey – Stephen B. Shepard • Listen to our podcast
Mysticism – Simon Critchley • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2019 podcast)
My Struggle: Book Six – Karl Ove Knausgaard
A Natural History of Empty Lots – Christopher Brown • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2018, 2019, lockdown, 2020, and 2023 conversations)
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper – Roland Allen • Podcast coming soon!
Roadside Picnic – Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
Born With A Tail: The Devilish Life and Wicked Times of Anton Szandor LaVey – Doug Brod • Listen to our podcast
Everyman – Philip Roth (r)
The Picture Not Taken: On Life And Photography – Benjamin Swett • Podcast coming soon!
2023
The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty – Dave Hickey
Septology I-II: The Other Name – Jon Fosse (tr. Damion Searle)
Boundless As The Sky – Dawn Raffel • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2019 podcast)
Septology III-V: I Is Another – Jon Fosse (tr. Damion Searle)
The Critic’s Daughter – Priscilla Gilman • Listen to our podcast
Septology VI-VII: A New Name – Jon Fosse (tr. Damion Searle)
The Destroyer of Worlds: A Return To Lovecraft Country – Matt Ruff • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2017 and 2020 podcasts)
Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt – Willard Spiegelman • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2013, 2016, and 2018 podcasts)
The Lost Americans – Christopher Bollen • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2015 podcast)
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Best Minds: How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness – Stevan Weine • Listen to our podcast
Faith, Hope and Carnage – Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan
On Christopher Street: Life, Sex, and Death After Stonewall – Michael Denneny • We were going to record a podcast, but he was dead when I arrived at his apartment; here’s the podcast I recorded about that & the followup a week later
V. – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Gone To The Wolves – John Wray • Listen to our podcast
Color Capital of the World: Growing Up with the Legacy of a Crayon Company – John W. Kropf • Listen to our podcast
Suppose A Sentence – Brian Dillon • Listen to our podcast
Affinities: On Art & Fascination – Brian Dillon • Listen to our podcast
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Rome as a Guide to the Good Life: A Philosophical Grand Tour – Scott Samuelson • Listen to our podcast
Gallery of the Disappeared Men – Jonathan Papernick • Listen to our podcast
The Disappeared – Andrew Porter • Listen to our podcast
Goodbye to Clocks Ticking: How We Live While Dying – Joseph Monninger • Listen to our podcast
The Black Locomotive – Rian Hughes • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2020 conversation)
To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse – Howard Fishman • Listen to our podcast
The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
A Haunting on the Hill – Elizabeth Hand • podcast coming soonish! (and listen to our 2015, 2017, and 2019 conversations)
The Art of Colour: The History of Art in 39 Pigments – Kelly Grovier • podcast coming someday! (I think)
In Defense of Love: An Argument – Ron Rosenbaum • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2013 and 2014 conversations)
Ravage & Son – Jerome Charyn • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2019, 2021, and 2022 conversations)
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor – Rachel Shteir • Listen to our podcast
When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalinithi
In Gratitude – Jenny Diski
John Le Carré: The Biography – Adam Sisman • Listen to our podcast
The Secret Life of John Le Carré – Adam Sisman • Listen to our podcast
A Year And A Day: An Experiment In Essays – Phillip Lopate • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2013, 2017 and 2020 conversations)
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin – Danny Fingeroth • Listen to our podcast
Valid Until Sunset – Jarrett Earnest • Listen to our podcast
My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer – Christian Wiman • Listen to our podcast
Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair – Christian Wiman • Listen to our podcast
He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, The Faith of Art – Christian Wiman • Listen to our podcast
Inherent Vice – Thomas Pynchon (r)
2022
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf (r)
Disaster Mon Amour – David Thomson • Listen to our podcast (r)
The Floundering Founder – Raman Sehgal • Listen to our podcast
Murder And The Movies – David Thomson • Listen to our podcast
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford (r)
Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film – Glenn Kurtz • Listen to our podcast
From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy – Scott Meslow • Listen to our podcast
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino (r)
Old Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions – Donald Hall
What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined: An (Auto)Biography of Niki de Saint Phalle – by Nicole Rudick • Listen to our podcast
What’s So Funny?: A Cartoonists’ Memoir – David Sipress • Listen to our podcast
The Latinist – Mark Prins • Listen to our podcast
Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine – Anna Della Subin • Listen to our podcast
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
Home/Land: A Memoir of Departure and Return – Rebecca Mead • Listen to our podcast
My Life In Middlemarch – Rebecca Mead • Listen to our podcast
The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art – Sebastian Smee • Listen to our podcast
Why Writing Matters – Nicholas Delbanco • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2017 podcast)
Flint and Mirror – John Crowley • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2013 and 2017 podcasts)
Blindness – Jose Saramago
Letters to Gwen John – Celia Paul • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2020 podcast)
The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem – Julie Phillips • Listen to our podcast
Dark Factory – Kathe Koja • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2015 and 2020 podcasts)
Our Laundry, Our Town – Alvin Eng • Listen to our podcast
What Artists Wear – Charlie Porter • Listen to our podcast
Philip Roth: A Counterlife – Ira Nadel • Listen to our podcast
Franz Kafka: The Drawings – Andreas Kilcher & Judith Butler • Listen to our podcast
Transit – Rachel Cusk
Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of The Mall – Alexandra Lange • Listen to our podcast
Kudos – Rachel Cusk
Dirty Pictures: How Nerds, Feminists, Bikers, and Potheads Revolutionized Comix – Brian Doherty • Listen to our podcast
Ways of Seeing – John Berger
Napoleon: A Life Told In Gardens and Shadows – Ruth Scurr • Listen to our podcast
Rare Stuff – Brett Ashley Kaplan
The End Of Solitude – William Deresiewicz • Listen to our podcast
All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work – Hayley Campbell • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2016 podcast)
Big Red – Jerome Charyn • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2019 and 2021 podcasts)
Against The Day – Thomas Pynchon • podcast coming soon (haha)
A Man Called Doll – Jonathan Ames • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2018 podcast)
The Wheel of Doll – Jonathan Ames • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2018 podcast)
John Aubrey: My Own Life – Ruth Scurr • Listen to our podcast
When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect – Eva Hagberg • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2019 podcast)
The Adventurists and Other Stories – Richard Butner • Listen to our podcast
I Dream With Open Eyes: A Memoir About Reimagining Home • George Prochnik • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2014 and 2017 podcasts)
Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change – W. David Marx • Listen to our podcast
Joseph Anton: A Memoir – Salman Rushdie
Gratitude – Oliver Sacks
Intoxicated By My Illness – Anatole Broyard
Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan – by Darryl Pinckney • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2020 podcast)
Art Is Life – Jerry Saltz • Listen to our podcast
How To Be An Artist – Jerry Saltz • Listen to our podcast
Crassus: The First Tycoon – Peter Stothard • Listen to our podcast
Esmond & Ilia: An Unreliable Memoir – Marina Warner • Listen to our podcast
Sleepless Nights – Elizabeth Hardwick
Walker Evans: Last Photographs & Life Stories – Michael Lesy • Listen to our podcast
The Future is Analog: How To Create a More Human World – David Sax • Listen to our podcast
Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs – Greil Marcus • podcast coming soon!
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York – Steven Heller • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2018, 2019, and 2020 podcasts)
Paint By Numbers – Dmitry Samarov • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2014, 2015, 2018, 2020, COVID Check-In, and 2021 podcasts)
LECH – Sara Lippmann • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2014 podcast)
Travels With My Aunt – Graham Greene
2021
God of Nothingness: Poems – Mark Wunderlich • Listen to our podcast
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
Stories I Forgot To Tell You – Dorothy Gallagher • Listen to our podcast
Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory: Bookmarked – Sven Birkerts • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2016 podcast and our COVID Check-In)
How I Came Into My Inheritance – Dorothy Gallagher • Listen to our podcast
Strangers In The House – Dorothy Gallagher • Listen to our podcast
Aftershocks – Nadia Owusu • Listen to our podcast
Lost Property: Memoirs & Confessions of a Bad Boy – Ben Sonnenberg • Listen to my podcast with his widow, Dorothy Gallagher
Fierce Attachments – Vivian Gornick • Listen to our podcast
Keats’ Odes: A Lover’s Discourse – Anahid Nersessian • Listen to our podcast
“Family Solstice” – Kate Maruyama • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2019 podcast and our COVID Check-In)
Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader – Vivian Gornick • Listen to our podcast
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (r)
Taking a Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature and Feminism in Our Time – Vivian Gornick • Listen to our podcast
Play It As It Lays – Joan Didion
We Play Ourselves – Jen Silverman • Listen to our podcast
A Month In The Country – JL Carr (re)
My Friend Natalia – Laura Lindstedt • Listen to our podcast
The Free World: Art & Thought in The Cold War – Louis Menand • Listen to our podcast
A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube – Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Pigeon Tunnel – John Le Carré
Stories I Forgot To Tell You – Dorothy Gallagher • Listen to our podcast (r)
Old Style – Dmitry Samarov • Listen to our podcast (And listen to our 2014, 2015, 2018, 2020 and COVID Check-In podcasts)
BALD: 35 Philosophical Short Cuts – Simon Critchley • podcast coming soon! (And listen to our 2019 podcast)
Notes on Suicide – Simon Critchley • podcast coming soon! (And listen to our 2019 podcast)
The Drowned World – JG Ballard
My Life As A Man – Philip Roth
Our Endless and Proper Work – Ron Hogan • Listen to our podcast (And listen to our 2015 podcast)
Empire of the Sun – JG Ballard
How To Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education – Scott Newstok • Listen to our podcast
Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings 1988-2018 – Peter Schjeldahl • Listen to our podcast
Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life – Heather Cass White • Listen to our podcast
Drafted: A Memoir of the ’60s – Heywood Gould • Listen to our podcast
Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living – Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn • Listen to our podcast
Pietr the Latvian – Georges Simenon
Meditations – Marcus Aurelius (r)
Rock & Roll – Tom Stoppard (r)
Nemesis – Philip Roth (r)
How To Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education – Scott Newstok (r) • Listen to our podcast
Every Third Thought: On Life, Death and the Endgame – Robert McCrum • Listen to our podcast
Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption – Robert McCrum • Listen to our podcast
My Year Off: Recovering Life After A Stroke – Robert McCrum • Listen to our podcast
The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien – Georges Simenon
The Philip Roth We Don’t Know: Sex, Race, and Autobiography – Jacques Berlinerblau • Listen to our podcast
The Humbling – Philip Roth (r)
Based on a True Story – Norm Macdonald (r)
Deception – Philip Roth (r)
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
Vertigo – WG Sebald (r)
This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death – Harold Brodkey (r)
The Art of Dramaturgy – Anne Cattaneo • Listen to our podcast
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Tolstoy (r)
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
The Fall – Albert Camus
Albert Camus and the Human Crisis – Robert Emmet Meagher • Listen to our podcast
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Profusely Illustrated: A Memoir – Edward Sorel • Listen to our podcast
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
On Tyranny – Timothy Snyder (ill. Nora Krug) • Listen to my podcast w/Nora
A Field Guide To Getting Lost – Rebecca Solnit
Disaster Mon Amour – David Thomson • Listen to our podcast
Death In The Afternoon – Ernest Hemingway
Dying: A Memoir – Cory Taylor
Silence and Silences – Wallis Wilde-Menozzi • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2013 and 2017 podcasts)
The White Album – Joan Didion
2020
Food of the Gods
Hammers on Bone
The Grand Dark
Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995
The Dairy Restaurant
Philosophy, Pussycats & Porn – Stoya • Listen to our podcast
Reading Backwards
The Peripheral
Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian
And Go Like This: Stories
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
88 Names: A Novel
Masters of Atlantis
Crash
Agency
Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny – Paul C. Tumey • Listen to our podcast
Velocities – Kathe Koja • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2015 podcast)
The Anti-Romantic Child – Priscilla Gilman
The Fox and Dr. Shimamura – Christine Wunnicke (tr. Philip Boehm – listen to our podcast)
Mavericks, Mystics and Misfits: Americans Against the Grain – Arthur Hoyle • Listen to our podcast
Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity – David Lynch
The Periodic Table – Primo Levi
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life – Zena Hitz • Listen to our podcast
The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety – Alan Watts
Essays After Eighty – Donald Hall (r)
Three Fifths – John Vercher • Listen to our podcast
A Perfect Spy – John Le Carré
Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth – Benjamin Taylor • Listen to our podcast
Proust: The Search – Benjamin Taylor • Listen to our podcast
Naples Declared – Benjamin Taylor • Listen to our podcast
Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All in Trouble – Judy Gold • Listen to our podcast
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford (r)
Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America – A Recent History – Kurt Andersen • Listen to our podcast
Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood – Margot Mifflin • Listen to our podcast
Failed State • Christopher Brown • Listen to our podcast (and listen to 2018 and 2019 podcasts)
Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker – David Mikics • Listen to our podcast
The Rings of Saturn – WG Sebald (r)
Counternarratives – John Keene • Listen to our podcast
The Book of Atlantis Black – Betsy Bonner • Listen to our podcast
Orphic Paris – Henri Cole • Listen to our podcast
Blizzard: Poems – Henri Cole • Listen to our podcast
Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate – Daniel Mendelsohn • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our podcast from earlier this year)
Annihilation (Area X, book 1) – Jeff VanderMeer (r)
Experience – Martin Amis
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America – Laila Lalami
Entanglements: Tomorrow’s Lovers, Families and Friends – Sheila Williams (ed.) • Listen to our podcast
Authority (Area X, book 2) – Jeff VanderMeer (r)
Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy – Darryl Pinckney • Listen to our podcast
Acceptance (Area X, book 3) – Jeff VanderMeer (r)
Busted in New York and Other Essays – Darryl Pinckney • Listen to our podcast
Inside Story – Martin Amis
The Odd Woman and The City – Vivian Gornick • Listen to our podcast
Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention – David Shields • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our podcasts from 2019 about The Trouble With Men and Marshawn Lynch: A History)
XX – Rian Hughes • Listen to our podcast
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World – Virginia Postrel • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our podcast from 2013)
Self Portrait – Celia Paul • Listen to our podcast
Speak, Memory – Vladimir Nabokov
The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative – Vivian Gornick • Listen to our podcast
Churchill & Orwell: The Fight For Freedom – Thomas E. Ricks
Essayism – Brian Dillion (r)
To The Moon and Back: A Childhood Under The Influence – Lisa Kohn • Listen to our podcast
Our Man In Havana – Graham Greene
The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt
Agent Running in the Field – John Le Carré
Sergeant Salinger – Jerome Charyn • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our podcasts from 2018 and 2022)
2019
The Kindly Ones
How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship
The Valley of Bones
The Soldier’s Art
The Military Philosophers
Books Do Furnish a Room
Temporary Kings
Hearing Secret Harmonies
Jimmy Neurosis: A Memoir
This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
The Climb from Salt Lick: A Memoir of Appalachia
A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety
The Book of Dirt
kaddish.com: A novel
The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
Stella Maris: And Other Key West Stories
My Young Life
The Green Hour
Essays After Eighty
What’s Left of the Night
Dating Tips for the Unemployed
Iris Has Free Time
A Replacement Life: A Novel
Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table (a Memoir with Recipes)
When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History
The Portrait of a Lady (New York revision)
A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel
Rules of Civility: A Novel
The Sheltering Sky
Mapping the Interior
Rule of Capture: A Novel
Curious Toys
Old Man’s War
I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution
Harrowgate
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies
Overthrow: A Novel
The Songlines
Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
Drag: The Complete Story
Confessions of a Window Dresser
Vertigo
Charleston Fancy: Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City
Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction
Slow Horses (Slough House #1)
Pedro Paramo
Just Kids
Call for the Dead: A George Smiley Novel
A Murder of Quality: A George Smiley Novel
The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 2: 1964–1977: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: A George Smiley Novel
The Looking Glass War: A George Smiley Novel
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A George Smiley Novel
The Swastika and Symbols of Hate: Extremist Iconography Today
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic
Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones
Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It
The Honourable Schoolboy: A George Smiley Novel
Smiley’s People: A George Smiley Novel
The River in the Sky: A Poem
Mysterious Obsession – Otto Penzler • Listen to our podcast
The Secret Pilgrim: A George Smiley Novel
Mag Men: Fifty Years of Making Magazines
A Legacy of Spies: A George Smiley Novel
Blonde: A Novel
2018
Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays
The Rings of Saturn
Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies
Normal: A Novel
A Conversation Larger Than the Universe: Readings in Science Fiction and the Fantastic, 1762-2017 – Henry Wessells • Listen to our podcast
My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One
The Other Paris
Last Song Before Night
The Phantom Tollbooth
Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business
You Were Never Really Here
The Double Life Is Twice as Good: Essays and Fiction
What’s Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer
A Reader on Reading
Fire Dance: A Novel
Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions
Urn Burial
Tropic of Kansas: A Novel
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Sandman Slim
Kill the Dead: A Sandman Slim Novel
Victory: An Island Tale
Everything Is Borrowed
Neapolitan Chronicles
Infomocracy: Book One of the Centenal Cycle
House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row
My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
Porcelain: A Memoir
I Will Be Complete: A Memoir
The Ashtray: (Or the Man Who Denied Reality)
Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
Her Fearful Symmetry
The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics
The Line of Beauty: A Novel
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
A River Could Be a Tree: A Memoir
A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture
Paradise Man
A Widow’s Story: A Memoir
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s
The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
Blue Eyes
The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and His Times
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White • Listen to our podcast
Marilyn The Wild – Jerome Charyn • Listen to our podcast (and listen to our 2021 and 2022 followups)
The Education of Patrick Silver
Secret Isaac
A Question of Upbringing: A Novel
A Buyer’s Market
The Acceptance World
At Lady Molly’s
Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
2017
Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love
The Dead Ladies Project: Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries
The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song
Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto
Memoir: A History
A Mother’s Tale
Note Book
Private Citizens: A Novel
What Belongs to You
Snowed Under
Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
The Sun Also Rises
Moving the Palace
Toscanelli’s Ray
Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem
Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator
Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936
Mrs. Dalloway
This Is How You Lose Her
This Is What a Librarian Looks Like: A Celebration of Libraries, Communities, and Access to Information
Lovecraft Country: A Novel
Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance
Bad Monkeys: A Novel
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr
Totalitopia
Playboy Laughs: The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboy
After Henry: Essays
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Merchant of Venice
Survival In Auschwitz
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories
The Hue and Cry at Our House: A Year Remembered
The Ministry of Special Cases
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories
The Peregrine
Three Floors Up
Behind Her Eyes
A Man Lies Dreaming
Central Station
Lastingness: The Art of Old Age
Curiouser and Curiouser: Essays
The Years
The Art of Youth: Crane, Carrington, Gershwin, and the Nature of First Acts
The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox
Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press
Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe
Dinner at the Center of the Earth: A novel
Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America
How to Read Nancy: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels
Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old
Exit Ghost
Everyman
2016
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Dept. of Speculation
The Leopard: A Novel
Willful Disregard: A Novel About Love
Talking To The Dead
Miss Lonelyhearts
Almost Everything Very Fast: A Novel
The Day of the Locust
Delicious Foods
At the Existentialist Café
Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War
The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures
Shadow Ops: Control Point
Nitro Mountain
The Hirschfeld Century: Portrait of an Artist and His Age
The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy
Bellow’s People: How Saul Bellow Made Life Into Art
Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy
Galaxies
Anna Karenina
Beyond Apollo
Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin
The Plot Against America
Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer
Engines of the Night / Breakfast in the Ruins
Senior Moments: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art
Play All: A Bingewatcher’s Notebook
Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins
Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker’s Greatest Cartoonist
Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
In Love
The Good Soldier
Solaris
Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers
Avid Reader: A Life
The Hard Problem: A Play
Based on a True Story: A Memoir
Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier
When Memory Comes
Where Memory Leads: My Life
The Speed of Sound: Breaking the Barriers Between Music and Technology: A Memoir
The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963
Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White
Sword of Honor Trilogy
Everyman
2015
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Third Rail
Unreliable Memoirs
Happy are the Happy
The Tourmaline
Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity
Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies)
La Ronde – Arthur Schniztler
Poetry Notebook: Reflections on the Intensity of Language
Falling Towards England
May Week Was In June
The Third Man
Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever
North Face of Soho: More Unreliable Memoirs
How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit
Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard & Art & the ’70s & the ’80s
In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China
Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers
How Sweet It Is!
Look Who’s Back
Chronicles
Where Women Are Kings
Muse: A novel
James Merrill: Life and Art
Orient: A Novel
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me: Stories and a novella
The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty: A Novel
Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea
Generation Loss
Available Dark
Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point
No Man’s Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America
Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins: A Novel
Latest Readings
Lionel Asbo: State of England
The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books
The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books
Everyman
Katherine Carlyle
Under the Poppy
Memory Theater
The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World
Montaigne
The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime
As I Lay Dying
The Peace Process: A Novella and Stories
Beware of Pity
Drawing Blood
2014
Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry
Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora
Comics Art
Black Cracker
Stern
About Harry Towns
The Current Climate
Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir
A Mother’s Kisses
The World of Yesterday
Visible City
The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880
Hyde
The Bookshop
The Cold Song
Mortality
This Is Where We Came In: Intimate Glimpses
All That Is
The Divine Comedy, Vol. 1: Inferno
The Divine Comedy, Vol. 2: Purgatorio
The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World
Secrecy
The Divine Comedy, Vol. 3: Paradiso
Solaris
Nose Down, Eyes Up
Bleeding Edge
Never Mind
The Incentive of the Maggot: Poems
Bad News
The Great Wave: Poems
Some Hope
Mother’s Milk
At Last
My Face for the World to See
The Horned Man
The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor
Doll Palace
Last Night
Where To?: A Hack Memoir
The Wife
The House of Mirth
Backing Into Forward: A Memoir
I Only Read It for the Cartoons: The New Yorker’s Most Brilliantly Twisted Artists
Mr. Wicker
The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany
Give + Take
Senseless
All Those Vanished Engines
Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
A Princess of Roumania
Death Comes for the Archbishop
2013
Bleak House
Confusion
The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War
Lucky Jim
A Sport and a Pastime
Engine Summer
The Original 1982
Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments
Distrust That Particular Flavor
The Other Side of the Tiber: Reflections on Time in Italy
Chess Story
Moby-Dick
Little, Big
Sabbath’s Theater
Portrait Inside My Head: Essays
To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise
The Oresteia
Payback: The Case for Revenge
A Month in the Country
Checkpoint
Portnoy’s Complaint
The Death of Ivan Ilych – Leo Tolstoy (r)
Stoner
A Month in the Country
Vineland
The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran
Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir
The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning
Another Insane Devotion: On the Love of Cats and Persons
Everyman
The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion
The Fifty-First State
The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism
Solo Faces
Getting Personal: Selected Essays
Barracuda in the Attic
Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad
The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman
2012
The Sun Also Rises
The Learners
Money
Brideshead Revisited
Selected Stories
Tropic of Cancer
Travesties
Metropole
Inherent Vice
Coriolanus
“Family Happiness” / “Happily Ever After”
The Living End
Darkness Visible
Uncle Vanya
Solaris
Meditations
Austerlitz
Selected Stories
Wise Blood
Rabbit, Run
Housekeeping
O, How the Wheel Becomes It!
Take Time for Paradise
The Aeneid
The Stranger
I Totally Meant To Do That
The Early History of Rome (Books I-V)
Cultural Amnesia
Rome and Italy: Books VI-X of the History of Rome from its Foundation
The Sense of an Ending
Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories
An Open Book
Metamorphoses
The Good Soldier
King Lear
Capital
Chess Story
Bartleby & Co.
Seven Pleasures
The Emigrants
Fifth Business
The Manticore
World of Wonders
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
World War Z
Journey into the Past
How the End Begins
Selected Stories
The Silence of Trees
Night Train
1984
2011
The Imperfectionists
A Question of Upbringing
The Age of Innocence
A Buyer’s Market
The Acceptance World
1959: The Year Everything Changed
Arcadia
At Lady Molly’s
Time’s Arrow
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Leopard
Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
“A River Runs Through It
The Kindly Ones
Nemesis
The Valley of Bones
Bespoke: Savile Row Ripped and Smoothed
The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
Everyman
The Soldier’s Art
Zero History
The Junket (Kindle Single)
The Military Philosophers
The Leopard
Books Do Furnish a Room
The Finkler Question
Temporary Kings
Wise Blood
Hearing Secret Harmonies
Scoop
The Trial
Hitch-22
2010
Cloud Atlas
Catcher in the Rye
Winesburg, Ohio
The Ask
The Night of the Gun
Indignation
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)
Pattern Recognition
Less Than Zero
Imperial Bedrooms
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (r)
Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up
Fly Fishing with Darth Vader
The Iliad
Never Let Me Go
The Odyssey
Black Swan Green
2009
The Last Good Kiss
The Hot Rock
The Complete Essays
Liar’s Poker
The Lemur
Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction
Nine Stories
Franny and Zooey
Antony and Cleopatra
Killing Yourself To Live
Arcadia
The Hunter
Killshot
Moby Dick
George, Being George
When The Shooting Stops … The Cutting Begins: A Film Editor’s Story
On Writing
Up in the Air
Gould’s Book of Fish
Hadji Murat
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Everyman
2008
The Counterlife
The Solitudes
No Country for Old Men
Exit Ghost
A Fan’s Notes
Love and Sleep
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (r)
Lush Life
The Secret Sharer – Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
Daemonomania
Netherland
Endless Things
The Dunwich Horror – H.P. Lovecraft
Camp Concentration
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
A Reader’s Manifesto
The Beast in the Jungle – Henry James
The Good Rat
Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko
When Genius Failed
The Death of Ivan Ilych – Leo Tolstoy (r)
The Long Goodbye
Samaritan
The Spy in the Ointment – Donald Westlake (r)
The Great Gatsby
Heyday
2007
Under the Volcano
The One from the Other
Ella Minnow Pea
Snow
The Iliad
Taliban
Then We Came to the End
Mergers & Acquisitions
Flashman
Seven Types of Ambiguity
Aspects of the Novel
Amsterdam
Oedipus the King
About Writing
The Metamorphosis
Oedipus at Colonus
Saturday
The Look of Architecture
London Fields
The Ghost Writer
79 Short Essays on Design
Zuckerman Unbound
Spook Country
Rock n Roll
Middlemarch
A Confederacy of Dunces
Love is a Mix Tape
The Anatomy Lesson
The Misanthrope
The Songlines
An American Dream
2006
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry
The Substance of Style
Letters from New Orleans
Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva
Norwood
Richard II
Henry IV, Part 1
Masters of Atlantis
Henry IV, Part 2
Henry V
Geek Love
I’m Losing You
Clockers
Explaining Hitler
The Power Broker
Arcadia
All the King’s Men
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril
Gilead
Gravity’s Rainbow
Pride & Prejudice
With Nails
Little, Big
Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos
Chronicles, Vol. 1
Dark Reflections
Gringos
Kaddish
March Violets
The Pale Criminal
A German Requiem
The Shakespeare Wars
2005
The System of the World
On the Natural History of Destruction
Swann’s Way
Preston Falls
Within a Budding Grove
The Virgin Suicides
The Guermantes Way
Sodom and Gomorrah
The Captive
The Fugitive
Time Regained
The Wasp Factory
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Perfume
The Underminer
Madame Bovary
A Farewell To Arms
A Canticle for Leibowitz
How Proust Can Change Your Life
Don Quixote
Number9Dream
Tender Is the Night
The Sun Also Rises
Pale Fire
Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
Why New Orleans Matters
The Future and Its Enemies
2004
Intelligence Wars
Into the Wild
Hadji Murat
Radiance
The Beach
We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
The Elsewhere Community
The Tesseract
Phallos
Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung
Trainspotting
Foucault’s Pendulum
Porno
Flaubert’s Parrot
Ajax
Quicksilver
The Confusion
2003
Prague
Gould’s Book of Fish
Pattern Recognition
The Immensity of the Here and Now
The Business of Books
The Immensity of the Here and Now
The Muse Asylum
The Coast of Utopia I: Voyage
The Coast of Utopia II: Shipwreck
The Coast of Utopia III: Salvage
Master Class
Cryptonomicon
Moneyball
The Immensity of the Here and Now
Men in Black
The Plague
Carter Beats the Devil
The Fall of the Towers
The Diamond Age
Lolita
American Gods
Gould’s Book of Fish
2002
Lit Life
Plowing the Dark
Screen
The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests
The Mad Man
Invisible Cities
Ravelstein
Red Harvest
The Cheese Monkeys
Desolation Road
The Counterlife
Jernigan
The Dying Animal
The Debt to Pleasure
Why Orwell Matters
Atlantis: Three Tales
Ghostwritten
2001
Book Business – Jason Epstein
Going Native – Stephen Wright (r)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter Thompson
Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up To Me – Richard Farina (r)
The Dog of the South – Charles Portis
The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests – Paul West (r)
Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
Much Ado About Nothing – William Shakespeare (r)
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (r)
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Swann’s Way – Marcel Proust (r)
The Mad Man – Samuel R. Delany
2000
Enigma – Richard Harris
This Wild Darkness – Harold Brodkey
Loose Balls – Jayson Williams
Harlot’s Ghost – Norman Mailer
I Married a Communist – Philip Roth
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests – Paul West
The Human Stain – Philip Roth
The Wonders of the Invisible World – David Gates • Listen to our podcast
The Secret Parts of Fortune – Ron Rosenbaum • Listen to our podcast
Richard II – William Shakespeare (r)
Ciphers – Paul Di Filippo • Listen to our podcast
The Lost Scrapbook – Evan Dara
The Biographer’s Tale – A.S. Byatt
Turn of the Century – Kurt Andersen • Listen to our podcast
Alcestis – Euripides
Oedipus the King – Sophocles (r)
Oedipus at Colonus – Sophocles (r)
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
1999
The Greek Philosophers – WKC Guthrie
Literary Lives: George Orwell
The Professor and the Madman – Simon Winchester
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carre
All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
The Einstein Intersection – Samuel R. Delany
Masters of Atlantis – Charles Portis
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
History of the Peloponnesian War – Thucydides
The Designated Mourner – Wallace Shawn
The Singing Detective – Dennis Potter (r)
1984: Collected Letters – Samuel R. Delany
Shorter Views – Samuel R. Delany
1998
Preston Falls – David Gates • Listen to our podcast
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (r)
1997
Deception – Philip Roth (r)
Don Quixote – Miguel De Cervantes
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
Idoru – William Gibson
1996
Hapgood – Tom Stoppard
Miss America – Howard Stern
Indian Ink – Tom Stoppard
Arcadia – Tom Stoppard (r)
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline – George Saunders
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Remote – David Shields
High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me – Richard Farina (r)
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Mumbo Jumbo – Ishmael Reed
Omens of Millennium – Harold Bloom • Listen to our podcast
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich – Danilo Kis
1995
The Judgment – Franz Kakfa
The Porcupine – Julian Barnes
The Overcoat – Nikolai Gogol
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Hadji Murat – Leo Tolstoy
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth (r)
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
V. – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Zuckerman Bound – Philip Roth
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Arcadia – Tom Stoppard
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance – Richard Powers
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
Galatea 2.2 – Richard Powers
Travesties – Tom Stoppard
Microserfs – Douglas Coupland
City of Glass – Paul Auster
Ghosts – Paul Auster
The Locked Room – Paul Auster
Phaedrus – Plato (r)
Spring 1995 (St. John’s College)
Endgame – Samuel Beckett
Particles and Luck – Jones
Leviathan – Paul Auster
Amusing Ourselves to Death – Neil Postman
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog – Mark Leyner
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Meditations on First Philosophy – Rene Descartes
The Republic – Plato (r)
The Woman Lit by Fireflies – Jim Harrison
Winter Break 1994/95
The Misanthrope – Moliere
Daisy Miller – Henry James
Meno – Plato (r)
Medea – Euripides
Fall 1994 (St. John’s College)
The Nature of Things – Lucretius
The Pugilist at Rest – Thom Jones
Discourse on the Method – Rene Descartes (r)
The Odyssey – Homer (r)
Spring 1994 (St. John’s College)
VOX – Nicholson Baker
The Republic – Plato (Bloom)
Life After God – Douglas Coupland
The Prince – Machiavelli (r)
Second Treatise on Government – John Locke
Second Discourse On Inequality – Jean-Jacque Rousseau
Elements of the Philosophy of Right – Hegel
Summer 1994
Going Native – Stephen Wright
Immortality – Milan Kundera
What They Did to Princess Paragon – Rob Rodi
Winter Break 1993/94
The Divine Invasion – Philip K.Dick
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer – Philip K.Dick
Fall 1993 (St. John’s College)
Iliad – Homer (r)
Franny and Zooey – JD Salinger
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Among the Dead – Michael Tolkin
Odyssey – Homer (r)
The Writing Life – Annie Dillard
King Lear – William Shakespeare (r)
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (r)
Oresteia – Aeschylus (r)
Turn of the Screw – Henry James
Oedipus the King / Antigone – Sophocles (r)
The Bakkhai – Euripides
Hippolytus – Euripides
VALIS – Philip K.Dick
Summer 1993
Neuromancer – William Gibson (r)
The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Swann’s Way – Marcel Proust
The Last Gentleman – Walker Percy
Balthazar – Lawrence Durrell
Within a Budding Grove – Marcel Proust
Elvissey – Jack Womack
All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
Mountolive – Lawrence Durrell
Last Notes from Home – Frederick Exley
Love in the Ruins – Walker Percy
Virtual Light – William Gibson
Clea – Lawrence Durrell
Spring 1993 (Hampshire)
Crito – Plato
Apology – Plato
Black Spring – Henry Miller
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Fast Sofa – Bruce Craven
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
1984 – George Orwell (r)
Goodbye Columbus – Philip Roth
A River Runs Through It – Norman Maclean (r)
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller (r)
Appointment in Samarra – John O’Hara
Pages from a Cold Island – Frederick Exley
Generation X – Douglas Coupland (r)
Marco Millions – Eugene O’Neill
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Much Ado About Nothing – William Shakespeare
Mostly Harmless – Douglas Adams
Winter Break 1992/93
Jernigan – David Gates (r) • Listen to our podcast
Howard’s End – EM Forster
Factotum – Charles Bukowski (r)
Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut (r)
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller (r)
Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fall 1992 (Hampshire)
Gilgamesh – Gardner / Maier
Oresteia – Aeschylus (Lattimore)
Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera (r)
Inside the Whale – George Orwell
A River Runs Through It – Norman Maclean
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Medea – Euripides (Warner)
Euthyphro – Plato
Krazy Kat – Jay Cantor
Et Tu, Babe – Mark Leyner
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
Bright Lights, Big City – Jay McInerney
A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley (r)
Summer 1992
A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley
The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
1984 – George Orwell
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller (r)
The Songlines – Bruce Chatwin (r)
Camp Concentration – Thomas Disch
Factotum – Charles Bukowski
Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs (r)
Helen – Euripides (Meagher)
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Neuromancer – William Gibson (r)
Generation X – Douglas Coupland
Count Zero – William Gibson (r)
Meno – Plato (r)
Mona Lisa Overdrive – William Gibson (r)
Jernigan – David Gates • Listen to our podcast
Phaedo – Plato
Theaetetus – Plato
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler (r)
A Commentary on Plato’s Meno – Jacob Klein
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (r)
Phaedrus – Plato (r)
Spring 1992 (Hampshire)
Gilgamesh – tr. Mason
Nature – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Signs of the Times – Carlyle
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Typee – Herman Melville
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
Poetics of Music – Igor Stravinsky
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville (r)
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky (Pevear / Volokhonsky) (r)
The Fall – Albert Camus
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
The Confidence Man – Herman Melville
Winter Break 1991/92
Candide – Voltaire (r)
The Man Who Was Thursday – GK Chesterton
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann (r)
Billy Budd – Herman Melville
Othello – William Shakespeare
Oedipus the King / Oedipus at Colonus / Antigone – Sophocles
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Merchant of Venice – William Shakespeare
The Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
The Winter’s Tale – William Shakespeare
Fall 1991 (Hampshire)
The Odyssey – Homer (Fitzgerald)
Macbeth – William Shakespeare (r)
King Richard the Second – William Shakespeare
Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth – Leo Tolstoy
King Henry the Fourth, part I – William Shakespeare
King Henry the Fourth, part II – William Shakespeare
King Henry the Fifth – William Shakespeare (r)
Culture and Anarchy – Matthew Arnold
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories – Leo Tolstoy
As You Like It – William Shakespeare
Father Sergius / Master and Man / The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
Hamlet – William Shakespeare (r)
The Tempest – William Shakespeare (r)
Phaedrus – Plato
Slam – Lewis Shiner
Resurrection – Leo Tolstoy
King Lear – William Shakespeare (r)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert Pirsig (r)
Symposium – Plato
Lila – Robert Pirsig
The Prince – Machiavelli
Summer 1991
V. – Thomas Pynchon (r)
The Art of Fiction – John Gardner
The Illuminatus! Trilogy – Shea & Wilson
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town – Charles Bukowski
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
Out on Blue Six – Ian McDonald
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist – Mark Leyner
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
Serial Killers – Norris
Earth – David Brin
Greasy Lake and Other Stories – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone – Richard Farina
The Difference Engine – William Gibson, Bruce Sterling
Homeboy – Seth Morgan
Patrimony – Philip Roth
King Henry the Fifth – William Shakespeare
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
The Iliad – Homer (Fitzgerald)
Good Omens – Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
Spring 1991 (Hampshire)
Galaxies – Barry Malzberg
Poor Folk – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Clocks and Culture – Cipolla
Theory of the Novel – Georg Lukacs
Dubliners – James Joyce
The Double – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Deception – Philip Roth
Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce (r)
History of Sexuality, Vol. I – Michel Foucault
Civilization and Its Discontents – Sigmund Freud
The Moonstone – William Willkie Collins
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Old Goriot – Honore De Balzac
The Possessed – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Red Dragon – Thomas Harris
The Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris
The Heart of Darkness – James Conrad (r)
Desolation Road – Ian McDonald (r)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera (r)
Winter Break 1990/91
Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs
Green Eyes – Lucius Shepard
The Bushwhacked Piano – Thomas McGuane
Junky – William S. Burroughs
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller (r)
“Death in Venice” – Thomas Mann
Fall 1990 (Hampshire)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
Mona Lisa Overdrive – William Gibson (r)
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon (r)
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
Aura – Carlos Fuentes
Words Without Pictures – ed. Niles
Summer 1990
In Patagonia – Bruce Chatwin
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (r)
Ivory – Mike Resnick
Life During Wartime – Lucius Shepard
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (r)
Burning Chrome – William Gibson (r)
Islands in the Net – Bruce Sterling
The Singing Detective – Dennis Potter
Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up To Me – Richard Farina (r)
Peter Pan – JM Barrie
Zen in the Art of Writing – Ray Bradbury
If the River was Whiskey – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Presumed Innocent – Scott Turow
Spring 1990 (Hampshire)
Concrete Island – JG Ballard
Fifth Business – Robertson Davies
Neuromancer – William Gibson (r)
Zen in the Art of Archery – Eugen Herrigel
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
The Songlines – Bruce Chatwin
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
Faust, part I – Goethe
Metrophage – Richard Kadrey
Winter Break 1989/90
King Lear – William Shakespeare
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
The Stranger – Albert Camus
Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass – Lewis Carroll
Fall 1989 (Tulane)
Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky (Garnett)
Mr. Palomar – Italo Calvino
V. – Thomas Pynchon
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Software – Rudy Rucker
The Doors of Perception – Aldous Huxley
Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Bach
Eclipse – John Shirley
Hedda Gabler – Henrik Ibsen
Cryano de Bergerac – Rostrand
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Oedipus the King – Sophocles
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
The Rubai’yat of Omar Khayyam – Fitzgerald
Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett
Frontera – Lewis Shiner
The Tempest – William Shakespeare
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
Candide – Voltaire
First Love and Other Sorrows – Harold Brodkey
Do the Right Thing screenplay – Spike Lee
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie – Tennessee Williams
Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller
Three Sisters – Anton Chekhov