Book Index

Below you’ll find every book I’ve read and recommended on this site, categorized by author. Starred books are my top favorites. Happy reading!

A

• Abbott, Megan – Dare Me
• Abbott, Megan – Give Me Your Hand
• Abbott, Megan – You Will Know Me
• Acuff, Jon – Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done
• Adachi, Kenra – The Lazy Genius Way*
• Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi – Americanah *
• Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi – We Should All Be Feminists
• Anderson, Carol – White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide *
• Anderson, Laurie Halse – The Impossible Knife of Memory
• Andrews, Alexandra – Who Is Maud Dixon?
• Armstrong, Heather B. – The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live
• Attenberg, Jami – All Grown Up
• Attenberg, Jami – All This Could Be Yours

B

• Baker, Peter – Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House
• Baldwin, James – The Fire Next Time
• Baldwin, James – Go Tell It on the Mountain *
• Baldwin, James – If Beale Street Could Talk
• Bauer, Carlene – Frances and Bernard
• Benedict, Elizabeth (editor) – Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession 
• Bennett, Britt – The Mothers *
• Bessey, Sarah – Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women
• Bessey, Sarah – Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God*
• Bessey, Sarah – Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
• Beyda, Emily – The Body Double
• Bogel, Anne – I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life
• Bogel, Anne – Reading People: How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything
• Bourne, Edmund J. – The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook
• Boyle, Erin – Simple Matters: Living with Less and Ending Up with More 
• Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451
• Brands, H. W. – Reagan: The Life
• Brennan-Jobs, Lisa – Small Fry
• Brower, Kate Andersen – The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House
• Brower, Kate Andersen – Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump *
• Brown, Austin Channing – I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
• Brown, Brené – Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
• Brown, Brené – Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead *
• Brown, Brené – The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
• Brownstein, Carrie – Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
• Brunt, Carol Rifka – Tell the Wolves I’m Home *
• Bush, Laura – Spoken from the Heart
• Butler, Halle – The New Me

C

• Carty-Williams, Candice – Queenie
• Carver, Raymond – Cathedral *
• Cep, Casey – Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
• Choi, Susan – Trust Exercise
• Cline, Emma – The Girls
• Clinton, Hillary Rodham – What Happened
• Coates, Ta-Nehisi – Between the World and Me
• Coetzee, J. M. – Disgrace
• Cooper, Helen – The Downstairs Neighbor
• Coulter, Kristi – Nothing Good Can Come from This
• Crosley, Sloan – Look Alive Out There
• Cross-Smith, Lisa – This Close to Okay
• Cullen, Dave – Columbine *
• Curtis, Rosie – We Met in December

D

• Danler, Stephanie – Sweetbitter
• Demick, Barbara – Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
• Denfeld, Rene – The Child Finder
• Dicks, Matthew – Twenty-One Truths About Love
• Didion, Joan – The White Album
• Doerr, Anthony – All the Light We Cannot See
• Douglass, Frederick – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• Dryer, Benjamin – Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
• Du Mez, Kristin Kobes – Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation*
• Duhigg, Charles – The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

E

• Edvardsson, M. T. – A Nearly Normal Family
• Egan, Jennifer – A Visit from the Goon Squad
• Eggers, Dave – The Circle
• Elden, Roxanna – Adequate Yearly Progress 
• Ellis, Helen – Southern Lady Code
• Ellison, J. T. – Good Girls Lie
• Enns, Peter – How the Bible Actually Works: In Which I Explain How an Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Books Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers–and Why That’s Great News
• Ephron, Nora – I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
• Erickson, Scott – Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-with-Us Then, Here, and Now
• Esther, Elizabeth – Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future
• Eugenides, Jeffrey – Middlesex *
• Evans, Rachel Held – A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master”

F

• Fey, Tina – Bossypants *
• Finn, A. J. – The Woman in the Window
• Flanders, Cait – The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store
• Flynn, Gillian – Dark Places
• Flynn, Gillian – Gone Girl *
• Flynn, Gillian – Sharp Objects
• Foer, Jonathan Safran – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close*
• Foley, Lucy – The Guest List
• Foley, Lucy – The Hunting Party
• Frankel, Laurie – This Is How It Always Is
• Frazier, Jean Kyoung – Pizza Girl
• French, Tana – In the Woods *
• French, Tana – The Likeness *
• French, Tana – The Witch Elm

G

• Gaines, Joanna – The Magnolia Table
• Gay, Roxane – Bad Feminist *
• Gay, Roxane – Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
• Gay, Roxane – An Untamed State
• Gerard, Tieghan – Half Baked Harvest
• Gibbs, Nancy and Michael Duffy – The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity
• Graham, Lauren – Someday, Someday, Maybe
• Green, John – Looking for Alaska
• Greene, Andy – The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s
• Greene, Bob – Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents
• Gyasi, Yaa – Homegoing *
• Gyasi, Yaa – Transcendent Kingdom

H

• Haig, Matt – The Midnight Library
• Haig, Matt – Notes on a Nervous Planet
• Haig, Matt – Reasons to Stay Alive *
• Hall, Araminta – Imperfect Women
• Hanff, Helene – 84, Charing Cross Road
• Hari, Johann – Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
• Harper, Jane – The Dry
• Harper, Jane – Force of Nature
• Harper, Jane – The Lost Man
• Harper, Jane – The Survivors
• Harris, Kamala – The Truths We Hold: An American Journey
• Henríquez, Cristina – The Book of Unknown Americans
• Hill, Nathan – The Nix *
• Hornby, Nick – Funny Girl
• Hornby, Nick – State of the Union: A Marriage in Ten Parts
• Hornby, Nick – Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books
• Hunt, Margot – For Better and Worse

I

• Irby, Samantha – Wow, No Thank You
• Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never Let Me Go
• Ishiguro, Kazuo – The Remains of the Day *

J

• Jackson, Shirley – The Lottery and Other Stories
• Jacob, Mira – Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
• Jamison, Leslie – The Empathy Exams
• Jamison, Leslie – Let It Scream, Let It Burn
• Jamison, Leslie – The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath *
• Jerkins, Morgan – This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America
• Jewell, Lisa – The Family Upstairs
• Jewell, Lisa – The Girls in The Garden
• Jewell, Lisa – I Found You
• Jewell, Lisa – Then She Was Gone
• Jewell, Lisa – Watching You *
• Johnson, Lindsey Lee – The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
• Joyce, Rachel – The Music Shop

K

• Kaling, Mindy – Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
• Kantor, Jodi and Megan Twohey – She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
• Kendi, Ibram X. – How to Be an Antiracist
• Kepnes, Caroline – Providence
• Kondo, Marie – The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
• Korelitz, Jean Hanff – The Plot
• Koul, Scaachi – One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
• Krakauer, Jon – Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town *

L

• LaForce, Thessaly and Jane Mount – My Ideal Bookshelf
• Lahiri, Jhumpa – Interpreter of Maladies
• Lamott, Anne – Almost Everything: Notes on Hope
• Lamott, Anne – Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair
• LaMarche, Una – Unabrow: Misadventures of a Late Bloomer 
• Lamott, Anne – Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
• Lamott, Anne – Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
• LaPlante, Eve – American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans
• Larsen, Nella – Passing
• LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole – Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
• Leilani, Raven – Luster
• Levin, Ira – The Stepford Wives
• Lewis, C. S. – Till We Have Faces *
• Lewis, Matthew – The Monk
• Locke, Attica – Bluebird, Bluebird
• Lockhart, E. – We Were Liars
• Lockwood, Patricia – Priestdaddy

M

• Macy, Beth – Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America
• Makkai, Rebecca – The Great Believers *
• Maren, Mesha – Sugar Run
• Martin, Steve – Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
• Martin, Steve – The Pleasure of My Company
• McAllister, Tom – How to Be Safe
• McGowan, Martina – I Am the Rage
• McKoy, Knox – All Things Reconsidered: How Rethinking What We Know Helps Us Know What We Believe
• McKoy, Knox – The Wondering Years: How Pop Culture Helped Me Answer Life’s Biggest Questions
• McPhail, Will – In
• McTiernan, Dervla – The Ruin
• Meacham, Jon – Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
• Medina, Meg – Burn Baby Burn
• Mendelsund, Peter and David J. Alworth – The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature
• Michaelides, Alex – The Silent Patient
• Miller, Chanel – Know My Name
• Miller, Kelsey – I’ll Be There for You: The One about Friends
• Miranda, Lin-Manuel and Jeremy McCarter – Hamilton: The Revolution
• Moreno-Garcia, Silvia – Signal to Noise
• Moriarty, Liane – Big Little Lies
• Moriarty, Liane – Nine Perfect Strangers
• Morrison, Toni – Jazz
• Moshfegh, Ottessa – My Year of Rest and Relaxation *
• Mount, Jane – Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany
• Murakami, Haruki – 1Q84
• Murakami, Haruki – Norwegian Wood
• Murakami, Haruki – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
• Murato, Sayaka – Convenience Store Woman

N

• Ng, Celeste – Everything I Never Told You
• Ng, Celeste – Little Fires Everywhere *
• Niffenegger, Audrey – The Time Traveler’s Wife
• Noah, Trevor – Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
• Notess, Hannah Faith (editor) – Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical
• Nouwen, Henri J. M. – The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom *
• Novak, B. J. – One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

O

• Obama, Michelle – Becoming
• O’Connor, Flannery – The Complete Stories *
• O’Connor, Flannery – The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
• O’Connor, Flannery – Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
• Offill, Jenny – Dept. of Speculation
• Oliver, Mary – Devotions
• Oluo, Ijeoma – So You Want to Talk About Race
• Olzmann, Matthew – Mezzanines

P

• Paris, B. A. – The Dilemma
• Passarella, Elizabeth – Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York 
• Patchett, Ann – This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
• Paul, Pamela – My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
• Pessl, Marisha – Night Film *
• Pessl, Marisha – Special Topics in Calamity Physics
• Phillips, Arthur – The Song Is You
• Pinborough, Sarah – Behind Her Eyes
• Poeppel, Amy – Musical Chairs
• Potok, Chaim – My Name Is Asher Lev
• Pressfield, Steven – The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Creative Battles

Q

• Quatro, Jami – The Fire Sermon
• Quatro, Jami – I Want to Show You More

R

• Rankine, Claudia – Citizen
• Reichl, Ruth – Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
• Reid, Kiley – Such a Fun Age
• Reid, Taylor Jenkins – Daisy Jones & the Six *
• Rilke, Rainer Maria – The Poetry of Rilke
• Robinson, Marilynne – Gilead *
• Rooney, Sally – Normal People
• Rose, Phyllis – The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading
• Rowell, Rainbow – Fangirl
• Rowell, Rainbow – Landline
• Runyan, Tania – Second Sky
• Runway, Tania – What Will Soon Take Place
• Russell, Kate Elizabeth – My Dark Vanessa *

S

• Sager, Riley – Final Girls
• Sager, Riley – Home After Dark
• Sager, Riley – The Last Time I Lied
• Sager, Riley – Lock Every Door
• Sales, Nancy Jo – American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers
• Satrapi, Marjane – The Complete Persepolis
• Saunders, George – Tenth of December
• Schultz, Emily – Little Threats
• Sedaris, David – Calypso *
• Sedaris, David – Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
• Sedaris, David – Me Talk Pretty One Day
• Sedaris, David – Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 
• Shelley, Mary – Frankenstein
• Shields, Sharma – The Cassandra
• Sifton, Sam – The New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes
• Silver, Josie – One Day in December
• Sims, Laura – Looker
• Sittenfeld, Curtis – Rodham
• Slimani, Leila – The Perfect Nanny
• Smith, Alexis M. – Glaciers *
• Smith, Myquillyn – Cozy Minimalist Home: More Style, Less Stuff
• Smith, Tracy K. – Life on Mars
• Smith, Zadie – Grand Union
• Smith, Zadie – Intimations
• Solomon, Carrie, ed. – Chefs’ Fridges: More Than 35 World-Renowned Cooks Reveal What They Eat at Home
• Souza, Pete – Obama: An Intimate Portrait
• Stanley, Jessamyn – Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love Your Body
• Stead, Rebecca – When You Reach Me *
• Stone, Nic – Dear Martin
• Strayed, Cheryl – Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life by Dear Sugar
• Strayed, Cheryl – Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
• Summers, Courtney – Sadie
• Swanson, Peter – Before She Knew Him
• Swanson, Peter – Eight Perfect Murders
• Swanson, Peter – Her Every Fear

T

• Takiff, Michael – A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him 
• Tartt, Donna – The Goldfinch
• Tartt, Donna – The Secret History *
• Taylor, Barbara Brown – An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith *
• Teigen, Chrissy – Cravings
• Thomas, R. Eric – Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America *
• Thorpe, Rufi – Dear Fang, With Love
• Tolstoy, Leo – Anna Karenina
• Tran, Phuc – Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
• Tung, Debbie – Book Love
• Tur, Katy – Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

V

• Van Ness, Jonathan – Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love
• Vuong, Ocean – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

W

• Walker, Alice – The Color Purple
• Walker, Jerald – How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
• Walker, Karen Thompson – The Dreamers
• Ward, Jesmyn (editor) – The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race
• Ward, Jesmyn – Salvage the Bones
• Ward, Jesmyn – Sing, Unburied, Sing *
• Ware, Ruth – The Turn of the Key
• Ware, Ruth – The Woman in Cabin 10
• Way, Camilla – The Lies We Told
• Weber, Carolyn – Surprised by Oxford
• Weir, Megan MacLean – The Book of Essie
• Westover, Tara – Educated *
• Whipple, Chris – The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
• Whitehead, Colson – The Nickel Boys
• Wilde, Oscar – The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Williams, John – Stoner *
• Williams, Odette – Simple Cake
• Wilson, Andrew – Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted
• Wiman, Christian – My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer *
• Wolitzer, Meg – The Female Persuasion
• Woodward, Bob – Fear: Trump in the White House
• Wright, Lawrence – Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Y

• Yanagihara, Hanya – A Little Life *

Z

• Zarr, Sara – What We Lost
• Zinna, Diane – The All-Night Sun
• Zusak, Markus – The Book Thief