ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS:

Aztec, by Gary Jennings

The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston

Love is Eternal: A Novel About Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln, by Irving Stone.

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

Kira, Kira, by Cynthia Kadohata

The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank

READING NOW: 

The Grouchy Historian, by Ed Asner

The American Revolution: A Visual History, by DK Publishing

1776, by David McCullough

Code Girls: ...American Women Code Breakers of WWII, by Liza Mundy (audiobook)

1968: The Year that Rocked the World, by Mark Kurlansky

2018 Write Well Award Anthology, edited by Rick Taubold

The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, by Samuel C. Florman

Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick

Vietnam: The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War, by Stanley Karnow

The Underground Railroad, by Charles L. Blockson

RECENT BOOKS READ (THE MOST MEMORABLE IN BOLD):

John Adams, by David McCullough

Howard's End, by E.M. Foster (audiobook)

The Kitchen God's Wife, by Amy Tan

The Water Museum (short stories), by Luis Alberto Urrea

Running in the Family, by Michael Ondaatje

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte (audiobook)

Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces..., by Ben MacIntyre

The Spy and the Traitor, by Ben Macintyre

Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo (audiobook)

Uh-Oh, by Robert Fulghum

The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah

Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (audiobook)

Someone I Used to Know, by Patty Blount

On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan

The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck (audiobook)

The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan

Chekhov's Sister, by W. D. Wetherell

A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster

Will Starling, by Ian Weir

The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells (audiobook)

What on Earth Have I Done?, by Robert Fulghum

Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

Lincoln's Dreams, by Connie Willis

Mexico City Noir, edited by Paco Ignacio Taibo II (short stories)

The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson

Flight of the Sparrow, by Amy Belding Brown (audiobook)

Slowly, Slowly in the Wind, by Patricia Highsmith (short stories)

Mrs. Bennett Has Her Say, by Jane Juska

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (audiobook)

Death Comes to the Archbishop, by Willa Cather

The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

The Stars, the Earth, the River, by Le Minh Khue (short stories from Vietnam)

A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson (audiobook)

A Round-Heeled Woman, by Jane Juska

It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It, by Robert Fulghum

The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard

Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon (audiobook)

Trap of Gold & Trail to Pie Town, by Louis L'Amour (audiobook)

A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey

Mothers and Sons, by Colm Toibin (short stories)

Echoes from the Macabre, by Daphne du Maurier (short stories)

The Librarian of Auschwitz, by Antonio Iturbe

Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, translated by Sholeh Wolpe

The Pearl, by John Steinbeck

A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry, by Michael C. Hillmann

Song of a Captive Bird, by Jasmin Darznik

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson and His World, by David Daiches

Native Son, by Richard Wright

Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome

Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Black Boy, by Richard Wright

The Conquest of Malaria in Italy, 1900-1962, by Frank Snowden, PhD.

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, by Wes Moore

Journal of a Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe

Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris

The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS, by Edward Hooper

Barrel Fever, by Davis Sedaris

The Barbary Plague, by Marilyn Chase

A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierly

Life is a Wheel: Love, Death, Etc., and a Bike Ride Across America, by Bruce Weber

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

My Antonia, by Willa Cather

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (essays), by Davis Sedaris

Mein Kampf: Words that Changed History, by Duane Damon

Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak (translation by Pevear & Volokhonsky)

The Scent of Rain and Lightning, by Nancy Pickard (audiobook)

Every Fifteen Minutes, by Lisa Scottoline (audiobook)

The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y. K. Lee (audiobook)

When You Are Engulfed in Flames (essays), by Davis Sedaris

Holidays on Ice (essays), by Davis Sedaris

Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt

'Tis: A Memoir, by Frank McCourt

Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt

Names on a Map, by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama

Lady Chatterly's Lover, by D. H. Lawrence

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, by Stephanie Oakes

Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

The Story of the Lost Child (Book 4 of 4), by Elena Ferrante

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Book 3 of 4), by Elena Ferrante (audiobook)

The Story of a New Name (Book 2 of 4), by Elena Ferrante (audiobook)

My Brilliant Friend (Book 1 of 4), by Elena Ferrante (audiobook)

Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Hunger of Memory, by Richard Rodriguez

Just Like Heaven, by Julia Quinn

Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg

Slightly Married, by Mary Balogh

Alex Cross's Trial: Alex Cross Series, Book 15, by James Patterson (audiobook)

Cancer Ward, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, by Diane Ackerman (audiobook)

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes (audiobook)

Stories and Prose Poems, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler

The Gladiators, by Arthur Koestler

The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson (audiobook)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Strange Fiction, by H.G. Wells (audiobook)

Home, by Toni Morrison (audiobook)

Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, by David Remnick

Seven Days that Shook the World: The Collapse of Soviet Communism, by Stuart Loory

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, by Geraldine Brooks (audiobook)

The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington, by Daniel Mark Epstein

Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, by Stephanie Coontz

The Giver, by Lois Lowry (audiobook)

Salt to the Sea (the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff), by Ruta Sepetys (audiobook)

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand

Hunting Eichmann, by Neal Bascomb

A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

The Men Who United the States, by Simon Winchester (audiobook)

Pacific, by Simon Winchester (audiobook)

Death Rides a Pale Horse, by Dusty Rhodes (audiobook)

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan (audiobook)

Message from Nam, by Danielle Steele

Juliet's Nurse, by Lois Leveen

Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight V. Swain

You Can't Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction, by Lee Gutkind

The Playwright's Guidebook, by Stuart Spencer

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (audiobook)

Seeds of Tomorrow, by Mikhail Sholokhov

The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler

Noah's Compass, by Anne Tyler (audiobook)

Johnny Angel, by Danielle Steele

In the Midst of Death, by Lawrence Block

A Time to Kill, by John Grisham

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (audiobook)

One Summer: America 1927, by Bill Bryson

The Short Story: 30 Masterpieces, edited by Beverly Lawn

Midnight Rain, by Holly Lisle

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII, by Iris Chang

Killing Patton, by Bill O'Reilly

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

I'm a Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson

The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson

Defiance, by Nechama Tec

Uncle Vanya (play), by Anton Chekhov

The House on the Embankment, by Yuri Trifonov

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

Another Life, by Yuri Trifonov

Sashenka, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain (audiobook)

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi

Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Romanov Sisters, by Helen Rappaport

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Prague Fatal, by Philip Kerr (a WWII mystery)

Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin

Queen of America, by Luis Alberto Urrea (sequel to The Hummingbird's Daughter)

Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border, by Luis Alberto Urrea

Undaunted Courage (Lewis and Clark), by Stephen F. Ambrose

The Devil's Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea

The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea

Eclipse, A Novel of Lewis and Clark, by Richard S. Wheeler

The Children's Blizzard (of 1888 ) by David Laskin

A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls (audiobook), by Ernest Hemingway

Puppy Chow Is Better Than Prozac, by Bruce Goldstein

Without You, There is No Us, by Suki Kim (about North Korea)

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

You Can't Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe

Long After Midnight, by Ray Bradbury (short stories)

The City of Thieves, by David Benioff

Dresden, by Frederick Taylor

Last Jew of Treblinka, by Chil Rajchman

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, by Chung Jang

Assembling California, by John McPhee

Krakatoa (volcano), by Simon Winchester

A Crack in the Edge of the World (SF earthquake), by Simon Winchester

Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel

The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square, by Ned Sublette

Savvy, by Ingrid Law

Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada

The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge

American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman who Defied the Puritans, by Eva LaPlante

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Volt, by Alan Heathcock (short stories)

Final Flight: The Mystery of a WW II Plane Crash and the Frozen Airmen in the High Sierra, by Peter Stekel

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann

Hattie Big Sky, by Kirby Larson

Torn Thread, by Anne Isaacs

In Arabian Nights, by Tahir Shah

The Art of Fiction, by John Gardner

The Anatomy of Story, by John Truby

Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman

A Writer at War, by Vasily Grossman

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder

Into Africa: The Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone, by Martin Dugard

Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of WWII's Greatest Rescue Mission, by Hampton Sides

Hell's Guest, by Glenn D. Frazier (Bataan Death March)

A Foot Soldier for Patton, by Michael C. Bilder

Under a Cruel Star: Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly

Crafting the Personal Essay, by Dinty W. Moore

China Men, by Maxine Hong Kingston

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor (short story collection)

Twenty-One Stories, by Graham Greene.

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner

The War Against the Jews 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz

Scarlett, by Alexandra Ripley (sequel to Gone with the Wind)

The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

Take Me With You, by Carolyn Marsden

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read

Robert E. Lee: A Biography, by Emory M. Thomas

Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, by Michael C. Ruppert

The Feast of all Saints, by Anne Rice

LONG-AGO BOOKS:

Caesar, by Colleen McCullough

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

A Separate Country, by Robert Hicks

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer

Tai-Pan, by James Clavell

Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, by Donald Johanson

Sacramento: Excursions into its History and Natural World, by William M. Holden

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance, by Laurie Garrett

Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why, by Amanda Ripley

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller

The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler

My Mother / My Self, by Nancy Friday

Passages, by Gail Sheehy

The Horse Whisperer, by Nicolas Evans

Age Wave, by Ken Dychtwald

The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver

A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking

Winged Legend: The Story of Amelia Earhart, by John Burke

Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin

Watch Your Language, by Robert Gorrell

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, by Paul Fussell

Confessions of a Medical Heretic, by Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D.

A Walk Across America, by Peter Jenkins

The Walk West: A Walk Across America 2, by Peter Jenkins

The Best American Essays, 2000, edited by Alan Lightman

The Best American Short Stories, 1999, edited by Amy Tan

Bound for Glory, by Woody Guthrie

Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl

Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Rats, Lice, and History, by Hans Zinsser

The Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Childhood 1975-80, by Molyda Szymusiak

Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi

All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot

All Things Wise and Wonderful, by James Herriot

Hawaii, by James Michener

Caravans, by James Michener

Poland, by James Michener

The Covenant, by James Michener

Texas, by James Michener

Mexico, by James Michener

The Limits to Growth, by D. Meadows

Beyond the Limits, by D. Meadows

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck

The World According to Garp, by John Irving

Serpentine, by Thomas Thompson

The Descent of Woman, by Elaine Morgan

Lust for Life (Vincent Van Gogh), by Irving Stone

Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl

The Ra Expeditions, by Thor Heyerdahl

Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham

Biko, by Donald Woods

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X & Alex Haley

The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean Auel

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury

The October Country, by Ray Bradbury

The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig

Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Floubert

Zane, by Jack Schaeffer

The Ox-Bow Incident, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

1984, by George Orwell

Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

The Ugly American, by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo

and lots more...

IN THE QUEUE :

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet A. Jacobs

A Train to Potevka: An American Spy in Russia, by Mike Ramsdell

The Origins of the Second World War in Europe, by P.M.H. Bell

Short Stories, by Langston Hughes, edited by Akiba Sullivan Harper (108)

In Search of Solomon's Mines, by Tahir Shah

Nothing that Meets the Eye, by Patricia Highsmith (SS's)

The Power and the Glory, by Graham Green

The Heart of Redness, by Zakes Mda

The Welsh Girl, by Peter Ho Davies

The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War, by Jaroslav Hasek (300+)

The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje (17)

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond

Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782, by Elizabeth A. Fenn

Naples in the Time of Cholera: 1884-1911, by Frank Snowden, PhD.

Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, by Frances FitzGerald

Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era, by Robert Buzzanco

Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building, by Richard Drinnon

The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith

Updated 5/6/19