My Reading List

A person’s bookshelf
is another window
into their soul.

Jerry Windley-Daoust

What follows is a (very) partial list of the books I’ve read over the years. While ebooks and online ordering make it easier to track the books I’ve read in the past ten years or so, prior to that I have nothing but my physical bookshelves and my memory to rely on.

Here’s my ranking system:

Five stars: A masterpiece…and I’d gladly read it more than once.
Four stars: The cream of the crop…somewhere in the top five percent of its genre.
Three stars: Not only did I enjoy it, I’d recommend it to my friends.
Two stars: Better than average in its genre…worth the time and money I spent on it.
One star: Meh. Not bad, but I’ve either read better or I can easily imagine how it could be better.

I’m combining different genres in this list, which makes for strange bedfellows, but there you have it.

So, without further ado, here is my very partial, work-in-progress list of books I’ve read (and some I’d recommend). Within each rating, books are listed in no particular order.

Five Stars

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

On Writing, by Steven King

An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

To Know As We Are Known by Parker Palmer

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

On the Shores of Silver Lake + On the Banks of Plum Creek, etc., (“Little House” series) by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works by Flannery O’Connor

Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Four Stars

Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle

Helgoland: The World of Quantum Theory by Carlo Rovelli

Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology by Aldo Leopold

The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby

Is This All There Is?: On Resurrection and Eternal Life by Gerhard Lohfink

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond

River of Doubt, by Candice Millard

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo

Three Stars

Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh: A Novel by Mo Yan

Good Poems by Keillor, Garrison

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Kelly, Scott

Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Chua, Amy

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Dreher, Rod

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need by Brody, Jessica

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

1984 by George Orwell

Rising Strong by Brene Brown

The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig

AAA Book Club

The AAA Book Club is a men’s book club that has been meeting…well, just about forever, but at least since I joined in 2006. We only read nonfiction. The “AAA” stands for affordable, accessible, and…what? No one really remembers, but I think we’ve decided to settle on “apocalyptic,” given the number of books we read about the world going to hell in a handbasket.

Following is a list of all the books I’ve read with the book club. The book club’s list is about thirty titles longer, but I culled out the ones I didn’t read or don’t remember. The titles are listed from 2006 to present, in descending order.

1. God’s Politics, by Jim Wallis
2. Wittgenstein’s Poker, by David Edmonds and John Eidinow
3. On Writing, by Steven King
4. For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard
5. Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America, by Stephen Bloom
6. Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
7. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond
8. Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, by Krista Tippett
9. River of Doubt, by Candice Millard
10. The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart
11. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel
12. Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner
13. Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, by Dr. Atul Gawande
14. Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
15. Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, by John McKnight and Peter Block
16. Bayou Farwell, by Mike Tidwell
17. Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder, by Kent Nerburn
18. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, by Peter Hessler
19. Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul
20. 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life, by Karen Armstrong
21. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt
22. Post American World 2.0, by Fareed Zakaria
23. Healing the Heart of Democracy, by Parker Palmer
24. Me the People: One Man’s Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, by Kevin Bleyer
25. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
26. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t, by Nate Silver
27. Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace
28. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
29. Reinventing Organizations, by Frederic Lalaux
30. Life is a Miracle, by Wendell Berry
31. The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
32. Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Gunaratana
33. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo
34. Climate Change: A Very Short Intro, by Mark Maslin
35. Pope Francis: Untying the Knots, by Paul Vallely
36. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande
37. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, by Rebecca Solnit
38. My Life With the Saints, by James Martin
39. Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown
40. When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi.
41. The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein
42. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick
43. The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben
44. The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging, by Charles Vogl
45. A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, edited by Sun Yung Shin
46. Silence in the Age of Noise, by Erling Kagge
47. Our Final Invention: AI and the End of the Human Era, by James Barrat
48. Travels With Charlie, by John Steinbeck
49. Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover
50. The Second Mountain, by David Brooks
51. Love Your Enemies, by Arthur C. Brooks
52. Reclaiming Conversation, by Sherry Turtle
53. An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives, by Matt Richtel
54. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
55. A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton
56. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson
57. This is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perloth
58. Rising Strong by Brene Brown
59. The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig
60. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
61. I Never Thought Of It That Way Monica Guzman

Cover art credit: Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay