Books I Have Read

	A	B	C	D	E	F
1	#	title	author	year read	5 Stars	Thoughts

2	1352	Stoner	John Williams	2024	4	Apparently book lovers consider this the "perfect novel". It was very good, even though it was very depressing at times. It's one of those stories that's not full of grand adventure, or even much in the way of a plot, but is very character driven. And wonderfully sad. One reviewer called it the anti-Gatsby, and I have to agree.
3	1351	A Game of Thrones	George R.R. Martin	2024	4	After many fans told me that I had to read this because George R.R. Martin was such an amazing writer, I finally decided to go the audiobook route. Normally I get very confused by high fantasy, but I was able to follow the story because I had seen the t.v. series. And, I agree with the fans, it is well written and an amazing story.
4	1350	The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store	James McBride	2024	5	I always love McBride's story telling. This one is a gem of a story, mostly set in the 1930s, in a small town in Pennsylvania, focusing on a neighborhood of Jewish immigrants and blacks. But, it's about much more, always much more.
5	1349	The Sentence	Louise Erdrich	2024	5	I have truly come to love Erdrich's stories. Her writing is so crisp and clear, and she creates wonderful characters that are placed in compelling stories. Even though it's about a ghost in a bookstore, it's not really a ghost story. It's really about people, community, and love.
6	1348	People Love Dead Jews	Dara Horn	2024	5	Wow, Horn really hits the nail on the head. She does a great job in making it clear how accepting the world is of antisemitism, while at the same time seemingly showing sorry and regret for past actions.
7	1347	American Pastoral	Philip Roth	2024	5	I get it. I totally understand why many people consider Phillip Roth one of the greatest American writers. This story is so incredible and so sublime. Even though it was written 25 years ago, and many of the scenes are from over 50 years ago, it feels so topical. Roth truly pegs what it means to be American, to be Jewish, and, basically, to be human.
8	1346	11/22/63	Stephen King	2024	3	I had been wanting to read this for a while, soon after Stephen King published it. It sounded very intriguing (time traveling back to try and stop the Kennedy assasination). It was an interesting plot, but I just wasn't as impressed with King's writing. It's fine, but I really need a good story AND great writing to keep me interested in a book.
9	1345	The Furrows	Namwali Serpell	2024	4	I was very impressed with Serpell's writing (quite beautiful), and I found the story very compelling: slow to start but it definitely takes off after a while. By the end, however, I wasn't as impressed as I had been at the beginning.
10	1344	If On A Winter's Night A Traveler	Italo Calvino	2024	5	This is book reader's book. If you're looking for just a book with a good plot line, do not read this one. It is one giant allegory about the joy of reading, and the different kinds of readers, and writers, that there are -- and how they are all linked. But it's beautiful!
11	1343	White Teeth	Zadie Smith	2024	5	I have been dying to read this book for a long time, and it was SO amazing! I loved the story, the writing style, the characters, the whole package. And it was her debut novel. Wow!
12	1342	Hamnet	Maggie O'Farrell	2024	5	I had read so many amazing reviews about this book, but I was still blown away on how good it was. O'Farrell writes in such a beautifully subtle way. Even though you know what is going to happen, you still are overwhelmed with emotions because of how she crafts the narrative and the characters. I also love how William Shakespeare is relegated to a side character, not even named, but how Hamnet and his mother are the true stars of the story.
13	1341	Salt Houses	Hala Alyan	2024	3	I liked the general idea of the book, but I just didn't the writing was that great. And, because the author explores 5 different generations of Palestinians who had to leave their homes, I don't think some of the main characters were developed enough. But I think she did a fabulous job of showing strong bonds between grandparents and grandchildren.
14	1340	The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity	David Graeber & David Wengrow	2023	5	Wow! These two just blew my mind with the way they have you relook at the history of people. It first happened with Guns, Germs, & Steel, and then with Sapiens, but these two point out the flaws in those two books with all of the newly discovered anthropological and archeological evidence.
15	1339	Gravity's Rainbow	Thomas Pynchon	2023	5	This book blew me away, but it took me quite a while to get into it. It truly is a modern Moby Dick, with its length, its humor, its density, and its overall themes.
16	1338	The Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka	2023	4	I don't know how I never had read this before, but I understand why it's a classic. And strange.
17	1337	Kafka on the Shore	Haruki Murakami	2023	5	One of the best contempory writers, and it's hard to say what kind of books these are. They're not exactly fantasy but not realistic either. It feels like I'm reading a David Lynch movie.
18	1336	The Moon's a Balloon	David Niven	2023	4	David Niven is such great and casual writer, and he tells the story of his life in a hilarious yet tender way.
19	1335	God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning	Meghan O'Gieblyn	2023	5	Such a fascinating and well written book! O'Gieblyn writes about so many of the issues surrounding new technologies, but connects them quite clearly to some of our longstanding beliefs about religion.
20	1334	Timequake	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	5	It was really fun to read this final Vonnegut novel after re-reading all of his other novels. I think he ended with a bang. It's not one of his bests, but he did a great job of continuing with his themes of free will and human stupidity, told with his typical wry humor, and amazing simple but deep writing style.
21	1333	The Corrections	Jonathan Franzen	2023	3	I really wanted to like it, but I just wanted to finish it as the end. I did end up enjoying it more than I did halfway through, but I just didn't really like any of the characters.
22	1332	Hocus Pocus	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	Another political commentary of Vonnegut, with references to Eugene Debs, the higher education system, and our prison system -- as well as systemic racism and the privatization of public agencies. And funny.
23	1331	Bluebeard	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	Vonnegut starting to be more of his classical self, and his return to his fascination with the art world by creating a pretened member of the Abstract Expressionism movement. I was entertained, as well as educated.
24	1330	Galápagos	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	This reminded me somewhat of Breakfast of Champions, but told from the point of view of a dead person (son of Kilgore Trout) rather than Vonnegut himself, and no illustrations. But just as silly, and with his commentary about the stupidity of humanity.
25	1329	How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question	Michael Schur	2023	5	Not only can Michael Schur create and write some excellent t.v., but he also can teach me a lot about philosophy and write it in such an easy and comedic manner. I also thoroughly loved his quirky footnotes!
26	1328	Everything Sad is Untrue	Daniel Nayeri	2023	5	I can see why this won the Printz award. Great voice! Great story! I love how it's told from the point of view of an immigrant now in an American middle school, and I loved how he modeled himself after Scheherazade, as well as teaching me few things about Persians and Iran.
27	1327	Deadeye Dick	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	Not too bad for an 80s Vonnegut. It has the usual quirky characters, and he ties in some of the people from Breakfast of Champions, but I never really felt that strong about the protagonist.
28	1326	Underground Airlines	Ben H. Winters	2023	4	Ben Winters creates a very different kind of Speculative Fiction with this story, set in current times, as though the Civil War didn't happen and we still have 4 slave states in the U.S., with the federal marshalls tasked to bring fugitive PB (persons bound, AKA slaves) back to their home states.
29	1325	Jailbird	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	Still a big departure from his earlier novels, but this Vonnegut book was still very entertaining.
30	1324	At Night All Blood is Black	David Diop	2023	5	Very powerful and creative story about World War I and its effects on of the French colonized soldiers from Africa, dealing with the loss of his best friend.
31	1323	Slapstick	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	3	Definitely one of the weakest of all Vonnegut's novels. But it was his first attempt at trying something different.
32	1322	The Lost City of Z	David Grann	2023	4	David Grann hooked me early on about the search for information of an explorer who disappeared in the Amazon rain forest almost 100 years ago, and the fascination that event has had on people ever since.
33	1321	Tenth of December	George Saunders	2023	5	George Saunders is so amazing! This collection of short stories help to show why has become one of my top favorite writers!
34	1320	On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous	Ocean Vuong	2023	4	Such beautiful writing! (I guess I shouldn't be that surprised since Ocean Vuong is a poet.)
35	1319	Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow	Gabrielle Zevin	2023	4	Very enjoyable, great characters who you become very attached to, and very interesting look at the gaming world and (fictional) people who create it. It reminded me a lot of Kavalier & Clay, but in the 90s and 2000s and the online gaming world.
36	1318	And In The End: The Last Days of the Beatles	Ken McNab	2023	4	I thougtht this book was fascinating! It goes through each month of 1969, where you see how the band slowly fell apart over the course of the year, inclduing the recording of Let It Be and Abbey Road. If the writing hadn't been so generic, I would have given it a 5.
37	1317	Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	5	Still my favorite novel of all time! I still remember how it impacted me when I was 17, and I still feel the same way.
38	1316	Demon Copperhead	Barbara Kingsolver	2023	5	My first Kingsolver, and it's great! I never did read David Copperfield, its inspiration, but she does an amazing job translating that basic story into a modern tale of an abandoned kid and the devastion of the opioid crisis.
39	1315	An Immense World	Ed Yong	2023	5	Ed Yong really opens you up to how the animal world makes takes in the world, with a variety of senses that fit their needs, without the anthrocentric way of comparing it all to human senses
40	1314	God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	3	Not my favorite Vonnegut, but still a good tale. And, as always, bringing in characgters from his other books.
41	1313	Are You There God, It's Me Margaret	Judy Blume	2023	5	I'm embarassed that I never read this classic, and it was definitely a great read!
42	1312	Cinema Speculation	Quentin Tarantino	2023	4	I knew Quentin Tarantino loved movies, but I didn't realy how much he truly knew. He was a cinephile at a very young age, watching dozens of movies a month. This is his description of the movie industry from the late 60s to the early 80s, and I had to Google names and movies throughout.
43	1311	Vintage Munro	Alice Munro	2023	5	I really didn't know much about Alice Munro before reading this short story collection, but now I completely understand why she won the Nobel Prize. Her writing style is so simple and so beautiful, but also so captivating. The plots are very simple, but that can be deceiving because her character development is slow but powerful.
44	1310	The Netanyahus	Joshua Cohen	2023	4	Quite enjoyable story, based on actual events, of Benjamin Netanyahu's father applying for a teaching job at a small New York college, where a character based on Harold Bloom had to entertain the family.
45	1309	The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao	Junot Díaz	2023	5	Such a great book, and I love how it was told from the point of view of a minor character. I am a sucker for fun footnotes placed in novels, and Díaz uses them in a wonderful way. It's also a good history lesson about the Dominican Republic and the dictator Trujillo.
46	1308	Black Birds in the Sky	Brandy Colbert	2023	4	Amazing history of the Tulsa Massacre, filling in the history of race issues at that time in both Oklahoma and the country overall. Colbert does a great job in connecting the past to our present situation as well.
47	1307	Liberation Day	George Saunders	2023	5	George Saunders is such a master story teller. These collection of short stories run the gamut from "traditional" to his more experimental style of writing, but tied all together with the loose theme of liberation. Amazing!
48	1306	The Beautiful Struggle	Ta-Nehisi Coates	2023	4	Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite essayists, and this memoir of his growing up in Baltimore gives me hope for kids who were considered "goof offs" and their ability to turn it around.
49	1305	Mother Night	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	As always, I am so amazed how timeless and timely Vonnegut's books are. Even though this is from 60 years ago, he hits on some themes that are fundamentally still around today: like intolerance, celebrity status, and the facade of propaganda hiding one's true feelings.
50	1304	The Last White Man	Mohsin Hamid	2023	4	I love how Mosin Hamid uses this fable of race to challenge our thinking about what race truly is, bringing out the systemic biases and the hidden true feelings. Plus he's just a great storyteller.
51	1303	Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	I know this is many people's favorite Vonnegut book, and I thoroughly enjoyed his lessons about religion, philosophy, and politics, but it's still not in my top 3. But it's definitely one that people should read to get insight into his writing and thinking.
52	1302	A Tale for the Time Being	Ruth Ozeki	2023	5	Wow! This is such a fantanstic read, and it's one with so many layers. Not many books can include teenage angst, pacificism, Zen Buddhism, quantum mechanics, bullying -- all from discovering a diary inside a Hello Kitty lunchbox that was washed up on Pacific Northwest beach, likely from the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan.
53	1301	The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois	Honorée Fanonne Jeffers	2023	5	I don't usually like multi-generational stories, and I did have to constantly refer to the family tree chart, but I thoroughly loved this book. It's about what it means to be black and indigenous in the 18th century, up to the 21st century. It's also about family: the known and the hidden.
54	1300	Matrix	Lauren Groff	2023	4	Fascinating story about the power that some women were able to obtain in the male-dominated world of the 12th century.
55	1299	Sirens of Titan	Kurt Vonnegut	2023	4	Very fun and entertaining, but I think this is one of Vonnegut's most disjointed books. Again, it's many people's favorites, and I do understand why.
56	1298	All the Pretty Horses	Cormac McCarthy	2023	4	I really enjoy McCarthy's writing style, and this one is readable -- maybe after a little bit of stumbling by the reader. But it's a great tale of a man living in the 1950s as if it were the 1870s.
57	1297	Player Piano	Kurt Vonnegut	2022	4	I decided to read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books, in order of publication, to celebrate his 100th birthday. Since this was his frist book, I started here. It's amazing that, even though it was written in 1952, it is very prescient about what can/will happen to society as we automate and have less work for people to do. You realize that simply having something like a universal basic income won't prevent people from feeling useless.
58	1296	The Book of Form and Emptiness	Ruth Ozeki	2022	4	My first Ozeki, and I am looking forward to reading more of her work. This is a beautiful yet tragic story about love, loss, redemption, Zen, and hearing inanimate objects speaking to you.
59	1295	After Lives	Abdulrazak Gurnah	2022	4	I wanted to love it, but I ended up just liking it a lot. Gurnah writes this beautiful story, that spans a few generations, in a former German colony of East Africa, focusing on the way of life there and how the First World War affected people in different ways.
60	1294	Legendborn	Tracy Deonn	2022	4	Great twist on the Arthurian legends, with a Black teen discovering her own magical roots in the midst of a group of descendants of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table in the modern age.
61	1293	The House in the Cerulean Sea	TJ Klune	2022	4	Quirky but fun tale of an inspector dispatched to check on an orphanage designed for kids with magical, but somewhat scary, powers.
62	1292	A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life	George Saunders	2022	5	George Saunders is such a master writer and teacher, and this book is essentially his writing class based on Russian short story writers. It truly is a joy to read, and it gives great insight into the craft of writing, with lessons for everyone about how to write, as well as lessons about life in general.
63	1291	Cemetery Boys	Aiden Thomas	2022	4	Very enjoyable story that blends lots of issues: Latin culture, transphobia, magical powers, and family dynamics.
64	1290	Why Fish Don't Exist	Lulu Miller	2022	4	Lulu Miller explores the role and impact of David Staff Jordan, early biologist who helped to name hundreds of aquatic species and who ended up as the first president of Stanford University, but was also a big proponent of eugenics.
65	1289	Rashomon and other Stories	Ryūnosuke Akutagawa	2022	4	Akutagawa was a master of the short story, rivalling such people as Chekhov and Edgar Allen Poe.
66	1288	Travels with Charlie	John Steinbeck	2022	5	I found this Steinbeck story as a timeless classic roadtrip, even though it was written about 60 years ago!
67	1287	A Snake Falls to Earth	Darcie Little Badger	2022	4	Great blend of classic Native American legends and modern story telling.
68	1286	Revolution in Our Time	Kekla Magoon	2022	5	Well researched and compelling story about the history of the Black Panther Party!
69	1285	Felix Ever After	Kacen Callender	2022	4	Felix is a real and complex character, and I really enjoyed this love story that shows how much high schoolers deal with nowadays -- especially trans kids even from others within the LGBTQ+ community.
70	1284	The Committed	Viet Nguyen	2022	5	Viet Nguyen is such an amazing writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed his follow-up to "The Sympathizer". His writing is so fresh and bold, and I always walk away thinking about the world differently.
71	1283	You Should See Me in a Crown	Leah Johnson	2022	5	So much going on in this book! It's got bullies, LGBTQ+, coming out, overcoming old-school traditions, being true to yourself, forgiveness. Primarily it's about a black, queer high school senior who runs for prom queen (despite hating the whole affair) because she needs the award money to pay for her college -- and so much happens as a result.
72	1282	Almost American Girl	Robin Ha	2022	4	Well done graphic novel memoir about moving from South Korea to American and trying to adjust.
73	1281	How Beautiful We Were	Imbolo Mbue	2022	5	Another powerful and creative storytelling about the struggles of an west African village dealing with imperialism, capitalism, and survival.
74	1280	Bewilderment	Richard Powers	2022	5	Powerful and tender story about a father and son, both struggling with the death of the mother, the issues surrounding the son's autism, and the destruction of our planet by humans.
75	1279	Firekeeper's Daughter	Angeline Boulley	2022	5	I understand why this book won the Printz award, because it's an important story (how the meth epidemic ravaged our indigenous population) and it's written so well.
76	1278	The Round House	Louise Erdrich	2022	5	I've been wanting to read a book by Louise Erdrich for a while, and this was a great one to start with. I admire her craft in writing, and this story of a native son investigating his mom's rape is very powerful.
77	1277	The Glass Hotel	Emily St. John Mandel	2022	4	Interesting story about a variety of characters connected through greed, fraud, art, death, and a glass hotel in Canada.
78	1276	The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century	Kirk W. Johnson	2022	4	Fascinating look into the pursuit of rare feathers in the fly-tying communities, and the true story of a heist that continues to taint that community.
79	1275	The Lager Queen of Minnesota	J. Ryan Stradal	2022	4	Very fun book, and a great set of characters and a wealth of knowledge about all the different types of ale (as well as a brief history of American lager and the rise of IPA here).
80	1274	Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents	Isabel Wilkerson	2022	5	As always, Wilkerson is spot on in how she can see what's there but hasn't actually been perceived before. Her explanation of the American view of race is intertwined with our own caste system explains so much, and, at the same time, shows how difficult it will be to eventually become a post-race society here.
81	1273	Klara and the Sun	Kazuo Ishiguro	2022	5	I really love Ishiguro's stories. They're so eerie, but scarily possible. This novel doesn't exactly ask the same kinds of ethical questions about androids as Blade Runner, Westworld, etc., but it does explore what goes on in the "mind" of these human-like robots.
82	1272	The Storyteller	Mario Vargas Llosa	2021	5	I really didn't know what to expect, but I absolutely loved this novel about the native population of Peru. It really gets you thinking about how often good intentions can lead to negative consquences.
83	1271	The Anomaly	Hervé Le Tellier	2021	5	Fascinating! It's like reading an episode of Black Mirror or Twilight Zone! Imagine what would happen if a plane took over in March, landed in March, then also landed again in June. How would the world respond? And those passengers that now have "twins"?
84	1270	This Is Your Mind on Plants	Michael Pollan	2021	4	Another Michael Pollan book, this one exploring human's cultivation and need for 3 categories of plants: opium, caffeine, and mescaline. As always, he brings a lot of history and human experience to these accounts.
85	1269	Cloud Cuckoo Land	Anthony Doerr	2021	4	Mutliple complex stories, woven together by one of the great storytellers of our time.
86	1268	Vanport	Manly Maben	2021	3	Not the best written history, but it's one of the few books about the rise and fall of the Vanport, at one time the second largest city in the state of Oregon.
87	1267	Behold the Dreamers	Imbolo Mbue	2021	4	Really gets you thinking about the "American Dream" -- and does it affect immigrants the way that they believe it will? Also, beautifully written.
88	1266	We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy	Ta-Nehisi Coates	2021	5	Ta-Nehisi Coates' collection of essays he wrote during the Obama presidency (and the looming takeover of Donald Trump) are both insightful and beautifully written. He doesn't pull punches at all, and I just love anything he writes.
89	1265	The Best We Could Do	Thi Bui	2021	5	Beautiful tribute that Thi Bui makes to her family, a graphic novel comparing her life in America to her family's refugee story from Vietnam.
90	1264	Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier	Peter Stark	2021	4	Very interesting and well-documented history of the people and events in the early 19th century to establish Astoria as the world capital for fur-trading, and its legacy.
91	1263	Good Talk: a Memoir in Conversation	Mira Jacob	2021	5	Wonderful, insightful, funny, and tragic. Mira Jacob uses the style of a graphic novel to share her personal stories of family, racism, and life in the 21st century.
92	1262	Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History	S.C. Gwynne	2021	4	Facinating look at the interactions between the people inhabiting Texas and the plains (Spanish, Mexican, American) and their interactions with powerful Comanche tribe.
93	1261	Pachinko	Min Jin Lee	2021	4	Beautifully told novel about 4 generations of a Korean family then emigrates to Japan
94	1260	Lovely War	Julie Berry	2021	4	Set during World War II, it's a love/war/music story that occurs during World War II, told from the point of view from the Greek gods of love (Aphrodite), war (Ares), music (Apollo), and death (Hades).
95	1259	The Overstory	Richard Powers	2021	5	Simply wow! Eight people's stories all intertwined through the power of trees. You will never view trees, forests, or fauna in general the same after.
96	1258	The Fire is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America	Nicholas Buccola	2021	4	Quasi-biography, quasi-history, telling how the lives of liberal James Baldwin and conservative William F. Buckley intertwined in the late 50s and early 60s, during the civil rights movements.
97	1257	Anxious People	Fredrik Backman	2021	5	Such an amazing book! It's a story about a bank robbery gone wrong, or maybe it's about a bridge, or maybe it's just about the human story. Backman is one of the greatest story-tellers of our age.
98	1256	Butterfly Yellow	Thanhha Lai	2021	4	Vietnamese refugee girl in Texas, looking for her younger brother, helped out by a wannabe Texan "cowboy".
99	1255	Opposite of Always	Justin A. Reynolds	2021	4	Another one of those "twists" on the Groundhog Day theme, but I thought Reynolds pulled it off pretty well. The boy keeps trying different variations to try and save the life of a girl that he meets at a party.
100	1254	All Boys Aren't Blue	George M. Johnson	2021	4	Great YA memoir about the life of a black trans teen, helping to understand how challenging his life was but how much family and love helped.