Past Reading
This is where I archive lists of what I’ve read in past years, presented in reverse-chronological order.
Books Read in 2023
1. Erlend Loe. Naiv. Super.
2. Muriel Spark. The Driver's Seat.
3. Peter Høeg. Smilla's Sense of Snow. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally)
4. Patti Smith. Just Kids.
5. Lauren Redniss. Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West. (Teaching text)
6. Karl Ove Knausgård. Winter. (Trans. Ingvild Burkey)
7. Muriel Spark. The Abbess of Crewe.
8. Stephen Greenblatt. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.
9. Ali Smith. Winter.
10. Ta-Nehisi Coates. Between the World and Me.
11. Muriel Spark. The Ballad of Peckham Rye.
12. Amos Tutuola. The Palm-Wine Drinkard. (Teaching text)
13. Daphne Brooks. Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound.
14. Jeffrey Eugenides. The Marriage Plot.
15. Aimé Césaire. Discourse on Colonialism. (Trans. Joan Pinkham; teaching text)
16. Wangari Maathai. Unbowed: A Memoir. (Teaching text)
17. Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart. (Teaching text)
18. Tayeb Salih. Season of Migration to the North. (Trans. Denys Johnson-Davies; teaching text)
19. Helen DeWitt. The Last Samurai.
20. Sayaka Murata. Convenience Store Woman. (Trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori)
21. Assia Djebar. Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade. (Trans. Dorothy S. Blair; teaching text)
22. Sohail Daulatzai. Fifty Years of "The Battle of Algiers": Past as Prologue.
23. Jamaica Kincaid. A Small Place. (Teaching text)
24. Donna Haraway. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant
25. Otherness. (Teaching text)
26. V. S. Naipaul. Miguel Street. (Teaching text)
27. Salman Rushdie. Luka and the Fire of Life.
28. Muriel Spark. Memento Mori.
29. Salman Rushdie. Shame. (Teaching text)
30. Ali Smith. Spring.
31. Leslie Marmon Silko. Ceremony. (Teaching text)
32. Ali Smith. How to be both.
33. John Felstine. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew.
34. Karl Ove Knausgård. Spring. (Trans. Ingvild Burkey)
35. Ali Smith. Summer.
36. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. La plus secrète mémoire des hommes.
37. Vigdis Hjorth. A House in Norway. (Trans. Charlotte Barslund)
38. Robin Hobb. Assassin's Apprentice.
39. Rachel Cusk. Second Place.
40. Boubacar Boris Diop. Murambi, The Book of Bones. (Trans. Fiona McLaughlin)
41. Abdulrazak Gurnah. Afterlives.
42. Boubacar Boris Diop. The Knight and His Shadow. (Trans. Alan Furness)
43. Karl Ove Knausgård. Summer. (Trans. Ingvild Burkey)
44. Jon Fosse. Melancholy. (Trans. Grethe Kvernes + Damion Searls)
45. Emily Hall. The Longcut.
46. Olga Ravn. The Employees. (Trans. Martin Aitken)
47. Sheila Heti. How Should a Person Be?
48. James Rollins. The Judas Strain.
49. Gunnhild Øyehaug. Present Tense Machine. (Trans. Kari Dickson)
50. Stein Riverton. Jernvognen.
51. David Diop. Beyond the Door of No Return. (Trans. Sam Taylor)
52. Christina Sharpe. Ordinary Notes.
53. Adania Shibli. Minor Detail. (Trans. Elisabeth Jaquette)
54. Mark Haber. Reinhardt's Garden.
55. Jon Fosse. A Shining. (Trans. Damion Searls)
56. Mark Haber. Saint Sebastian's Abyss.
57. Harald Voetmann. Awake. (Trans. Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen)
58. Kate Briggs. The Long Form.
59. Sigrid Undset. Olav Audunssøn I. Vows. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally)
60. Olly Richards. Short Stories in Norwegian.
61. Sigrid Undset. Olav Audunssøn II. Providence. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally)
62. Jenny Hval. Paradise Rot. (Trans. Marjam Idriss)
63. Benjamin Moser. Sontag: Her Life and Work.
64. Renee Gladman. Event Factory.
65. Jeff Vandermeer. Borne.
Books I've Dabbled in This Year
This category reflects my attempt to read more poetry, short stories, and essays, but without always committing to reading every piece in every collection. I'm also continuing to practice letting myself not finish books that aren't serving me — at least, for now. In time, some of these texts may move up into the "fully read" list. For now, though, want to preserve a space to keep track of my dabbling.
1. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. (Teaching text)
2. Manuel De Landa. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. (Teaching text)
3. Gregory Bateson. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. (Teaching text)
4. Michael Taussig. Palma Africana. (Teaching text)
5. Sophie Chao. In the Shadow of the Palms: More-than-Human Becomings in West Papua (Teaching
6. text)
7. Martin Hägglund. This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.
8. Juno Salazar Parreñas. Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation. (Teaching text)
9. Hugh Raffles. The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time. (Teaching text)
10. Derek McCormack. Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment. (Teaching text)
11. Lyall Watson. Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind. (Teaching text)
12. Jenny Offill. Weather. (Teaching text)
13. Lucy Ellmann. Ducks, Newburyport. (Teaching text)
14. Min Hyoung Song. Climate Lyricism. (Teaching text)
15. Amitav Ghosh. The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.
16. Alex Ross. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.
17. Alistair Horne. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962.
18. Roberto Bolaño. The Savage Detectives. (Trans. Natasha Wimmer; I just couldn't with this one!)
19. Marjorie Perloff. Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century.
20. Thomas Bernhard. Wittgenstein's Nephew. (Trans. David McClintock; so bored!)
Books Read in 2022
1. Jon Fosse. The Other Name (Septology I–II). (Trans. Damion Searls)
2. Susan Sontag. Against Interpretation and Other Essays.
3. Jonas Eika. After the Sun. (Trans. Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg)
4. Aisha Sabatini Sloan. Borealis.
5. William Finnegan. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.
6. Hilary Mantel. The Mirror and the Light.
7. O. E. Rølvaag. Giants in the Earth. (Trans. Lincoln Colcord, with author)
8. Jon Krakauer. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster.
9. Jon Fosse. I Is Another (Septology III–V). (Trans. Damion Searls)
10. Jon Krakauer. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.
11. Henrik Ibsen. Pillars of the Community. (Trans. Deborah Dawkin + Erik Skuggevik)
12. Reginald Gibbons. How Poems Think.
13. Dinaw Mengestu. How to Read the Air.
14. Henrik Ibsen. A Doll's House. (Trans. Deborah Dawkin + Erik Skuggevik)
15. Lowell Wyse. Ecospatiality: A Place-Based Approach to American Literature.
16. Aeschylus. The Oresteia. [Agamemnon / The Libation Bearers / The Eumenides.] (Trans. Ted Hughes)
17. Alva Noë. Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness.
18. Henrik Ibsen. Ghosts. (Trans. Deborah Dawkin + Erik Skuggevik)
19. Dante Alighieri. Inferno. (Trans. Robert and Jean Hollander)
20. Henrik Ibsen. An Enemy of the People. (Trans. Deborah Dawkin + Erik Skuggevik)
21. Tom Kristensen. Havoc. (Trans. Carl Malmberg)
22. Penelope Fitzgerald. The Bookshop.
23. Wilma Stockenström. The Expedition to the Baobab Tree. (Trans. J. M. Coetzee)
24. Henrik Ibsen. The Wild Duck. (Trans. Deborah Dawkin + Erik Skuggevik)
25. Yū Miri. Tokyo Ueno Station. (Trans. Morgan Giles)
26. Paul Celan. The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials. (Trans. Pierre Joris)
27. Georg Büchner. Woyzeck. (Trans. Carl Richard Mueller)
28. Dag Solstad. Shyness and Dignity. (Trans. Sverre Lyngstad)
29. Fleur Jaeggy. SS Proleterka. (Trans. Alastair McEwen)
30. Günter Grass. The Tin Drum. (Trans. Breon Mitchell)
31. Dante Alighieri. Purgatorio. (Trans. Jean and Robert Hollander)
32. Jon Fosse. A New Name (Septology VI–VII). (Trans. Damion Searls)
33. John Burgman. High Drama: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of American Competition Climbing.
34. Tommy Caldwell. The Push: A Climber's Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits.
35. Dinaw Mengestu. All Our Names.
36. Teju Cole. Open City.
37. Min Hyoung Song. Climate Lyricism.
38. Alaa Al Aswany. The Yacoubian Building. (Trans. Humphrey Davies)
39. Dante Alighieri. Paradiso. (Trans. Robert and Jean Hollander)
40. Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary: Provincial Ways. (Trans. Lydia Davis)
41. Damon Galgut. The Promise.
42. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Americanah.
43. José Eduardo Agualusa. A General Theory of Oblivion. (Trans. Daniel Hahn)
44. Oyinkan Braithwaite. My Sister, the Serial Killer.
45. Dinaw Mengestu. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. (Second reading)
46. Jennifer Nansubugi Makumbi. A Girl Is a Body of Water.
47. Ursula K. Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness.
48. Khadija Abdalla Bajabar. The House of Rust.
49. Véronique Tadjo. In the Company of Men. (Trans. Véronique Tadjo + John Cullen)
50. Ursula K. Le Guin. The Dispossessed.
51. Abdulrazak Gurnah. By the Sea.
52. Abdulrazak Gurnah. Admiring Silence.
53. Kazuo Ishiguro. When We Were Orphans.
54. Richard Yates. Revolutionary Road.
55. Anonymous. The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey's Godi. (Trans. Terry Gunnell)
56. André Aciman. Call Me By Your Name.
57. Jan Kjærstad. The Conqueror. (Trans. Barbara Haveland)
58. André Aciman. Find Me.
59. Halldór Laxness. Paradise Reclaimed. (Trans. Magnus Magnusson)
60. Jon Fosse. Aliss at the Fire. (Trans. Damion Searls)
61. Peter Weiss. Conversation of the Three Wayfarers. (Trans. E. B. Garside)
62. Cormac McCarthy. All the Pretty Horses.
63. Hanne Ørstavik. Ti Amo. (Trans. Martin Aitken)
64. Enrique Vila-Matas. The Illogic of Kassel. (Trans. Anne McLean and Anna Milsom)
65. Clarice Lispector. Água Viva. (Trans. Stefan Tobler)
66. Sophie Chao. In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua.
67. Karl Ove Knausgård. Autumn. (Trans. Ingvild Burkey)
68. Fernando Pessoa. The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro. (Trans. Margaret Jull Costa + Patricio Ferrari)
69. Louise Erdrich. The Round House.
70. Merethe Lindstrøm. Days in the History of Silence. (Trans. Anne Bruce)
71. Roberto Bolaño. By Night in Chile. (Trans. Chris Andrews)
72. Jenny Offill. Weather.
73. Erin Manning. Always More Than One: Individuation's Dance.
74. Ali Smith. Autumn.
75. Eugenie Brinkema. Life-Destroying Diagrams.
76. Jon Fosse. An Angel Walks Through the Stage and Other Essays. (Trans. May-Brit Akerholt)
77. Lydia Davis. Break It Down. (in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis)
78. Mircea Cărtărescu. Solenoid. (Trans. Sean Cotter)
79. Henrik Ibsen. Rosmersholm. (Trans. Deborah Dawkin + Erik Skuggevik)
80. Jessica Au. Cold Enough for Snow.
81. Fleur Jaeggy. I Am the Brother of XX. (Trans. Gini Alhadeff)
82. Patrick Rothfuss. The Name of the Wind. (Second reading)
83. Russell Hoban. Riddley Walker.
84. Peter Weiss. The Shadow of the Coachman's Body. (Trans. Rosmarie Waldrop)
85. Hjalmar Söderberg. Doctor Glas. (Trans. Paul Britten Austin)
86. Niviaq Korneliussen. Last Night in Nuuk. (Trans. Anna Halager)
Books I've Dabbled in This Year
This is a new category for me, as I attempt to read more poetry, short stories, and essays, but without always committing to reading every piece in every collection. I'm also continuing to practice letting myself not finish books (in the case of this list, mostly novels) that aren't serving me. In time, some of these texts may move up into the "fully read" list. For now, though, want to preserve a space to keep track of my dabbling.
1. Jay Ponteri. Someone Told Me.
2. Alexander Kluge. Temple of the Scapegoat: Opera Stories. (Trans. Isabel Fargo Cole, Donna Stonecipher, et al.)
3. Lydia Davis. Essays: Two.
4. Gwen E. Kirby. Shit Cassandra Saw.
5. Kjell Askildsen. Everything Like Before: Stories. (Trans. Seán Kinsella)
6. James Joyce. Ulysses. (Currently engaged in a *very* slow third reading, begun on the centenary of the book's publication.)
7. Brian Massumi. Parables for the Virtual.
8. Jean-Paul Sartre. Being and Nothingness. (Trans. Sarah Richmond.)
9. Frank Bidart. Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016.
10. Rodolphe Gasché. The Stelliferous Fold: Toward a Virtual Law of Literature's Self-Formation.
11. Peter Szondi. Celan Studies. (Trans. Susan Bernofsky, with Harvey Mendelsohn)
12. Iris Murdoch. Existentialists and Mystics.
13. Jesse McCarthy. Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?
14. Karen Lawrence. The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses.
15. Anthony Burgess. Re Joyce.
16. Sasha Abramsky. The House of Twenty Thousand Books.
17. Charles Bambach. Thinking the Poetic Measure of Justice: Hölderlin–Heidegger–Celan.
18. Tomas Hägg. The Novel in Antiquity.
19. Thomas Friedman. From Beirut to Jerusalem.
20. Herodotus. The Histories. (Trans. Andrea L. Purvis; the Landmark edition)
21. Susan Z. Andrade. The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958–1988.
22. Jill Jarvis. Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and the Politics of Testimony.
23. Craig Dworkin. Radium of the Word.
24. Craig Dworkin. No Medium.
25. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States.
26. Cormac McCarthy. Suttree.
27. Michael Taussig. Palma Africana.
28. Don DeLillo. Underworld. (Life's just too short to suffer through the second half of this borefest!)
29. Esther Kinsky. Grove: A Field Novel. (Trans. Caroline Schmidt)
30. Douglas Stuart. Shuggie Bain.
Books Read in 2021
1. Gunnhild Øyehaug. Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life. (Trans. Kari Dickson)
2. Brian Dillon. Suppose a Sentence.
3. Roberto Bolaño. 2666. (Trans. Natasha Wimmer)
4. Tor Ulven. Replacement. (Trans. Kerri A. Pierce)
5. Vigdis Hjorth. Will and Testament. (Trans. Charlotte Barslund)
6. V. S. Naipaul. Miguel Street.
7. Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism.
8. Patti Smith. The Year of the Monkey.
9. Muriel Spark. The Girls of Slender Means.
10. Hilary Mantel. Bring Up the Bodies.
11. Roberto Gaudioso. The Voice of the Text and its Body: The Continuous Reform of Euphrase Kezilahabi's Poetics.
12. Barry Lopez. Arctic Dreams. [Partial reading]
13. Hanya Yanagihara. A Little Life.
14. Tove Ditlevsen. Childhood. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally)
15. Tove Ditlevsen. Youth. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally)
16. e. e. cummings. The Enormous Room.
17. Tove Ditlevsen. Dependency. (Trans. Michael Favala Goldman)
18. James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. [Second reading]
19. Evelyn Waugh. A Handful of Dust.
20. Anthony Powell. A Question of Upbringing.
21. Toni Morrison. Home.
22. Karl Ove Knausgård. In the Land of the Cyclops. (Trans. Martin Aitken et al.)
23. Rachel Cusk. Outline.
24. Kazuo Ishiguro. Klara and the Sun.
25. Marilynne Robinson. Gilead.
26. Jamaica Kincaid. A Small Place.
27. Rachel Cusk. Transit.
28. Jennifer Wenzel. The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature.
29. Rachel Cusk. Kudos.
30. Robert Macfarlane. Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit.
31. Andrea Bajani. If You Kept a Record of Sins. (Trans. Elizabeth Harris)
32. V. S. Naipaul. In a Free State.
33. Evelyn Waugh. Brideshead Revisited.
34. Devin Singh. Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West.
35. Jon Fosse. Trilogy. (Trans. May-Brit Akerholt)
36. Francis Hodgson Burnett. The Secret Garden.
37. Alex Dubilet. The Self-Emptying Subject: Kenosis and Immanence, Medieval to Modern. [Partial reading]
38. Penelope Fitzgerald. The Blue Flower.
39. Lauren Redniss. Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West. (Second reading)
40. Nancy Armstrong. How Novels Think: The Limits of Individualism from 1719–1900. [Partial reading]
41. Minae Mizumura. An I-Novel. (Trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter)
42. Hagar Kotef. The Colonizing Self: Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine. [Partial reading]
43. Aravind Adiga. The White Tiger.
44. Clarice Lispector. The Passion According to G.H. (Trans. Idra Novey)
45. Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart. The Hundreds.
46. Andrew Bisharat. Sport Climbing.
47. Haruki Murakami. Dance Dance Dance. (Trans. Alfred Birnbaum)
48. Minae Mizumura. A True Novel. (Trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter)
49. Perry Zurn. Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry.
50. Clarice Lispector. The Hour of the Star. (Trans. Benjamin Moser)
51. V. S. Naipaul. A Way in the World.
52. Margaret Anne Doody. The True Story of the Novel.
53. Ling Ma. Severance.
54. Nabaneeta Dev Sen. Acrobat. (Trans. Nandana Dev Sen)
55. Samuel R. Delany. The Motion of Light in Water.
56. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Kintu.
57. Bettina L. Love. We Want To Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom.
58. Heliodorus. Aithiopika [An Ethiopian Story]. (Trans. J. R. Morgan)
59. Tove Jansson. The Summer Book. (Trans. Thomas Teal)
60. Anonymous. Beowulf. (Trans. Maria Dahvana Headley)
61. Kaiama L. Glover. A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being. [Partial reading]
62. V. E. Schwab. A Darker Shade of Magic.
63. Robert Glück. Margery Kempe.
64. Julian Barnes. The Sense of an Ending.
65. Jeanne-Marie Jackson. The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing.
66. Rachel Cusk. Coventry.
67. Jay Timothy Dolmage. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education.
68. Yaa Gyasi. Transcendent Kingdom.
69. Kate Zambreno. Heroines.
70. Namwali Serpell. Stranger Faces.
71. Shaaban Robert. Kusadikika: A Country in the Sky. (Trans. David C. Sperling)
72. Zora Neale Hurston. Dust Tracks on a Road.
73. Driss Chraïbi. The Simple Past. (Trans. Hugh A. Harter) [Second reading]
74. Jan Kjærstad. The Seducer. (Trans. Barbara Haveland)
75. Dag Solstad. Novel 11, Book 18. (Trans. Sverre Lyngstad)
76. Vladimir Nabokov. Pnin.
77. Karl Ove Knausgård. The Morning Star. (Tran. Martin Aitken)
78. Tété-Michel Kpomassie. An African in Greenland. (Trans. James Kirkup)
79. Werner Skalla. The Mystery of Nils: Norwegian Course for Beginners.
80. Vigdis Hjorth. Long Live the Posthorn! (Trans. Charlotte Barslund)
81. Diana Taylor. Performance.
82. Rita Felski. The Limits of Critique.
83. Henrik Ibsen. Brand. (Trans. Geoffrey Hill + Janet Garton)
84. Benjamín Labatut. When We Cease to Understand the World. (Trans. Adrian Nathan West)
85. Robert Walser. The Walk. (Trans. Christopher Middleton + Susan Bernofsky)
86. Maggie Nelson. On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. [I skipped the drug "song," though.]
87. Fleur Jaeggy. The Water Statues. (Trans. Gini Aldaheff)
88. Fleur Jaeggy. Sweet Days of Discipline. (Trans. Tim Parks)
89. Richard Panek. The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet.
90. Magda Szabó. The Door. (Trans. Len Rix)
91. Carlo Rovelli. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. (Trans. Simon Carnell + Erica Segre)
92. Mariana Oliver. Migratory Birds. (Trans. Julia Sanches)
93. Thomas Mann. Death in Venice. (Trans. Michael Henry Heim)
94. T Fleischmann. Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through.
95. David Diop. At Night All Blood Is Black. (Trans. Anna Moschovakis)
96. Henrik Ibsen. Peer Gynt. (Trans. Geoffrey Hill + Janet Garton) [Second reading]
97. Gunnhild Øyehaug. Knots: Stories. (Trans. Kari Dickson)
Books Read in 2020
1. Sjón. From the Mouth of a Whale. (Trans. Victoria Grubb)
2. Tarjei Vesaas. The Ice Palace. (Trans. Elizabeth Rokkan)
3. Jane Gallop. Anecdotal Theory.
4. Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold. Monsterhuman. (Trans. Becky L. Crook)
5. Tommy Orange. There There.
6. Paul Ricoeur. Time and Narrative: Volume 1. (Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin & David Pellauer)
7. Frank Kermode. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction.
8. José Ortega y Gasset. Meditations on Quixote. (Trans. Evelyn Rugg & Diego Marín)
9. Margaret Atwood. Oryx and Crake. (Second reading)
10. Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote. (Trans. Edith Grossman)
11. William Egginton. The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World.
12. Margaret Atwood. Alias Grace.
13. Lucy Ellmann. Ducks, Newburyport.
14. Paul Ricoeur. Time and Narrative: Volume 2. (Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin & David Pellauer)
15. Jane Alison. Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative. (Partial reading)
16. Jane Elliott. The Microeconomic Mode: Political Subjectivity in Contemporary Popular Aesthetics.
17. Bram Büscher + Robert Fletcher. The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene.
18. Józef Czapski. Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp. (Trans. Eric Karpeles)
19. Richard Ellmann. James Joyce.
20. Chang-Rae Lee. A Gesture Life.
21. Tarjei Vesaas. The Hills Reply. (Trans. Elizabeth Rokkan)
22. Edith Wharton. The Age of Innocence.
23. Marcel Proust. Swann's Way. (Second reading)
24. Kazuo Ishiguro. Nocturnes.
25. Marthe Robert. Origins of the Novel. (Trans. Sacha Rabinovitch; partial reading)
26. Pema Chödrön. The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness.
27. V. S. Naipaul. A Bend in the River. (Second reading)
28. Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native.
29. Kazuo Ishiguro. An Artist of the Floating World.
30. Hiromi Kawakami. Parade. (Trans. Allison Markin Powell)
31. Natsume Sōseki. Kokoro. (Trans. Edwin McClellan)
32. Deborah Hay. My Body, the Buddhist.
33. Maria Popova. Figuring.
34. Yōko Ogawa. The Memory Police. (Trans. Stephen Snyder)
35. Margaret Atwood. The Testaments.
36. V. S. Naipaul. A House for Mr. Biswas.
37. Richard Powers. The Overstory.
38. Christos Ikonomou. Good Will Come From the Sea. (Trans. Karen Emmerich)
39. Junot Díaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (Second reading)
40. Olga Tokarczuk. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. (Trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
41. José Eduardo Agualusa. The Society of Reluctant Dreamers. (Trans. Daniel Hahn)
42. Linda Boström Knausgård. Welcome to America. (Trans. Martin Aitken)
43. Robert Macfarlane. Underland: A Deep Time Story.
44. Octavia Butler. Dawn. (Lilith's Brood / Xenogenesis 1)
45. Olaudah Equiano. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, The African.
46. Jean Giono. Occupation Journal. (Trans. Jody Gladding)
47. Dominique Fabre. The Waitress Was New. (Trans. Jordan Stump)
48. John Boyne. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
49. Hanne Ørstavik. Love. (Trans. Martin Aitken)
50. Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex.
51. Olga Tokarczuk. Flights. (Trans. Jennifer Croft)
52. Bernardine Evaristo. Girl, Woman, Other.
53. T. E. Lawrence. Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
54. Michael McKeon. The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740.
55. Adam Shafi Adam. Les Girofliers de Zanzibar. (Trans. from Swahili to French by Jean-Pierre Richard)
56. Kazuo Ishiguro. The Buried Giant.
57. John Richetti. A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature. (Partial reading)
58. Patrick French. The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul.
59. Iris Murdoch. Bruno’s Dream.
60. Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi. Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies.
61. Namwali Serpell. The Old Drift.
62. Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn: The Final Empire. (Mistborn 1)
63. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. (Second reading)
64. Maria Dahvana Headley. The Mere Wife.
65. Tómas González. Difficult Light. (Trans. Andrea Rosenberg)
66. Ian McEwan. Atonement.
67. Scholastique Mukasonga. Igifu. (Trans. Jordan Stump)
68. Don DeLillo. Cosmopolis.
69. Saul Bellow. The Adventures of Augie March. (Abandoned halfway through)
70. Dag Solstad. T. Singer. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally)
71. Megha Majumdar. A Burning.
72. Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man. (Second reading)
73. Nicole Seymour. Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age. (Partial reading)
74. Ursula K. Heise. Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species. (Partial reading)
75. Thom van Dooren. Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction. (Partial reading)
76. Jane Bennett. Influx & Efflux: Writing Up with Walt Whitman. (Partial reading)
77. Jennifer K. Ladino. Reclaiming Nostalgia: Longing for Nature in American Literature. (Partial reading)
78. Helon Habila. Oil on Water.
79. Ogaga Ifowodo. The Oil Lamp.
80. Terese Marie Mailhot. Heart Berries.
81. William Edelglass et al., eds. Facing Nature: Levinas and Environmental Thought. (Partial reading)
82. David J. Gauthier. Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Politics of Dwelling. (Partial reading)
83. Ivan Vladislavić. The Distance.
84. Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West.
85. Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas. Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil. (Partial reading)
86. Christine Stelzig, Eva Ursprung, and Stefan Eisenhofer, eds. Last Rites Niger Delta: The Drama of Oil Production in Contemporary Photographs.
87. Eben Kirksey. Emergent Ecologies. (Partial reading)
88. Susanna Clarke. Piranesi.
89. James Wood. How Fiction Works.
90. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman. (Partial reading)
91. Giuseppe Ungaretti. Allegria. (Trans. Geoffrey Brock)
92. Halldór Laxness. Independent People: An Epic. (Trans. J. A. Thompson)
93. Daniel Mendelsohn. Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate.
94. Margaret MacMillan. War: How Conflict Shaped Us. (Partial reading)
95. Hilary Mantel. Wolf Hall.
96. Robert Macfarlane. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot.
97. Per Petterson. Out Stealing Horses. (Trans. Anne Born)
98. Lauren Redniss. Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West.
99. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: On Practices and Discourses of Decolonization. (Trans. Molly Geidel)
100. Nancy C. Mulvaney. Indexing Books.
101. Kathryn Yusoff. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. (Partial reading)
Books Read in 2019
1. Sigrid Undset. The Wreath. [Kristin Lavransdatter, Book 1]
2. Arturo Escobar. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds.
3. Sigrid Undset. The Wife. [Kristin Lavransdatter, Book 2]
4. Maggie Nelson. The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning.
5. Neil Gaiman. Norse Mythology.
6. Markus Gabriel. Why the World Does Not Exist.
7. Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita.
8. Benjamin Hoff. The Tao of Pooh.
9. Yasunari Kawabata. Snow Country.
10. Wallace Stegner. Angle of Repose.
11. Kazuo Ishiguro. Remains of the Day.
12. Marshall McLuhan + Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. (Third reading)
13. Keller Easterling. Medium Design. (Second reading)
14. Sigrid Undset. The Cross. [Kristin Lavransdatter, Book 3]
15. Kazuo Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go.
16. Caroline Levine. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network.
17. Mark Synnott. The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life.
18. William Shakespeare. Julius Caesar.
19. Deidre Shauna Lynch. The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning.
20. Flann O’Brien. At Swim-Two-Birds.
21. Tom McCarthy. Satin Island.
22. J. M. Coetzee. Elizabeth Costello.
23. J. M. Coetzee. Slow Man.
24. Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451.
25. Kate Rigby. Dancing with Disaster: Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous Times.
26. William Cronon, ed. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. (Selections)
27. Annie Dillard. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
28. Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family.
29. Calvin L. Warren. Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation. (Selections)
30. Linda Weintraub. What's Next?: Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art.
31. Rebecca Solnit. A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
32. Dee Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
33. Homer. The Iliad. (Second reading; first time with the Fagles translation)
34. Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan. Buried in the Sky.
35. Willa Cather. One of Ours.
36. Macarena Gómez-Barris. The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. (Selections)
37. Karl Ove Knausgård. So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch.
38. Octavia Butler. Kindred.
39. Roland Barthes. S/Z: An Essay.
40. John Steinbeck. East of Eden.
41. Park Honan. Shakespeare: A Life.
42. Stephen Greenblatt. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.
43. Janis P. Stout. Cather Among the Moderns.
44. Albert Camus. The Plague.
45. M. Somerset Maugham. Of Human Bondage.
46. Natalie Loveless. How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation.
47. Alexis Wright. Carpentaria.
48. Calvin Thomas. Ten Lessons in Theory: An Introduction to Theoretical Writing. (Partial reading)
49. Macarena Gómez-Barris. Beyond the Pink Tide: Art and Political Undercurrents in the Americas.
50. Peter Mattheissen. At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
51. Toni Morrison. Beloved. (Third reading)
52. Susanna Clarke. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
53. Dag Solstad. Professor Andersen’s Night.
54. Juno Salazar Parreñas. Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation.
55. Sjón. The Whispering Muse.
Books Read in 2018
1. Tarjei Vesaas. The Birds.
2. Jóanes Nielsen. The Brahmadells.
3. Sjón. The Blue Fox.
4. Eric Hayot. The Elements of Academic Style.
5. William Shakespeare. Othello. (Second reading.)
6. Robert Ferguson. Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North.
7. Walidah Imarisha. Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption.
8. Jeffrey T. Schnapp + Adam Michaels. The Electric Information Age Book: McLuhan/Agel/Fiore and the Experimental Paperback.
9. Marshall McLuhan + Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. (Second reading.)
10. Maggie Nelson. The Argonauts.
11. Frank Close. The Void.
12. Bret Easton Ellis. American Psycho. (Stopped halfway through, as it didn't seem necessary to continue to "get the point" — a lesson I learned from Michael Haneke's film Funny Games.)
13. László Krasznahorkai. Satantango. (Trans. Georges Szirtes)
14. James Owen Weatherall. Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing.
15. Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart. (Third [fourth?] reading.)
16. Partha Chatterjee. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories.
17. Timothy Morton. Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People.
18. Judith [Jack] Halberstam. The Queer Art of Failure.
19. Eduardo Kohn. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human.
20. Hal Foster. Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency.
21. Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. (Selections.)
22. Ruth Ozeki. My Year of Meats.
23. Thomas Mann. Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend.
24. Monique Truong. The Book of Salt.
25. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.
26. Mahmoud Darwish. Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982.
27. William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Second reading.)
28. Marv Wolfman + George Pérez. Crisis on Infinite Earths.
29. Sarah Sentilles. Draw Your Weapons.
30. Elias Khoury. Gate of the Sun. (Partial reading.)
31. John Berger. Ways of Seeing.
32. László Krasznahorkai. The World Goes On.
33. Max Horkheimer + Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. (Selections.)
34. R. John Williams. The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and the Meeting of East and West.
35. Dag Solstad. Armand V.
36. Amy Allen. The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. (Selections.)
37. Claudia Rankine. Citizen: An American Lyric.
38. Michel Serres. Genesis.
39. Samuel R. Delany. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.
40. N. K. Jemisin. The Fifth Season.
41. Christina Sharpe. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being.
42. Stuart Jeffries. Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. (Selections.)
43. Ytasha L. Womack. Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy. (Selections.)
44. Manuel De Landa. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History.
45. N. K. Jemisin. The Obelisk Gate.
46. Donna J. Haraway. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene.
47. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. M Archive: After the End of the World.
48. Helen Sword. Stylish Academic Writing.
49. Frank Herbert. Dune. (Herbert's cardboard characters ended it for me halfway through.)
50. Elizabeth Bowen. The Death of the Heart.
51. Muriel Spark. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
52. F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. (Third reading.)
53. G. W. F. Hegel. Introduction to the Philosophy of History.
54. Iris Murdoch. The Sea, the Sea.
55. James Elkins. The Object Stares Back.
56. William Shakespeare. Hamlet. (Second[?] reading.)
57. Allan deSouza. How Art Can Be Thought: A Handbook for Change.
58. William Shakespeare. King Lear. (Third reading.)
59. William Shakespeare. Macbeth. (Second reading.)
60. Michel Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge. (Selections.)
61. N. K. Jemisin. The Stone Sky.
62. William Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice.
63. Samiya Bashir. Field Theories.
64. Mark Rifkin. Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination. (Selections.)
65. Leslie Marmon Silko. Storyteller.
66. Karl Ove Knausgård. My Struggle: Book Six.
67. Honoré de Balzac. The Unknown Masterpiece [& Gambara].
68. Umberto Eco. The Name of the Rose.
69. Tom McCarthy. Remainder.
70. Achille Mbembe. Critique of Black Reason. (Selections.)
71. Peter Matthiessen. In Paradise.
72. Hito Steyerl. Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War.
73. Annie McClanahan. Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First-Century Culture. (Selections.)
74. Hal Foster. Design and Crime (And Other Diatribes).
75. W. G. Sebald. Vertigo.
Books Read in 2017
1. David Foster Wallace. Consider the Lobster.
2. David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest. (Put it down at the two-thirds mark.)
3. Anonymous. Egil's Saga. (In The Sagas of Icelanders.)
4. Graham Greene. The Quiet American.
5. Karl Ove Knausgård. My Struggle: Book One.
6. Karl Ove Knausgård. My Struggle: Book Two.
7. Katherine Profeta. Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance.
8. Knut Hamsun. Hunger.
9. Henrik Ibsen. Peer Gynt.
10. Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. (Fourth reading.)
11. Peter Matthiessen. The Snow Leopard.
12. François Jullien. In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics.
13. Roy Scranton. Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization.
14. David Ehrenfeld. The Arrogance of Humanism.
15. Stephen Batchelor. After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age.
16. Edward Hinga. Out of the Jungle.
17. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir.
18. James Joyce. Dubliners. (Second reading.)
19. Karl Ove Knausgård. My Struggle: Book Three.
20. Banana Yoshimoto. Kitchen.
21. Åsne Seierstad. One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway.
22. Halldór Laxness. Wayward Heroes.
23. Ivan Vladislavić. The Exploded View.
24. Ivan Vladislavić. The Folly.
25. Ivan Vladislavić. Double Negative.
26. Amadou Hampaté Bâ. The Fortunes of Wangrin.
27. J. D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye.
28. Emily Ruete [née Sayyida Salme]. Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar.
29. Anne Garréta. Sphinx.
30. Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (Second reading.)
31. Wole Soyinka. Aké: The Years of Childhood.
32. Wole Soyinka. Myth, Literature and the African World.
33. Anonymous. Njal's Saga.
34. Marshall McLuhan + Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
35. William H. Gass. On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry.
36. Pheng Cheah. What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature.
37. Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography.
38. William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet. (Second reading.)
39. William Shakespeare. The Tempest. (Second reading.)
40. Susan Sontag. On Photography.
41. Susan Sontag. Regarding the Pain of Others.
42. Judith Butler. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (Selections.)
43. Martha Buskirk. The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art. (Selections.)
44. W. J. T. Mitchell. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. (Selections.)
45. Donna J. Haraway. Manifestly Haraway.
46. Wole Soyinka. Death and the King's Horseman. (Second reading.)
47. Karl Ove Knausgård. A Time for Everything.
48. Karl Ove Knausgård. My Struggle: Book Four.
49. Karl Ove Knausgård. My Struggle: Book Five.
No records kept for 2016 — ‘twas a sad year for reading.
Books Read in 2015
1. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. Dust.
2. D. H. Lawrence. The Rainbow.
3. D. H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterly's Lover.
4. F. R. Leavis. D. H. Lawrence: Novelist. (Selections)
5. William York Tindall. D. H. Lawrence and Susan His Cow.
6. D. H. Lawrence. Mornings in Mexico.
7. Jakob von Uexküll. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans.
8. D. H. Lawrence. The Plumed Serpent.
9. Martin Heidegger. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. (Part Two)
10. Jeff VanderMeer. Authority.
11. D. H. Lawrence. Studies in Classic American Literature.
12. Quentin Meillassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency.
13. Graham Harman. The Quadruple Object.
14. Steven Shaviro. The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism.
15. Jane Bennett. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.
16. Jeff VanderMeer. Acceptance.
17. Michel Serres. The Natural Contract.
18. Maggie Nelson. Bluets.
19. Henry D. Thoreau. Walden.
20. Arthur J. Bachrach. D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico.
21. D. H. Lawrence. Fantasia of the Unconscious.
22. Dolores LaChapelle. D. H. Lawrence: Future Primitive.
23. D. H. Lawrence. Sketches of Etruscan Places.
24. Elizabeth Kolbert. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.
25. Max Oelschlaeger. The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology. (Selections)
26. Ben Woodard. On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy.
27. D. H. Lawrence. Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence. (Selections)
28. Eugene Thacker. In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 1.
29. D. H. Lawrence. St. Mawr.
30. Neil Evernden. The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment.
31. Graham Harman. Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy. (Parts 1 + 3)
32. D. H. Lawrence. The Fox.
33. Toni Morrison. God Help the Child.
34. Vincent Scully. Pueblo: Mountain, Village, Dance. (Selections)
35. Dan Lloyd. Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness.
36. Dan Simmons. Hyperion.
37. Lily King. Euphoria.
38. Emily St. John Mandel. Station Eleven.
39. Rosi Braidotti. The Posthuman.
40. David Skrbina. Panpsychism in the West.
41. Tom Quirk. Bergson and American Culture: The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens. (Selections)
42. Willa Cather. My Mortal Enemy.
43. Ellen Eve Frank. Literary Architecture: Essays Toward a Tradition.
44. William Plomer. Turbott Wolfe.
45. H. I. E. Dhlomo. Collected Works. (Selections)
46. Sol Plaatje. Native Life in South Africa.
47. Dan Simmons. The Fall of Hyperion.
48. André Brink. A Chain of Voices.
49. Chenjerai Hove. Bones.
50. E. M. Forster. Aspects of the Novel. (Selections)
51. Terence Ranger. Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe.
52. Edward Said. Beginnings: Intention and Method. (Selections)
53. Wole Soyinka. Myth, Literature, and the African World. (Selections)
54. Simon Gikandi. Reading the African Novel. (Selections)
55. Hermann Hesse. Steppenwolf.
56. Ayi Kwei Armah. Two Thousand Seasons.
57. Patrick Rothfuss. The Slow Regard of Silent Things.
58. Eugène Marais. The Soul of the White Ant.
59. Doris Lessing. African Stories. (Selections)
60. Lawrence Vambe. An Ill-Fated People: Zimbabwe Before and After Rhodes.
61. Joseph O'Neill. The Dog.