Reading List
Reading List
My Reading List. Writer Heather Sellers recommends in Chapter After Chapter that all writers keep a list of 101 books that they have read cover to cover. This is my list, beginning December 2016. At one point I had the list in order of books as they were read. Then, as of August 8, 2018, I changed them into two lists. Books of fiction and books of craft. At the time, it took me from a list of 95 books read back to 73, but my intention was to read 101 books of fiction. Now, in 2021, I am on my way in reading the next 101 books.
In all honesty, I think when I read Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, I came to a new realization about the level of stakes that a book must include. I’d seen it all along, but I think that was the turning point for me, as an author, when the negation of the negation really became this phenomena I could see, as though it were an object in front of me, glowing, real, but something that required special powers to see so clearly.
Book 101 – Fictional Works
1 The Awakening, Kate Chopin
2 The Egypt Game, Zilpha Keatley Snyder
3 Go Set a Watchman, by Nell Harper Lee
4 All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
5 Wintering, Peter Geye
6 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
7 Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
8 Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
9 Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl
10 Muscle and a Shovel, Michael J. Shank
11 The Heaven of Mercury, Brad Watson
12 The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
13 To Kill a Mockingbird, by Nell Harper Lee
14 Twelve Days of Christmas, Debbie Macomber
15 The Snowden Files, Luke Harding
16 The Grid, by Harry Hunsicker
17 A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
18 Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett
19 Twain’s End, by Lynn Cullen
20 Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
21 War and Turpentine, by Stefan Hertmans
22 Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
23 Mere Christianity, C S Lewis.
24 Moonglow, Michael Chabon
25 The Storied Life of A J Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin
26 A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
27 Rules of Civility, Amor Towles
28 A Separate Peace, John Knowles
29 The Travelers, Chris Pavone
30 History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund
31 The Human Comedy, William Saroyan
32 The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden
33 Caraval, Stephanie Garber
34 The Wolf in the Attic, Paul Kearney
35 The Barrowfields, Phillip Lewis
36 The Call of the Wild, Jack London
37 Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
38 A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick
39 Elmet, Fiona Mozley
40 The Hazel Wood, Melissa Albert
41 A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway *
42 Uncommon Type, Tom Hanks
43 The Lodger, Marie Belloc Lowndes
44 Hemingway in Love, His Own Story, A.E. Hotchner
45 On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
46 The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
47 The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, The Hemingway Library
48 To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway
49 The Waters and the Wild, DeSales Harrison
50 Before We Were Yours, Lisa Wingate
51 A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
52 The Torrents of Spring, Ernest Hemingway
53 The Figure in the Carpet, Henry James
54 The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald
55 The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
56 Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh
57 Animal Farm, George Orwell
58 The Overstory, Richard Powers
59 The Captives, Debra Jo Immergut
60 Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
61 Warlight, Michael Ondaatje
62 The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin
63 Your Destination is on the Left, Lauren Spieller
64 The President is Missing, Bill Clinton and James Patterson
65 Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler
66 The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah
67 Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, Oscar Wilde
68 A Long Way From Home, Peter Carey
69 My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
70 The Pearl, John Steinbeck
71 The Human Stain, Philip Roth
72 The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante
73 The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
74 Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
75 There There, Tommy Orange
76 The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
77 The Woman in the Window, A. J. Finn
78 When Life Gives You Lululemons, Lauren Weisberger
79 The Summer That Melted Everything, Tiffany McDaniel
80 Across the River and into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway
81 Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
82 Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett
83 My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout
84 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
85 The Outsider, Stephen King
86 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
87 Tailspin, Sandra Brown
88 Pieces of Her, Karin Slaughter
89 The Plague, Albert Camus
90 The Shack, Wm. Paul Young
91 The Collector, John Fowles
92 You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe
93 Atonement, Ian McEwan
94 Swift Vengeance, T Jefferson Parker
95 The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel
96 The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, Robert Dugoni
97 The Flame Throwers, Rachel Kushner
98 The Other Woman, Daniel Silva
99 Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
100 The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
101 The Infatuations, Javier Marías
The Second 101
102 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
103 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
104 Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
105 Ways to Hide in Winter, Sarah St. Vincent
106 Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
107 Beneath A Scarlet Sky, Mark Sullivan
108 The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman
109 The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
110 Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev
111 The Master & Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
112 Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
113 The Little Paris Bookshop, Nina George
114 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer & Anne Barrows
115 And Quiet Flows the Don, Mikhail Sholokhov
116 Closely Watched Trains, Bohumil Hrabal
117 The Alchemist, Paul Coelho
118 I Served the King of England, Bohumil Hrabal
119 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
120 Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
121 The Dead Fathers Club, Matt Haig
122 Nutshell, Ian McEwan
123 Sashenka, Simon Sebag Montefiore
124 One Night in Winter, Simon Sebag Montefiore
125 The Secrets We Kept, Lara Prescott
126 First Love, Ivan Turgenev
127 White Rose, Black Forest, Eoin Dempsey
128 The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
129 You Are One of Them, Elliot Holt
130 The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides
131 There’s A Bat In Bunk Five, Paula Danzinger
132 The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald
133 The Guest List, Lucy Foley
134 Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
135 Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
136 The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
137 Ain’t Nobody Nobody, Heather Harper Ellett
138 Writers & Lovers, Lily King
139 Hamnet, Maggie O’Ferrell
140 The Jane Austen Society, Natalie Jenner
141 This Tender Land, William Kent Krueger
142 Summer of the Woods, Steven K. Smith
143 The Children’s Blizzard, Melanie Benjamin
144 Cold, John Smolens
145 The Body, Stephen King
Books on Craft
1 Chapter After Chapter, by Heather Sellers *
2 Dialogue, by Robert McKee *
3 Invisible Ink: A practical guide to building stories, Brian McDonald *
4 The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler *
5 The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne *
6 Story, by Robert McKee *
7 Please Understand Me II, David Keirsey *
8 Make Your Words Work, Gary Provost *
9 The Story Solution, Eric Edson *
10 Inner Drives, Pamela Jaye Smith *
11 The Games People Play, by Dr. Eric Berne *
12 The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass *
13 Writing 21st Century Fiction, Donald Maass *
14 Writing The Breakout Novel, Donald Maass *
15 The Daniel Plan, Rick Warren, Daniel Amen, Mark Hyman ^
16 The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron *
17 How to Shoot Video that Doesn’t Suck, Steve Stockman *
18 Finding Water, Julia Cameron *
19 Walking In This World, Julia Cameron *
20 Fearless Writing, William Kenower *
21 Let’s Write a Short Story, Joe Bunting *
22 The Right to Write, Julia Cameron *
(Have placed an asterisk * behind books that are about writing. Hemingway in A Moveable Feast calls them “Explainers.” (I put an asterisk by his, but it is less about writing than it is about his life). There are at least 20 of them on the list, which leads me to believe I should create a separate list about books for writing and leave them off the 101 books meant to help me become a better writer–as better writing is inspired through reading the works of other writers, not necessarily via books on craft, though books on craft certainly have bene helpful. Heather Sellers says during any writing project that one should not use more than one, if my memory holds. I’ve far exceeded that.)
^ The Daniel Plan is a book about eating healthy, though my nutritionist says they didn’t consult a nutritionist to write the book….
Twenty-two of these titles are not works of fiction, but works on how to improve craft or self-help. They really should not be counted in the sum total, but are for now. I will read beyond the 101 titles to ensure I have indeed absorbed the intent of lesson.
