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.

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 blatantly.

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

 

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.