I often asked what I’m reading, or what books I would recommend.  I love to read, and I’ve plowed through a lot of books over the years.  This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything I’ve read, just the books that I a.) remember, and b.) enjoyed for the most part.  I’ve left off anything that I thought was awful, and all of the stuff I read in high school (V.C. Andrews anyone??) and college (I was an English major, I read A LOT).

Some of the books I have listed below were fabulous, and others just OK.  I left my opinions off the list and rather just provided you with the titles and authors, and I indicated which books were not fiction, since most are fiction.

I will say that, to date, the top 2 books I have ever read are Kristin Hannah’s “The Nightingale” and Amor Towles’ “Rules of Civility.”  Both authors have what I believe to be an amazing command of the English language and the written word.  They were both such a pleasure to read, and if I’m honest, it’s been difficult to read other authors without comparing them (and very few modern day writers can be compared to these two!).

I provide a few more details about the books, and my opinions of them in some posts on my blog.  You can find these linked under Fun>Book Club on the main page of my blog, but this is a consolidated list of everything in those posts, plus a few more.  I’ll add to this as I read more, or if I remember something I may have forgotten and left off.

Books

(all are fiction unless otherwise indicated)

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot (Marianne Cronin)

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music (Dave Growl)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (Taylor Jenkins Reid)

The Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles)

The Last Thing He Told Me (Lara Dave)

Daisy Jones & The Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid)

The Glass Hotel (Emily St. John Mandel)

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V.E. Schwab)

When All Is Said (Anne Griffin)

The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett)

The Lager Queen of Minnesota (J. Ryan Stradal)

The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion)

The Guest List ((Lucy Foley)

American Dirt (Jeanine Cummins)

Summer of ’69 (Elin Hilderbrand)

The Garden of Small Beginnings (Abbi Waxman)

Something in the Water (Catherine Steadman)

City of Girls (Elizabeth Gilbert)

Rules of Civility (Amor Towles)

The Nightingale (Kristen Hannah)

City of Girls (Elizabeth Gilbert)

A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)

All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

The Great Alone (Kristen Hannah)

All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother (Danielle Teller)

Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens)

A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman)

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Jamie Ford)

Dear Wife (Kimberly Bell)

Educated (Tara Westover) – memoir

The Dutch House (Ann Patchett)

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikery (Gabrielle Zevin)

The Woman in the Window (A.J. Finn)

The Woman in Cabin 10 (Ruth Ware)

The Immortalists (Chloe Benjamin)

Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night (Mark Haddon)

Etta and Otto and Russell and James (Emma Hooper)

The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins)

The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion (Fannie Flagg)

I’ll Take You There (Wally Lamb)

She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)

Hillbilly Elegy (J.D. Vance) – memoir

No One is Coming to Save Us (Stephanie Powell)

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)

Ordinary Grace (William Kent Krueger)

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

The Hunger Games Trilogy (Suzanne Collins)

The Year of Living Biblically (A.J. Jacobs) – nonfiction (humor)

Room (Emma Donoghue)

The Help (Kathryne Stockett)

The Stolen Village (Des Ekin) – Nonfiction (history)

Unbroken (Lauren Hildebrand) – Nonfiction (biography)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)

People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks)

Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann)

Wicked (Gregory McGuire)

Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (Lisa See)

The Falls (Joyce Carol Oates)

The Gravedigger’s Daughter (Joyce Carol Oates)

Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain) – memoir

Me Before You (Jojo Moyes)

After You (Jojo Moyes)

A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini)

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

Five Presidents (Clint Hill) – memoir

Boomerang (Michael Lewis) – nonfiction (finance)

Another Roadside Attraction, Still Life with Woodpecker, Even Cowgirls Get the Blue, Skinny Legs and All, Jitterbug Perfume (Tom Robbins)

The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven (Barbara Kingsolver)

A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley)

Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)