I’ve got to remember to read this…

A few years ago, I got incredibly discouraged when I realized that not only will I not remember the plots and details of all the books I have read, but I also won’t have time in my life to read everything I should or would like to read. The list below is just a way to capture the books I think I would like to read as I continue to develop into the person I would like to be. Please add your wish list or recommendations below!

Recent Additions:

  • The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Krauss
  • Capital by Thomas Piketty (Bill Moyers recommends)
  • Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman
  • Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thessinger
  • If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Writing/Grammar Books:

  • 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B Tobias
  • The Grammar Book by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen Freeman
  • Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Marguerite Ann Snow
  • Writing Creative Nonfiction edited by Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard
  • Grammar in Use by Betty Azar and Raymond Murphy
  • The Subversive Copy Editor
  • Making Sense: The Glamorous Story of English Grammar by David Crystal
  • The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy
  • The Editor’s Companion by Steve Durham
  • The Copy Editor’s Handbook by Amy Kinsohn
  • The Perfect English Grammar Workbook by Lisa McLendon
  • It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences by June Casagrande
  • Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
  • Writing Without Bullshit by Josh Bernoff
  • Writing Science in Plain English
  • Content Rules by Ann Handley and CC Chapman
  • Woe Is I by Patricia O’Conner
  • The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus
  • The Sense of Style
  • On Writing Well by William Zinsser

General Non-Fiction

  • Lights Out: The Electricity Crisis, the Global Economy, and What It Means to You by Jason Makansi
  • The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World by Philip F Schewe
  • From Edison to Enron: The Business of Power and What It Means for the Future of Electricity by Richard Munson
  • Understanding Today’s Electricity Business by Bob Shirely
  • Damned If We Don’t! Ideas for Accelerating Change Around Water by Christopher Peacock (wateranthology.com)
  • The Value of Water Book Project by Donna Vincent Roa (www.thevalueofwater.org)

Books Related to India

  • Not Only the Things That Have Happened by Mridula Koshy
  • The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh
  • Chronicles of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry
  • God’s Little Soldier by Kiran Nagarkar
  • Serious Man by Mann Joseph
  • The Lost Flamingos of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghri
  • The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
  • The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
  • A Matter of Rats by Amitava Kumar
  • The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri
  • Our Moon Has Clots by Rahul Pandita
  • The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
  • Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar
  • Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
  • Shiva Trilogy by Armish
  • Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar
  • English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee
  • A Free Man by Aman Sethi
  • The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger
  • A Strange Kind of Paradise by Sam Miller
  • The Mountain Shadow by Gregory David Roberts
  • Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
  • A Fire Balance by Rohinton Mistry
  • Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
  • A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
  • Kim by Rudyard Kipling

General Non-Fiction

  • The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett
  • The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer
  • Flu by Gina Kolata
  • Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Enrenreich
  • New Jack by Ted Conover
  • Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
  • The Immaculate Invasion by Bob Shacochis
  • Chasing the Sea by Tom Bissell
  • Winter by Rick Bass
  • The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
  • The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
  • Dispatches by Michael Herr
  • True Notebooks by Mark Saltzman
  • Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti
  • Aspects of the Novel by EM Forster
  • Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley
  • Ways of Seeing by John Berer
  • Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf
  • Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
  • The Silent Woman: Silvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm
  • John Adams by David McCullough
  • Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon
  • Mark Twain: A Life by Ron Powers
  • Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
  • Essays by Michel de Montaigne
  • Getting Personal by Phillip Lopate
  • Virgin Time by Patricia Hampl
  • Reasonable Creatures (essays) by Katha Pollit
  • About This Life (essays) by Barry Lopez
  • Blues of Cannibals (essays) by Charles Bowden
  • Readings (essays) by Sven Birkerts
  • The Writer and the World by V.S. Naipaul
  • Under the Sign of Saturn (essays) by Susan Sontag
  • Confessions by Rousseau
  • Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy
  • Halls of Fame by John D’Agata
  • The Next American Essay (anthology) edited by John D’Agata
  • The Smoking Diaries by Simon Gray
  • On Being Blue by William Gass
  • Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson
  • Enough About You by David Shields
  • Confessions of an Opium Eater by Thomas DeQuincy
  • Out of Place by Edward Said
  • My Mother’s House by Colette
  • Fourteen by Stephen Zanichkowsky
  • Speak, Memory by V.S. Nabokov
  • The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster
  • Not Even Wrong by Paul Collins
  • Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman
  • The Lover by Marguerite Duras
  • A Death in the Family by James Agee
  • Old School by Tobias Wolff

General Literature:

  • Angle in Repose by Wallace Stegner
  • Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Atonement by Ian McEwan
  • The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
  • The Bookseller of Kabul
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • Brothers K by David James Duncan
  • Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon
  • Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bemier
  • Confederacy of Dunces by John K Toole
  • Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
  • Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  • Camulod Chronicles by Jack Whyte
  • Demanding Dignity: Young Voices From the Front Lines of the Arab Revolutions edited by Maytha Alhassen and Ahmed Shihab-Eldin
  • Don’t Tell by Karen Rose
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
  • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
  • A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  • Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Handmade’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov
  • A History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
  • House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
  • I, Claudius by Robert Graves
  • In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
  • A Journal of the Plague of Years by Daniel Defoe
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
  • Lajja by Taslima Nasrim
  • The Last Empress by Anchee Min
  • Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec
  • Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  • The Magic Tree House book series
  • Mating by Norman Rush
  • Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
  • The Mists of Avalon by Marion Z Bradley
  • The Mortal Instrument series by Cassandra Clare
  • Narcissus and Goldman by Hermann Hesse
  • Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  • Our Moon Has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita
  • The Plague by Albert Camas
  • Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
  • The Pioneer Woman by Ree Drummond
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
  • The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
  • Russian Forest by Leonid Leonov
  • Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • School for Fools by Sokolov
  • The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
  • Shibumi by Trevanian
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
  • Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
  • Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston
  • Transitions Making Sense of Life’s Changes by William Bridges
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  • To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
  • The Villiage by Ivan Bunin
  • Walking Across Egypt by Clive Edgerton
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
  • The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist’s Path to Freedom by Gennady Gorelik
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  • Zhuangzi

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