2023
Alive At The End Of The World – Saeed Jones
Steel Beach – John Varley
All About Love: New Visions – bell hooks
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency – Chen Chen
Station Eternity – Mur Lafferty
Refuse to Disappear – Tara Betts
This is How You Lose the Time War – Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
The Ballad of Beta-2 – Samuel R. Delany
Stargazer – Laurie Petrou
a record of the mother’s textile became sound – Nawal Nader-French
Normal Distance – Elisa Gabbert
I Have Some Questions for You – Rebecca Makkai
The Creative Pragmatist – Amy Smilovic
Fractal Poems – Marian Christie
S.S.O.T.B.M.E. Revised: An Essay on Magic – Ramsey Dukes
Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers – Leonard Koren
Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication – Oren Jay Sofer
The Rupture Tense: Poems – Jenny M Xie
Jung Origami – Sacha Archer
Extra Long Matches – Chris Kerr
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin (reread)
Judas Goat: Poems: Gabrielle Bates
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone – Benjamin Stevenson
The Writing Retreat – Julia Bartz
Biography of X – Catherine Lacey
The Hurting Kind: Poems – Ada Limón
The Guest – Emma Cline
The Trees Witness Everything – Victoria Chang
Almost a Nightmare – Astra Papachristodoulou
Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer – Julia Cameron
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness – Culadasa (John Yates)
Berlin – Bea Setton
Textual Porosity – Caroline Harris, Briony Hughes & Astra Papachristodoulou
Facets – Erica Castellanos
A Collection of 25 Horror Movie Props – Beau Wanzer & Brad Rohloff (illust.)
Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters
Dele Weds Destiny – Tomi Obaro
Last Summer on State Street – Toya Wolfe
Trance Poetics: Your Writing Mind – Kristin Prevallet
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On – Franny Choi
Beach Read – Emily Henry
Neuromancer – William Gibson (reread)
The Five-Star Weekend – Elin Hilderbrand
neckbone: visual verses – Avery R. Young
Midwinter Day – Bernadette Mayer
To 2040 – Jorie Graham
Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World: A History – William Alexander
All-Night Pharmacy – Ruth Madievsky
Yellowface – R. F. Kuang
Carrie Soto Is Back – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Salt Fish Girl – Larissa Lai
Ripe – Sarah Rose Etter
Essence of Shibari: Kinbaku and Japanese Rope Bondage – Shin Nawakari, Piez Jeng (Photographer)
Bluest Nude: Poems – Ama Codjoe
Candelaria – Melissa Lozada-Oliva
Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me: And Other Poems – Ghassan Zaqtan, Fady Joudah (Translator)
Land of Milk and Honey – C Pam Zhang
a Year & other poems – Jos Charles
2022
Meg E. Griffitts – Hallucinating a Homestead
Ruth Stone (Bianca Stone, Ed.) – The Essential Ruth Stone
Claudia Rankine – Just Us: An American Conversation
Kimberly O'Connor – White Lung
Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matthew Wilson, and Jared K. Fletcher – Paper Girls Vol. 1
Alix E. Harrow – The Ten Thousand Doors of January
Arulu – Surrender to Chaos
Astra Papachristodoulou – Inside Ocean Größt’s Time Capsule
Mia P. Manansala – Arsenic and Adobo
Cecilia Vicuña – About to Happen
Emma Laperruque – Big Little Recipes: Good Food with Minimal Ingredients and Maximal Flavor
Miri Yū, Morgan Giles (Translator) – Tokyo Ueno Station
Arthur C. Clarke – Tales from the White Hart
K-Ming Chang – Bone House
Marlin Figgins – Homebound
Alejandro Zambra, Carolina De Robertis (Translator) – Bonsai
Akua Lezli Hope (ed.) – NOMBONO: Speculative Poetry by BIPOC Poets
Etel Adnan – There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other
Sun Ra – Jazz in Silhouette liner note poems
Angela Y. Davis – Women, Race & Class
Michelle Zauner – Crying in H Mart
Hoa Nguyen – A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure
Brian Catling – The Vorrh
Estebán Rodríguez – A City Is Always Near
Emily Henry – People We Meet on Vacation
Anuschka Rees – The Curated Closet
Frater U∴D∴, Ingrid Fischer (Translator) – Practical Sigil Magic
Akwaeke Emezi – Content Warning: Everything
Lina Meruane, Megan McDowell (Translator) – Nervous System
Anthony Opal – The Roof Above Our Heads
Taneda Santoka, Anthony Opal (Translator) – Poems of Taneda Santoka
Chris McDade – The Magic of Tinned Fish: Elevate Your Cooking with Canned Anchovies, Sardines, Mackerel, Crab, and Other Amazing Seafood
Lily Rose Kosmicki – The Eyelash Atlas
Lillian Fishman – Acts of Service
June Jordan – Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan
Alex Finlay – The Night Shift
Peter Gizzi – Now It’s Dark
Akwaeke Emezi – You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
Daniel Borzutzky – The Performance of Becoming Human
Cora Harrington – In Intimate Detail: How to Choose, Wear, and Love Lingerie
Morgan Parker – Other People's Comfort Keeps Me up at Night
Paraic O'Donnell – The House on Vesper Sands
Astra Papachristodoulou – Constellations
Kristen Miglore – Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy – The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love
Noor Hindi – Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow.
Ryka Aoki – Light from Uncommon Stars
Amanda Eyre Ward – The Jetsetters
Natalie Díaz – When My Brother Was an Aztec
Robert A. Heinlein – The Door Into Summer
Jean Thompson – The Poet’s House
Wang Wei, David Hinton (Translator) – Selected Poems of Wang Wei
Lucy R. Lippard – Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972
Christian Bök – Crystallography
Emily St. John Mandel – The Glass Hotel
Ellen Lupton – Thinking with Type
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Gabrielle Joy Lessans – [ a go ]
Joanna Russ – We Who Are About To…
Andreas Malm – How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Marie Conlan – Neurotic Love Baby
Mia Ayumi Malhotra – Notes from the Birth Year
Astra Papachristodoulou – Almost a Dream
Tara Isabella Burton – Social Creature
Various – The Book of Penteract
Vicki Siolos – The Art of the Artist Bio
Kim Addonizio – Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within
Astra Papachristodoulou – Stargazing
Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Illustrator) – Saga Vol. 10
2021
Tiana Clark -- I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples -- Saga Vol. 7-9
James Thomas, Robert Shapard, and Christopher Merrill (Eds.) -- Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World
*Liu Cixin -- Death’s End
Matthew Rohrer -- The Sky Contains the Plans
Christine Taylor (Ed.) -- Lift Every Voice: An Anthology of Poetry
David Coccagna -- I Watched the Dog Go Hungry
Rumaan Alam -- Leave the World Behind
Don Mee Choi -- DMZ Colony
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Ríos -- Pretty Deadly Vol. 1
Hélène Cixous -- First Days of the Year
Nikki Wallschlaeger -- Crawlspace
Nikki Wallschlaeger -- I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel
Elif Batuman -- The Idiot
Leslie Stein -- I Know You Rider
*Jericho Brown -- The Tradition
Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda -- Monstress Vol. 1-6
Bernadette Mayer -- Scarlet Tanager
Lee Ann Roripaugh -- Dandarians
*Amor Towles -- A Gentleman in Moscow
*Etel Adnan -- Shifting the Silence
Yoko Ono -- Acorn
Raven Leilani -- Luster
Lara Mimosa Montes -- Thresholes
Jia Tolentino -- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
*Mónica de la Torre and Alex Balgiu (Eds.) -- Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979
Nate Marshall -- Finna
Akwaeke Emezi -- The Death of Vivek Oji
Rosmarie Waldrop -- The road is everywhere or stop this body
Ellen Bass -- Indigo
*Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore -- The Freezer Door
Layla F. Saad -- Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
Jackie Wang -- The Sunflower Cast a Spell To Save Us From The Void
Joshua Nguyen -- American Lục Bát for My Mother
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -- The Sirens of Titan (reread)
Wren Hanks -- Lily-Livered
*Susanna Clarke -- Piranesi
William Frederick Marvel -- The Life and Times of William Frederick Marvel
Ottessa Moshfegh -- Death in Her Hands
Kiley Reid -- Such a Fun Age
*Gabirelle Joy Lessans -- BREAD OF
Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator) -- Convenience Store Woman
Britteney Black Rose Kapri -- Queer Black Hoe
Rainer Maria Rilke, Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy (Translators) -- Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Elizabeth Bradfield & Antonia Contro -- Theorem
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge -- A Treatise on Stars
Vendela Vida -- The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty
Dawn Lundy Martin -- Good Stock Strange Blood
Paul Fleischman, Ken Nutt (Illustrations) -- I Am Phoenix: Poems for Two Voices
Nnedi Okorafor -- Remote Control
Natasha Alterici, Rachel Deering, Ashley A. Woods, Morgan Martinez -- Heathen Vol. 1 -3
Nicole Sealey -- Ordinary Beast
Patrick Modiano -- Out of the Dark
Brice Maiurro -- Stupid Flowers
Megan Abbott -- Dare Me
Kurtis J. Wiebe & Roc Upchurch -- Rat Queens Vol. 1-2
Kaveh Akbar -- Pilgrim Bell
Silvia Moreno-Garcia -- Mexican Gothic
*Rachel Cusk -- Transit
Marilyn Hacker -- Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons
Naomi Hirahara -- Clark and Division
Malidoma Patrice Somé -- Ritual: Power, Healing and Community
Rafia Zakaria -- Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption
Marlowe Granados -- Happy Hour
Tia Williams -- Seven Days in June
Tameca L Coleman -- an identity polyptych
Julia Turshen -- Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs
Martha Collins -- Night Unto Night
Laura Passin -- Borrowing Your Body
Taffy Brodesser-Akner -- Fleishman Is in Trouble
Sophia Stid – Whistler’s Mother
*Maggie Nelson – On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint
Lisa Marie Basile – City Witchery
*[ . . . ] – Ava Hofmann
Alana Collins – Strength Training Over 40
*Andrea Abi-Karam & Kay Gabriel (Editors) – We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics
Nnedi Okorafor – Binti: The Complete Trilog7
Taylor Jenkins Reid – Malibu Rising
—-
*Denotes a favorite
2020
*N. K. Jemisin -- The Obelisk Gate
Heather Christle -- The Crying Book
Ocean Vuong -- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Lisa Taddeo -- Three Women
Liu Cixin -- The Three-Body Problem
*Ariana Reines -- A Sand Book
*Danez Smith -- Homie
Elizabeth Lowell -- Death Echo
*Ilya Kaminsky -- Deaf Republic
N. K. Jemisin -- The Stone Sky
*Anne Boyer -- A Handbook of Disappointed Fate
*Marie Conlan -- Say Mother Say Hand
Christine Taylor -- Claw: A Collection of Haibun
Liu Cixin -- The Dark Forest
Ijeoma Oluo -- So You Want to Talk About Race
Naima Yael Tokunow -- Shadow Black
Patrick Whitfill -- Curiosity
Agatha Christie -- Murder on the Orient Express
Shari Lapena -- The Couple Next Door
Chera Hammons -- Maps of Injury
*Marlon James -- Black Leopard, Red Wolf
R. O. Kwon -- The Incendiaries
Ashley M. Jones -- Magic City Gospel
Morgan Parker -- Magical Negro
Gertrude Stein -- Paris France (reread)
*Akwaeke Emezi -- Freshwater
*Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples -- Saga Vol 1-6
Susan Howe -- That This
Samantha Irby -- Wow, No Thank You
Rachel Howzell Hall -- And Now She’s Gone
*Audre Lorde -- Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Gretchen Rockwell -- Love Songs for Godzilla
Tana French -- The Searcher
Jackson MacKenzie -- Whole Again
Christine Kanownik -- Head
*Cecilia Vicuña -- QUIPOem / The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña
Lily King -- Writers and Lovers
*Khadijah Queen -- Anodyne
*Denotes a favorite
2019
Ada Limón -- The Carrying
Karin Slaughter -- Cop Town
*Jennifer S. Cheng -- Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems
Lauren Groff -- Florida
Charlie Bondhus -- Divining Bones
Dorothea Lasky -- Awe
Michelle Tea -- Black Wave
Jessica Knoll -- The Favorite Sister
*Khadijah Queen -- I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On
Rachel McKibbens -- blud
Juan Morales -- The Handyman’s Guide to End Times
Hermione Hoby -- Neon in Daylight
Patricia Frazier -- Graphite
Tracy K. Smith -- Life on Mars
Octavia E. Butler -- Parable of the Sower
Niviaq Korneliussen -- Last Night in Nuuk
Celeste Ng -- Little Fires Everywhere
Harryette Mullen -- Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary
*Danez Smith -- Don’t Call Us Dead
Maria Hummel -- Still Lives
Christine Hamm -- Notes on Wolves and Ruin
Makoto Ueda (Ed.) -- Modern Japanese Tanka
Eloisa Amezcua -- From the Inside Quietly
Carol Guess and Daniela Olszewska -- How To Feel Confident With Your Special Talents
Madeline Miller -- Circe
*Italo Calvino -- Cosmicomics (reread)
Karin Slaughter -- Pretty Girls
Chloé Delaume -- Not a Clue
Aimee Nezhukumatathil -- Oceanic
*Kim Stanley Robinson -- Aurora
B. A. Paris -- Behind Closed Doors
*Donna Tartt -- The Secret History (reread)
Kate Atkinson -- Transcription
Jos Charles -- feeld
Emily St. John Mandel -- Last Night in Montreal
Gretchen Rubin -- Outer Order, Inner Calm
*Samiya Bashir -- Field Theories
Andrea Bartz -- The Lost Night
Anthony Horowitz -- Magpie Murders
Candace Williams -- Spells for Black Wizards
Jen Sincero -- You Are a Badass
Tana French -- The Witch Elm
Taylor Jenkins Reid -- Daisy Jones and the Six
Diana Khoi Nguyen -- Ghost Of
N.K. Jemisin -- The Fifth Season
Karen Cleveland -- Need to Know
Francis Bacon and David Sylvester -- Interviews with Francis Bacon
*Alan Moore -- Watchmen
Jim Lynch -- The Highest Tide
*Denotes a favorite
2018
I read the following books in 2018, in chronological order.
Books with an asterisk(*) particularly affected me. My top five-ish are: Alice Notley -- The Descent of Alette, Rachel Blau DuPlessis -- Interstices, Kiki Petrosino -- Witch Wife, Terrance Hayes -- American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Selah Saterstrom -- Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics, and Ottessa Moshfegh -- My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
This year, I also read a lot for Inverted Syntax, a new literary journal for which I’m an editor.
Full list
——————————
Arundhati Roy -- The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Barbara Mauriello -- Making Memory Boxes
Richard McGuire -- Here
Tana French -- The Secret Place
Dylan Krieger -- Giving Godhead
Roberto Bolaño -- The Savage Detectives
Renee Gladman -- Newcomer Can’t Swim
Melissa Kwasny -- Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950
Philip K. Dick -- Ubik
Paula Hawkins -- Into the Water
Jean Valentine -- Shirt in Heaven
Alex Lemon -- Feverland
Sawnie Morris -- Her, Infinite
Don Delillo -- White Noise
*Selah Saterstrom -- Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics
Gregory Dowling -- Ascension
Elizabeth Robinson -- Rumor
CAConrad -- While Standing in Line for Death
Renee Gladman -- Prose Architectures
Ellen Bryant Voigt -- Headwaters
CAConrad -- YOU DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE MY NEMESIS
Tana French -- The Trespasser
Donna Tartt -- The Little Friend
*Rachel Cusk -- Outline
Taisia Kitaiskaia -- Literary Witches
Tara Nolan -- Raised Bed Revolution
Sarah Waters -- The Little Stranger
Halle Butler -- Jillian
Meg Wolitzer -- The Wife
Michelle Tea -- Modern Tarot
Courtney Weber -- Tarot for One
Bethany C. Morrow -- Mem
*Samantha Hunt -- The Seas
Rosalie Knecht -- Who Is Vera Kelly?
*jamie mortara -- some planet
Christina Dalcher -- Vox
Jennifer Egan -- Look at Me
Peter Frase -- Four Futures: Life After Capitalism
Carmen Maria Machado -- Her Body and Other Parties
Fatimah Asghar -- If They Come for Us
Laura Lippman -- Every Secret Thing
Allison E. Joseph -- Corporal Muse
Jessica Knoll -- Luckiest Girl Alive
Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English -- Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers
Alexander Chee -- How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Ilene Rosen -- Saladish
*Kiki Petrosino -- Witch Wife
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett -- Good Omens
*Terese Marie Mailhot -- Heart Berries
Dorothea Lasky -- Milk
*Rebecca Makkai -- The Great Believers
Timothy Snyder -- On Tyranny
Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- Poetry as Insurgent Art
Monica McClure -- Tender Data
*Alice Notley -- The Descent of Alette
J. T. Ellison -- Lie to Me
Yoel Hoffmann (Ed.) -- Japanese Death Poems
*Ottessa Moshfegh -- My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Sherwin Bitsui -- Dissolve
*Rachel Blau DuPlessis -- Interstices
Diane di Prima -- The Poetry Deal
Megan Abbott -- The Fever
Karen Auvinen -- Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living
*Modern Women -- Many Moons 2018 Vol 2: July - December
Nicolai Houm -- The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland
*Terrance Hayes -- American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
2017
The following is a list of books I read in 2017, in approximate chronological order. I didn't track journals and magazines, so the list isn't complete.
Books with an asterisk(*) particularly affected me. My top five-ish are: Renee Gladman – Calamities, CAConrad – Ecodeviance, Julie Buntin – Marlena, Mary Ruefle – Madness, Rack, and Honey, and Chris Kraus – I Love Dick. Bonus points to Tana French for getting me into thrillers this last year.
Full list
——————————
Anna Smaill -- The Chimes
*Chris Kraus -- I Love Dick
Stéphane Mallarmé -- Selected Poetry And Prose
Maggie Nelson -- Bluets
Hal Elrod -- The Miracle Morning
Cat Marnell -- How to Murder Your Life
*Anne Boyer -- Garments Against Women
Wang Wei -- Laughing Lost in the Mountains
Yumi Sakugawa -- Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One With the Universe
Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik -- Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Miriam Towes -- All My Puny Sorrows
Jennifer Denrow -- California
Howard R. Bloch -- One Toss Of The Dice : The Incredible Story Of How A Poem Made Us Modern
Elizabeth Mckenzie -- The Portable Veblen
Ruth Stone -- In the Next Galaxy
Stuart Shedletsky -- Still Working: Underknown Artists of Age in America
Sarah Manguso -- 300 Arguments
Jami Attenberg -- All Grown Up
*Maggie Nelson -- The Argonauts
Tana French -- In the Wood
Ada Limón -- Bright Dead Things
Elena Ferrante -- The Story of a New Name
Tana French -- The Likeness
Joan Didion -- South and West
*Julie Buntin -- Marlena
*Lynn Emanuel -- The Nerve of It
Dani Shapiro -- Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
Ann Patchett -- Commonwealth
*Safia Elhillo -- The January Children
Wendell Berry -- The Country of Marriage
Denis Johnson -- Train Dreams
*Renee Gladman -- Calamities
Liane Moriarty -- The Husband’s Secret
*Tommy Pico -- Nature Poem
Jim Harrison -- Off to the Side
Agnes Martin with Frances Morris And Tiffany Bell, ed. -- Agnes Martin
Monica Youn -- Blackacre
Kenneth Goldsmith -- Wasting Time on the Internet
Daphne Oram -- An Individual Note
Eve Babitz -- Slow Days, Fast Company
Paul Beatty -- The Sellout
Brenda Shaughnessy -- So Much Synth
Felicia Yap -- Yesterday
Maile Maloy -- Do Not Become Alarmed
Madison Smartt Bell -- Behind the Moon
*CAConrad -- Ecodeviance (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness
Ruth Ware -- In a Dark Dark Wood
Morgan Parker -- There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé
Claire Dederer -- Love and Trouble
John Berger -- Ways of Seeing
*Mary Ruefle -- Madness, Rack, and Honey
George Saunders -- Lincoln in the Bardo
J. Diego Frey -- The Year the Eggs Cracked
Tana French -- Faithful Place
Karyna McGlynn -- Hothouse
Claudia Rankine -- Citizen
Dale Power and Jeffrey B. Snyder -- Making Wooden Boxes
Jema Hewitt -- Steampunk Emporium
Joyce Carol Oates -- The Accursed
Saryn Sowell -- Silhouettes
*Rebecca Solnit -- Men Explain Things to Me
Dawn DeVries Sokol -- 1,000 Artist Journal Pages
Virginia Woolf -- On Being Ill
Tana French -- Broken Harbor
*Kaveh Akbar -- Calling a Wolf a Wolf
Roxane Gay -- Hunger
Robin McKenzie -- Treat Your Own Neck
Sally Rooney -- Conversations with Friends
Patti Smith -- Devotion
Emily Dickinson -- The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
*Juliana Spahr -- That Winter the Wolf Came
Manjula Martin (Ed.) -- Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living
2016
The following is a list of books I read in 2016, in approximate chronological order. Approximate because I tend to read five or so books at a time, picking up whichever corresponds to my mood, so there can be some overlap.
Favorite fictions:
James Hannaham – Delicious Foods; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah; Hanya Yanagihara – A Little Life; Anthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot See; Emma Cline – The Girls; Elizabeth Gilbert – The Signature of All Things
Favorite non-fictions:
Patti Smith – M Train; iO Tillett Wright – Darling Days
Favorite poetry/hybrids:
Matthea Harvey – If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?; Claudia Rankine – Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; Stéphane Mallarmé – One Toss of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance; Solmaz Sharif – Look
Full list
——————————
Patti Smith – M Train
Tomas Transtromer – Selected poems
Vladimir Sorokin – The Blizzard
Tracy Knapp – Mouth
Jeffrey Eugenides – The Marriage Plot
Ursula LeGuin – The Wind’s Twelve Quarters
Jenny Lawson – Furiously Happy
James Hannaham – Delicious Foods
Chris Ransick – Language for the Living and the Dead
Andrea Gibson – Pansy
Suzanne Scanlon – Promising Young Women
Barbara Pleasant – Starter Vegetable Gardens
Ali Smith – There but for the
Jhumpa Lahiri – In Other Words
Elizabeth Willis – Alive: New and Selected Poems
Jennifer Weiner – All Fall Down
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah
Sherman Alexie (ed.) – The Best American Poetry 2015
Marie Kondo – The Life‑Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Ben Lerner – The Lichtenberg Figures
Hanya Yanagihara – A Little Life
Ocean Vuong – Night Sky with Exit Wounds
Carl Jung – Man and His Symbols
Anthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot See
Ben Lerner – The Hatred of Poetry
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney – The Nest
Gretchen Marquette – May Day
Max Porter – Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
Emma Cline – The Girls
Jessica Valenti – Sex Object
Laura Munson – This Is Not The Story You Think It Is
Kim Addonizio – Bukowski in a Sundress
Kathryn Budig – Aim True
Sara Majka – Cities I’ve Never Lived In
francine j harris – play dead
Solmaz Sharif – Look
Catherine Lacey – Nobody Is Ever Missing
Amy Sohn – The Actress
Cole Swensen and David St. John, eds. – American Hybrid
Ann Lauterbach – The Night Sky
Sascha Arango – The Truth and Other Lies
Anuradha Roy – Sleeping on Jupiter
Molly Prentiss – Tuesday Nights in 1980
Emily Dickinson – The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Ingrid Schaffner – The Essential Joseph Cornell
iO Tillett Wright – Darling Days
Lauren Groff – Fates and Furies
Marisa Silver – Little Nothing
Julia Turshen – Small Victories
Liane Moriarty – Big Little Lies
Dana Levin – In the Surgical Theatre
Jessie Burton – The Muse
Claudia Rankine – Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
Dana Spiotta – Innocents and Others
Jess Walter – Beautiful Ruins
William Gibson – Mona Lisa Overdrive
Jeffrey Wechsler and Townsend Ludington – Image in the Box: From Cornell to Contemporary
Lee Montgomery, ed. – The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House
Anne Carson – Float
Stéphane Mallarmé – One Toss of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance
Elizabeth Gilbert – The Signature of All Things
Mary Ruefle – Madness, Rack, and Honey
Megan Abbott – You Will Know Me
Matthea Harvey – If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?
Charles Simic – Dime-Store Alchemy
Gregory Pardlo – Digest
2015
The following is an incomplete list of books I read in 2015. “Incomplete” because I didn’t track as I read; I had to piece it together using library receipts, emails to friends, and my bookshelf. I really wish I’d started this in 2014, that was the year I read only women writers. For 2016, I’ll track as I go #resolutions
To count as read:
–I included poetry books where I didn’t read every single poem (for example: 500 page collected works volumes).
–Same with non-fiction: I included books if I read at least half.
–I included only fiction that I completely finished (though fiction that I quit midway through would be an interesting list).
Best fiction:
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Best non-fiction:
Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed, Meghan Daum
Best poetry:
Springing, Marie Ponsot
Full list
——————————
Meghan Daum – Selfish, Shallow,and Self-Absorbed
Patti Smith – Just Kids
Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch
Leslie Jamison – The Empathy Exams
Maggie Nelson – The Argonauts
Zoë Howe – Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams, and Rumours
Suzanne Scanlon – Her 37th Year
Claudia Rankine – Citizen
Maggie Nelson – Bluets
Sarah Manguso – Ongoingness: The End of a Diary
Heidi Julavits – The Folded Clock
Salman Rushdie – Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Emily St. John Mandel – Station Eleven
Tracy Daugherty – The Last Love Song (Joan Didion bio)
Kate Atkinson – A God in Ruins
Roxane Gay – Bad Feminist
Jenny Offill – Dept. of Speculation
Mary Oliver – A thousand Mornings
Mary Oliver – Why I Wake Early: New Poems
Chris Ransick – Never Summer : Poems from Thin Air
Louise Glück – Averno
Meghan Daum – The Unspeakable
Meghan Daum – Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House
John Burnside – Black Cat Bone
Vendela Vida – The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty
Kate Zambreno – Green Girl
Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn – Sharp Objects
Paula Hawkins – The Girl on the Train
Adrienne Rich – Diving into the Wreck
Adrienne Rich – Tonight No Poetry Will Serve : Poems, 2007-2010
Rebecca Makkai – The Hundred Year House
Ottessa Moshfegh – Eileen
Rachel Kushner – The Flamethrowers
Rachel Kushner – The Strange Case of Rachel K
Sarah Michas-Martin – Gray Matter
Emma Straub – The Vacationers
Yes, Please! – Amy Poehler
Amanda Cohen – Dirt Candy Cookbook
Ben Lerner – Leaving the Atocha Station
D. Nurkse – A Night in Brooklyn : Poems
Michael Hofmann – Where Have You Been? : Selected Essays
Natalie Goldberg – Writing Down to the Bones
Kino Macgregor – The Power of Ashtanga Yoga
Mary Barr – Friends Disappear
John Ashbery – Collected Works
Wallace Stevens – Collected Works
Marie Ponsot – Springing
Zadie Smith – On Beauty
Umberto Eco – How to Write a Thesis
Helen Vendler – The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar
Lili Anolik – Dark Rooms
Kevin Kwan – Crazy Rich Asians
Kevin Kwan – China Rich Girlfriend
Tyson and Brown – Home Buying for Dummies
Haruki Murakami – The Strange Library
Kenneth Koch – Collected Poems
Margaret Atwood – Negotiating with the Dead : A Writer on Writing
C. K. Williams – Writers Writing Dying
Olivia Liang – The Trip to Echo Spring : On Writers and Drinking
Thank you, libraries!!