When I was in graduate school, one of the things I missed most about life outside of student-hood was reading for pleasure. Between my courses and my teaching position, I spent a great deal of my time reading, and rarely had the mental energy to pick up a book outside of that, just for entertainment. Upon moving to New York City in September of 2017, I had two immediate goals: to find a steady job that would support my musical endeavors, and to read more. I promptly joined a friend’s book club and through it found a full-time job in a bookstore – somehow managing to achieve one goal and make the second unavoidably reachable – within two weeks of my arrival.
Maybe it’s because I was missing the organization of grad school, or maybe I am just a deeply obsessive reader, but for whatever reason, I decided to keep a list of every book I read. It’s been very cathartic, and proves useful when I am asked for recommendations. The list is in a little notebook which has plenty of pages left to fill, but I feel compelled to digitize it as well. I have included quotations that I found particularly striking – I write them on the pages opposite the list itself. So, without further elaboration, here is a reverse-chronological list of every book (and a few short stories) I have read since I moved to NYC:
[2019]
Currently reading: The Complete Poetry – Walt Whitman
Currently reading: Falter – Bill McKibben
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter* – Carson McCullers
Sa Femme – Emmanuelle Bernheim
The Book of Essie – Meghan Maclean Weir
Paul takes the form of a mortal girl* – Andrea Lawlor
The Houseguest and Other Stories* – Amparo Dávila
Sabrina – Nick Drnaso
Girl Town – Carolyn Nowak
Born A Crime* – Trevor Noah
Crush* – Richard Siken
Mrs. Caliban* – Rachel Ingalls
The Warmth of Other Suns* – Isabel Wilkerson
Another Brooklyn – Jacqueline Woodson
I’m Just a Person – Tig Notaro
Girl Made of Stars – Ashley Herring Blake
Educated* – Tara Westover
Sex Object* – Jessica Valenti
Zami* – Audre Lorde
[2018]
Friday Black* – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Ultraluminous – Katherine Faw
You Have the Right to Remain Fat – Vergie Tovar
Autobiography of Red* – Anne Carson
Reckless Daughter* – David Yaffe
Blood Child – Octavia Butler
Sonny’s Blues* – James Baldwin
Call Them by Their True Names* – Rebecca Solnit
“I sometimes wonder when I’m at a mass march, like the January 2017 Women’s March, whether the reason it matters is because some unknown young person is going to find her purpose in life that will only be evident to the rest of us when she changes the world in twenty years, when she becomes a great liberator.
The Witches – Roald Dahl
The Tree – John Fowles
“It is not necessarily too little knowledge that causes ignorance; possessing too much, or wanting to gain too much, can produce the same result.”
“There is a spiritual corollary to the way we are currently deforesting and denaturing our planet. In the end what we most defoliate and deprive is ourselves. We might as soon start collecting up the world’s poetry, every line and every copy, to burn it in a final pyre; and think we should lead richer and happier lives thereafter.”
Adele – Leila Slimani
Coyote Doggirl – Lisa Hanawalt
The Guest Cat – Tikashi Hiraide
Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black – Cookie Mueller
Beautiful Losers – Leonard Cohen
The Testament of Mary – Colm Toíbin
If Beale Street Could Talk* – James Baldwin
“I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they are making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.”
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools* – Monique J. Morris
Maud Martha* – Gwendolyn Brooks
Boy Erased – Garrard Conley
Citizen* – Claudia Rankine
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows – Balli Kaur Jaswal
George* – Alex Gino
The Argonauts* – Maggie Nelson
Difficult Women – Roxane Gay
An Untamed State – Roxane Gay
Priestdaddy* – Patricia Lockwood
We Were Feminists Once* – Andi Zeisler
Not That Bad* – ed. Roxane Gay
Giovanni’s Room* – James Baldwin
The Wild Iris* – Louise Glück
Redefining Realness – Janet Mock
One Plus One – Jojo Moyes
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
Heavens on Earth – Carmen Boullosa
A Little White Shadow – Mary Ruefle
On Imagination – Mary Ruefle
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights* – Katha Pollitt
Kindred – Octavia Butler
His Own Where* – June Jordan
Future Sex – Emily Witt
The Red Parts – Maggie Nelson
Jane: A Murder – Maggie Nelson
Annie John – Jamaica Kincaid
“Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of my other eye, I could see her shadow on the wall, cast there by the lamplight. It was a big and solid shadow, and it looked so much like my mother that I became frightened. For I could not be sure whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world.”
The Vegetarian – Han Kang
The Purity Myth* – Jessica Valenti
“What’s the difference between venerating women for being fuckable and putting them on a purity pedestal? In both cases, women’s worth is contingent upon their ability to please men and to shape their sexual identities around what men want.”
Quoting bell hooks:
“For me forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”
There, There* – Tommy Orange
Heating/Cooling* – Beth Ann Feeley
Not One Day – Anne Garretta
“But we have learned that this world is traitorous and that the surest way to preserve what we cherish is to devalue it overtly so that no one would think to take it, to flaunt it so that no one can expose it for what it is or steal it.”
Two Boys Kissing – David Levithan
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin
“To oppose something is to maintain it.”
World of Wakanda – Roxane Gay with Ta-Nehisi Coates
[2017: Through September]
Notes of a Crocodile – Qiu Miaojin
Life Among the Savages* – Shirley Jackson
The Hate U Give* – Angie Thomas
We Have Always Lived in the Castle* – Shirley Jackson
I Love Dick – Chris Kraus
“To be in love with someone means believing that to be in someone else’s presence is the only means of being, completely, yourself.”
“Reading delivers on the promise that sex raises but hardly ever can fulfill – getting larger ’cause you’re entering another person’s language, cadence, heart, and mind.”
Gratitude – Oliver Sacks
A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness
Timequake – Kurt Vonnegut
“I define a saint as a person who behaves decently in an indecent society.”
Heather: The Totality – Matthew Weiner
Witches, Sluts, Feminists – Kirsten J. Solée
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body* – Roxane Gay
How I Became A Nun – César Aira
Night Shift – Ron Kolm
My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
The New Jim Crow* – Michelle Alexander
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
The Girls – Emma Cline
*Favorite. I know I have a lot of favorites; the books that I marked here are ones that I would read again, and recommend to just about anyone.
