Reading

Here is an ever-growing list of my favourite books

History, Nonfiction, and Biography

  • Yokohama Yankee: My Family’s Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan by Leslie Helm
  • The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege by Marilynne K. Roach
  • Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann
  • So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson
  • Little by Little: A Writer’s Education by Jean Little
  • Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East by Susan Allen Toth
  • A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota edited by Sun Yung Shin
  • A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America by Allyson Hobbs
  • The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist by Marcus Rediker
  • What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America by Peggy Pascoe
  • 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Haff
  • Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston,
  • The Invisible Thread by Yoshiko Uchida
  • So Far from the Bamboo Grove and My Brother, My Sister, and I by Yoko Kawashima Watkins

(Historical) Fiction

  • The All Souls trilogy, narrated by Jennifer Ikeda and Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness
  • The Elm Creek Quilt series, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker,  The Spymistress, Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, and Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini
  • The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
  • The Chronicles of St Mary’s series by Jodi Taylor
  • The Historian by Elizabeth  Kostova
  • A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
  • The Giordano Bruno series by S. J. Parris
  • The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
  • The Lion’s Blood series by Steven Barnes
  • The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo, narrated by Jennifer Ikeda
  • Ireland by Frank Delaney, narrated by Frank Delane
  • Anthem by Ayn Rand
  • The Ivory Carver trilogy by Sue Harrison
  • The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharyn McCrumb
  • The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Science Fiction

  • Lucy by Laurence Gonzales
  • The Martian by Andy Weir
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Lock In by John Scalzi
  • Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi
  • Inferno and Escape from Hell by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
  • The Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony, narrated by George Guidall

Classics

  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
  • Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
  • A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  • Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  • East of Eden by John Steinbeck
  • The Crucible by Arthur Miller
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Writing

  • On Writing by Stephen King
  • Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
  • The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner
  • Kitchen Privileges: A Memoir by Mary Higgins Clark
  • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
  • Views From the Loft by Daniel Slager