THE BIG 100 of 2011:
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
- Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- The Alchemist by Paul Coelho (so great!)
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Man Walks Into a Room by Nicole Krauss
- The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
- i am no one you know by Joyce Carol Oates
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read)
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
- Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
- The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Wild Things by Dave Eggers
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
- Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
- Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- I Love You, Ronnie by Nancy Reagan
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson
- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (an incredible series!)
- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
- Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
- Blindness by José Saramago
- Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
- Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lein Bynum
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
- The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye: Short Stories by Jonathan Lethem
- Bossypants by Tina Fey (unbelievable! I was laughing out loud!)
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedarisune
- What is the What by Dave Eggers (re-read) (a hugely important, wonderful book)
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (re-read)
- A Separate Peace by John Knowles (re-read)
- War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
- The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
- ‘Tis by Frank McCourt
- Miss American Pie by Margaret Sartor
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
- The Life to Come and Other Stories by E.M. Forster
- Seconds of Pleasure by Neil LaBute
- Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
- South of the Border West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
- Let the Great World Spin by Collum McCann (amazing! a unique, deep story–and one of my favorites so far)
- Eight White Nights by Andre Aciman
- Invisible by Paul Auster
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (fascinating and lovely)
- Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
- Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (this man is a genius)
- Bel Canto by Ann Pachett
- The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (a delight!)
- Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (another hugely important, incredible read by Dave Eggers)
- Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones (excellent)
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (beautiful!)
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver (gorgeous, insightful short stories with real, heartfelt people)
- Dubliners by James Joyce
- Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland (such a surprise, and truly lovely)
- After Long Silence by Helen Fremont
- Setting Free the Bears by John Irving (my favorite Irving novel yet!)
- Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger
- Slam by Nick Hornby
- Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (a thrilling horror/mystery novel)
- In the Heart of the Country by J.M. Coetzee
- High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
- Men and Cartoons: Short Stories by Jonathan Lethem
- The World to Come by Dara Horn (UNBELIEVABLE! So complex and gorgeous. One of my favorites of the year.)
- You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
- A Model World and other short stories by Michael Chabon
- The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
- The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
- Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
- In the Image by Dara Horn
- The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
- No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
- Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut (amazing! a speed-read and a thoughtful, hilarious one at that)
- Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (my favorite Hornby so far)
- The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Village of a Million Spirits by Ian McMillan
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barberry
- Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (man, Vonnegut is so good.)
- This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann (I think McCann is my new favorite author).
10 Books I’m too happy I’ve read (just the beginning of the list of dozens I loved):
- Let the Great World Spin
- The World to Come
- Bossypants
- Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
- Zeitoun
- The Alchemist
- Life of Pi
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog
- The Road
- Fahrenheit 451
5 books I wish I hadn’t wasted time on:
- Super Sad True Love Story
- Eight White Nights
- The Corrections
- Freedom
- To the Lighthouse