Reading &c.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” — J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

These are the 24 books I have read in 2026 (so far!) See here for what I read last year.

Fiction

• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. 1880
• Dubliners by James Joyce. 1914
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. 1918
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. 1929
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck. 1935
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. 1937
• The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. 1937
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. 1943
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. 1945
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck. 1947
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. 1952
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles. 1959
• Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald. 1979
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. 1980
• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle. 1993
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth. 1997
• The Epic of Gilgamesh by Andrew George. 1999
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. 2003
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. 2007
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. 2009
• Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. 2012
• The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka. 2011 (for WGS 145 Globalization)
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. 2017 (for WGS 145 Globalization)

Non-fiction

• The Early History of Rome by Titus Livius (Livy). Between 27 and 9 BC