* Starred books are favorites. 

2024:

Paul Murray, The Bee Sting (now reading)

Martin Solares, How to Draw a Novel (now reading)

2023:

Annie Ernaux, Getting Lost (A lovely copy I bought on a recent solo escapade to Brussels! It is ok, sort of repetitive? Which is kind of the point?)

Hernan Diaz, Trust

Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (now reading, kind of perpetually actually)

Allegra Goodman, Sam

Ted Chiang, Exhalation*

Jose Saramago, All The Names

Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Better

Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch*

2022:

Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus*

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future*

Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths*

Vauhini Vara, The Immortal King Rao

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

Ottessa Moshfegh, My Life of Rest and Relaxation

Sindya Bhanoo, Seeking Fortune Elsewhere

Matt Bell, Refuse To Be Done

Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise*

Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley

2021:

Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing

Thomas Bernhard, Concrete*

Hilary Leichter, Temporary

Paul Harding, Tinkers

Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment*

Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation*

John Updike, Too Far to Go

Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers

James Suzman, Work: A Deep History

Philip Roth, Deception

Thomas Bernhard, The Loser*

Rachel Cusk, Aftermath

Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun*

George Saunders, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain** (Best book on writing ever)

Shruti Swamy, A House is a Body* (Carefully written, deserving of the praise. Took risks with structure, content, pacing)

Sayaka Murata, Earthlings (Intense, unexpectedly creepy read. I felt the ideas were a bit confused and repetitive.)

2020:

Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer* (I love anything by Steven Millhauser)

Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman* (First book I could star in a while)

Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli

Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel (Liked this a lot more than I expected to. The brother-sister relationship is haunting.)

Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Lacy M. Johnson, The Other Side

Megha Majumdar, A Burning

Jenny Offill, Weather

Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. (Unsparing in opinions about the Indian psyche but often very funny)

Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You

Sumana Roy, My Mother’s Lover and other stories (I came across this contemporary Indian writer on Twitter. Her writing is simply luminous.)

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman*

Nikil Saval, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace

Gurchuran Das, India Unbound

Brian Greene, Until the End of Time (I probably understood about 25%. Two impressions: There are many theories and little consensus about the universe, and it’s deflating to end with “…there is no grand design” like I don’t know this.)

Daniel Susskind, A World Without Work

Elif Batuman, The Idiot

Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Ambai, A Kitchen in the Corner of the House * (Strong imagery, eye-opening look at intersection of modern and traditional worlds for women in India)

Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be (temporarily abandoned)

2019:

Hiroko Oyamada, The Factory

Jokha Alharthi, Celestial Bodies

Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap * (You would pick up this book only if you are interested in this kind of thing like I am.)

Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist *

Bruce Holsinger, The Gifted School

Carl Zimmer, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh (Some parts read like science fiction. I felt the book tried to cover too much.)

Richard Powers, The Overstory * (Tough read. I didn’t always enjoy the writing but the second half was powerful.)

Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

Halle Butler, The New Me *

Andrew Sean Greer, Less

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life * (This epic novel made me very sad for a very long time, which is kind of awesome.)

Eugene O’Neill, “All God’s Chillun Got Wings” (my octogenarian father’s recommendation)

Chaya Bhuvaneswar, White Dancing Elephants *

2018:

Perumal Murugan, One Part Woman *

Neel Patel, If You See Me Don’t Say Hi

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time * (A difficult read. I probably understood only 20%, but it was worth the effort.)

Keith Gessen, A Terrible Country * (I love anything to do with Russia.)

Han Kang, The Vegetarian

Elizabeth Flock, The Heart is a Shifting Sea

Neel Mukherjee, A State of Freedom

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West *

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo *

Magda Szabo, The Door *

Amos Oz, My Michael

Matthew Zapruder, Why Poetry

2017:

Gwendoline Riley, First Love *

Amit Majmudar, Dothead

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics *

Vivek Shanbhag (translated by Srinath Perur), Ghachar Ghochar: A Novel *

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind *

U.R. Ananthamurthy, Samskara (an NYRB classic)*

Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night *

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich *

Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

Ratika Kapur, The Private Life of Mrs. Sharma

Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

Earlier:

Philip Larkin’s poems *

George Saunders’ stories *

V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas *

Stephen Dunn, What Goes On: Selected and New Poems *

Rachel Cusk, Outline *

Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther *

Donald Antrim, The Emerald Light in the Air: Stories*

Atul Gawande, Being Mortal

Steven Millhauser, We Others New and Selected Stories *

Emmanual Carrere,  The Mustache *

Thomas Bernhard, Woodcutters *

Albert Camus, The Fall *

Nikolai Gogol, “The Overcoat” *

Franz Kafka’s stories*

Neel Mukherjee,  The Lives of Others

Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist *

Albert Camus, The Stranger

J.M. Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K *

Akhil Sharma, Family Life *

Saadat Hasan Manto, Bombay Stories

Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel and Other Stories *

William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

Shirley Jackson, The Lottery and Other Stories

E.M.Forster, A Passage to India

John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever