The Huge Book Post
I keep a list of books I’ve read for pleasure in the back of my paper journal. When a book thrills me, I give it a star. I can’t explain what distinguishes that thrill or why some books I thought were really great or even loved don’t have a star. It’s basically a je ne sais quoi of instinctive passionate delight. It’s also wildly ecumenical: could be the latest bestseller or an obscure deep cut, Serious Fiction or a romance novel.
Here is a chronological list of the books I’ve starred since 2004 with annotations where I have something to say.
Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
A.L. Kennedy, Paradise
Amanda Eyre, How to Be Lost
Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep (best depiction of adolescent sex in literary history)
Sue Miller, Lost in the Forest
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love (I stand by this!)
Marisha Pessel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics (this list is probably going to bring some of you way back)
Michael Patrick McDonald, All Souls (I have a theory about him but am still waiting for the third memoir that I thought would confirm it…though its non-appearance might also be confirmation)
Sigrid Nunez, The Last of Her Kind
Patti Boyd, Wonderful Tonight (I have a thing for rock chick memoirs, and some of them are so good)
Michelle Tea, The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America
Meredith Hall, Without a Map (all I remember of this is New Hampshire)
Rachel Seiffert, Afterwords (the first but probably not the last starred book of which I have zero recollection)
Martin Millar, Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me (British, can’t recall if it was a memoir or novel, do remember it being utterly delightful and maybe hilarious but could be wrong about the latter)
Elizabeth McCracken, An Excellent Replica of a Figment of My Imagination (exquisite, also the first star among the many grief memoirs on my list, maybe I was always getting ready)
Vicki Forman, This Lovely Life (I love loving a friend’s book and this one was magnificent)
Stephen Elliott, The Adderall Diaries (ugh, wonder what I would think now, not going to find out)
Geoff Dyer, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (I find it so odd that his new book is being marketed as his first memoir because I feel like all his books have been some kind of intellectual history meets memoir, at least the ones I’ve read)
Kate Walber, A Short History of Women (I remember liking this so much)
Megan McAndrew, Dreaming in French (I believe this was a book I couldn’t believe wasn’t making a huge stir, but maybe it did and that’s why I read it? memory is weird)
Patti Smith, Just Kids (sometimes I am basic…actually often I am basic)
Hilary Thayer Homan, Anthropology of an American Girl (I think this actually was not the graphic memoir with a similar title that I think it was, but I do recall it being fantastic, whatever it was)
Jane Mendelsohn, I Was Amelia Earhart (I am an OG Amelia Earhart stan - wrote my 8th grade research paper about her and yes I have thoughts about the recent New Yorker article - but what I loved most about this was the way it showed how much the tiniest book can do)
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Emma Donoghue, Room (man, it’s hard to type her last name, but I guess she is probably used to it)
Keith Richards, Life (not so into male rocker lit, but this was irresistible)
Natalie Dykstra, Clover Adams (pretty sure this was a great biography)
Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes (resisted this for so long and then it really was all that)
Rosamund Lupton, Sister (I rarely read thrillers, but this one was gripping)
Cheryl Strayed, Wild (I think you’re going to find Love Warrior on this list too [edited to add: you won’t but I liked that too] - I’m quite impressed with how Strayed has stepped off the influencer road her peers in the bestselling self-discovery women’s memoir field have chosen to walk)
Lauren Groff, Arcadia
Steve Kluger, The Most Excellent Year (the best YA book ever, my children and I loved it, everyone we ever recommended it to loved it, it’s got Boston, the Red Sox, and musical theater, aka everything to love)
Harriet Lane, Alys, Always (British, I believe Hampstead, vague recollections of a house)
Michael Chabon, Brokeland (truly no idea what this book is, and I would have thought I knew all his books)
Francesca Segal, The Innocents (The Age of Innocence in contemporary Jewish London…I think!)
John Lancaster, Capital (more London - I do love a good London novel)
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life (this one actually has five stars which is not a ranking in this system - also London)
Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs
David Rakoff, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish (David was one of Corinna’s dearest friends, I might have finally read this when he died)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (duh)
Jilly Cooper, Riders (genius trash - trash is a positive in my reading lexicon!)
Julian Barnes, Levels of Life
Harriet Chessman, The Beauty of Ordinary Things (Harriet was my feminist literary criticism professor in college and my model for being an academic and leaving academia, every word she writes is exquisite)
Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones
Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation
Walter Mosley, Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore
Lily King, Euphoria (there’s usually a book I recommend until I start recommending another…this was the book I recommended back then)
Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (this one has four stars, which I don’t believe makes it lesser than Life After Life, but simply marks another superstar book, which it certainly is)
Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan, The Royal We
Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night (I love a simple book of genius)
Dinaw Mengestu, All Our Names
Edward St. Aubyn, the Patrick Melrose novels (I read them all at once, so brutal, so brilliant)
Patti Smith, M Train (I was so into Patti Smith’s books and then I was over them, but I want her to make all the money and have everything she wants and needs)
Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (duh)
Maggie Nelson, Jane (then I read all the Maggie Nelson books, but I’m surprised I didn’t star Bluets which I recall as the one I liked best, but I guess not)
Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn
Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
Ann Patchett, Commonwealth (as recently mentioned)
Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company (I love the way she wrote)
Ali Smith, Autumn
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West (this was the one I recommended that year)
Susanna Daniel, Sea Creatures (I think she’s a friend of my friend Harold, at least he recommended her, and I loved this book, also Florida, which I also love)
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (read this belatedly, on vacation with a bunch of people who all read my copy after I finished it)
Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (oh yeah, recommended this constantly)
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (what took me so long?!)
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing (one of my clients is an alt ed high school in Boston, where I persuaded a teacher to use this in an Advanced Literature course and so many of the students said it was the first book they had ever actually read, loved, or both)
Colson Whitehead, Underground Railroad
Leila Slimani, The Perfect Nanny (so creepy and good)
Alan Hollingshurst, The Swimming Pool Library
Caitlin Macy, Mrs.
Alan Hollingshurst, The Sparsholt Affair (I do binge authors I like)
Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room (the only book of hers I’ve been able to read)
Tommy Orange, There There (our students also like this one)
Caitlin Moran, How To Be Famous
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick (a must)
Jane Gardam, Filth (three stars…these multistars are so random, but this is one of the best books ever, which everyone says and I couldn’t believe it, but they were right)
Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six (I read this every year, it’s like Jane Eyre, every time I find something new)
Sally Rooney, Normal People (I am really good at figuring out how and why books work, but I have no idea why this book works even though it so obviously does)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (probably my third read, so different once you are Mrs. Ramsay rather than Lily Briscoe)
Angie Thomas, On the Come Up
Sofka Zinovieff, Putney (a great book that should have been much bigger, though I believe some people hate it)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer
Katherine McGee, American Royals
Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys
Jacqueline Woodson, Red at the Bone
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road (this was wild)
Anne Glenconner, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown (a hoot)
Christina Baker Kline The Exiles (this is not Christina’s favorite of her books, but I think it’s her best)
Andre Leon Talley, The Chiffon Trenches
Edward P. Jones, The Known World (ha, I was just looking at this at the library and trying to remember if I’d read it! I was pretty sure I had)
Jamie Figueroa, Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (I love it when my friends write brilliant books, I recommended this one a lot too)
Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie (the New Yorker essay on Green-Wood Cemetery - same issue as Amelia Earhart, I almost never read the New Yorker in paper, but when it hits, it hits, and this issue was great - made me think of this)
Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy (brilliant books for sad writer moms…uh, that kind of diminishes their excellence, but I’m pretty sure Emily Gould pointed me to this)
Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Marianne Faithfull, Faithfull (ROCK CHICKS)
Alison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength (the book of me)
Alix Ohlin, We Want What We Want (impeccable short stories)
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois (I thought it very much worth the length, but mileage may differ)
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat (still the only pandemic novel you need)
Ali Hazelwood, The Love Hypothesis
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (keeps coming back for a reason)
Jennifer Egan, The Candy House
Brook Hayward, Haywire (read this in my childhood classic Hollywood stage, read it again, still great)
Beth Gutcheon, The New Girls (to be read with Prep)
Mary Rodgers & Jess Green, Shy (real life 20th c. showbiz Zelig)
Nell Painter, Old in Art School
Dave Alvin, New Highway (the fourth most important man in my life, after my husband, father, and nephew)
Robinne Lee, The Idea of You (the movie is fine, the book is better)
Paul Newman, The Extraordinary Life of an Extraordinary Man (I went through a huge Paul Newman phase a couple of years ago)
Eve Babitz, Sex and Rage
Marlen Haushofer, The Wall (the ur woman alone novel)
Catherine Lacey, Biography of X (recommended this to everyone, not everyone liked it)
Christine Lai, Landscapes (country homes, gardens, books, decay…another perfect book for me)
Howard Norman, The Bird Artist (another sleeper, about a man who paints birds on an island in Nova Scotia in the early 20th c., also sex and murder)
Alice McDermott, Absolution (she writes like nobody’s business)
Vigdis Hjorth, Will and Testament
Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers
Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women (so big, so long, took so long to read, so worth it)
Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings
Percival Everett, James (sometimes the one everyone says is the best really is the best)
Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights (I’m in my 20th c. New York era)
Tricia Romano, The Freaks Come Out to Write (the Village Voice, my 20th c. New York era)
Naomi Klein, Doppelgänger (I think I wrote about this here)
Joshua Clover, Roadrunner (I definitely wrote about this here)
Well, that was a lot of fun to write and remember. If you made it all the way through - or even if you didn’t - please leave a comment with what struck you, and I will respond!
Because we still deserve nice things…
Cellist Larissa Maestro is a revelation. She’s played with so many cool artists, she is as amazing as the bio on her website, she’s writing fantastic new music that I got to hear recently and which I hope will soon be an album, and she’s an absolute gem, truly the nicest in all the ways.
❤️ Please do this every June, so we can plan our summer
I've just added a bunch more books to my library hold lists! So many of these that you recommended hit me hard--and some of them I'd never heard of before you mentioned them, like Filth and Old in Art School.