The Procrastinating Poet

Reading Log

I’ve always been curious about what other people are reading, and I’ve always found lists inexplicably addicting, and maybe you do too. This is a running list of the books I’ve read since 2016 – from about midway through college until the present day.

(“Finished” = finished from a previous calendar year)

2026

2025

  • Duino Elegies — Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. David Oswald (finished)
  • Songs from Fern’s Pond — Sheryl Pothier Harmer (Read my review here)
  • The Wisdom of Solomon (New American Bible)
  • The First Book of Maccabees (King James Version)
  • Confessions — Saint Augustine, tr. R. S. Pine-Coffin (finished)
  • C. S. Lewis— A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet — Alister McGrath (Audiobook)
  • The Dynamics of Change in the Human Race — John E. Pugh
  • Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Audiobook) — Eric Metaxas (finished) 
  • Eternal Vigilance: Guarding Against the Predatory State — Ralph L. Bayrer
  • Dies Irae: Requiem for a Lost Soul — Jeffrey Keith Gough
  • Remarkably Bright Creatures — Shelby Van Pelt (finished)
  • Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Audiobook) — Yuval Noah Harari
  • Georgia and Anita: The Lifelong Friendship of Georgia O’Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer – Liza Bennett (Read my review here)
  • Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration, and the Battle for Power at the Top of the World – Kieran Mulvaney (Read my review here)
  • The Flight of Peter Fromm — Martin Gardiner
  • The Book of Psalms (King James Version & Coverdale Version — BCP)
  • The Gospel According to Luke (King James Version)
  • Walsingham and the English Imagination — Gary Waller
  • Jesusland: Stories from the Upside Down World of Christian Pop Culture — Joelle Kidd (Read my review here)
  • How to Read Like an Anti-Fascist: Storytelling and Narrative Literacy for Young People — Annette Wannamaker (Read my review here)
  • The Gospel According to John (King James Version)
  • Anglican Spirituality: An Introduction — Greg Peters
  • Land of Unlikeness (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • The Great White Hoax: Two Centuries of Selling Racism in America — Philip Kadish (Read my review here)
  • Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment — David Garland (Read my review here)
  • How to Read (and Write About) Poetry: Second Edition — Susan Holbrook (finished)
  • Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy — Andréa Becker (Read my review here)
  • Lord Weary’s Castle (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • The Mills of the Kavanaughs (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle, tr. Martin Ostwald
  • Life Studies (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • For the Union Dead (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • Near the Ocean (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • For Lizzie and Harriet (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • New Selected Poems — Robert Lowell, ed. Katie Peterson
  • The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon — Jane Kenyon, Selected by Donald Hall
  • The Dolphin (Poems) — Robert Lowell
  • Robert Lowell’s Religious Temperament — Thomas Austenfeld
  • Twelve Angry Men (Play) — Reginald Rose
  • Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry — Donald Hall
  • Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel — Rowan Williams
  • The Word That Loves You — Allen Thompson Brillhart III
  • Glengarry Glen Ross (Play) — David Mamet
  • Anna Atkins: Photographer, Naturalist, Innovator — Corey Keller (read my review here)
  • The Book of Genesis (King James Version) (finished)
  • Chronicles: Volume One (Audiobook) — Bob Dylan
  • In the Circle of Ancient Trees: Our Oldest Trees and the Stories They Tell — ed. Valerie Trouet (Read my review here)
  • The Pale Blue Data Point: An Earth-Based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life — Jon Willis (Read my review here)
  • The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs — Gerta Keller (Read my review here)
  • The Book of Exodus (King James Version)
  • Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System — Dagomar Degroot (Read my review here) (Read my interview with the author here)
  • Gilead — Marilynne Robinson
  • How to Baby — Liana Finck
  • The Acts of the Apostles (King James Version)
  • The Lamentations of Jeremiah (King James Version)
  • Paper Money (Poems) — Winshen Liu
  • Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life — Todd Goddard (Read my review here) (Read my interview with the author here)
  • The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory – Thomas Fuller 
  • Apologia Pro Vita Sua — John Henry Newman
  • Encounter Grace: Moments of Hope, Joy, and Peace — Becky Eldredge
  • Abundance (Audiobook) — Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
  • The Natural Order of Things (Poems) — Donika Kelly (Read my review here)
  • Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (Audiobook) — Ross Douthat
  • One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Audiobook) — Omar El Akkad
  • Raising Genius: Mozart, Einstein, Jobs: The Price of Brilliance — Nam Nguyen (Read my review here)
  • A Separate Peace — John Knowles
  • The Chosen (Audiobook) — Chaim Potok
  • What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome: The Authorized Biography of Justin Townes Earle — Jonathan Bernstein
  • The Book of Ezra (New American Bible)
  • Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud — Barry W. Holtz
  • Deacon King King (Audiobook) — James McBride
  • Street Corner Talking: The Autobiography of Kim Simmonds — Kim Simmonds
  • Separation of Church and Hate (Audiobook) — John Fugelsang
  • The Tragedy of Macbeth — Shakespeare
  • Julius Caesar — Shakespeare
  • Disasters of Biblical Proportions: The Ten Plagues Then, Now, and at the End of the World — Steven Weitzman
  • The Book of Nehemiah (New American Bible)
  • Paul: A Biography (Audiobook) — N.T. Wright
  • Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity — Paul Kingsnorth
  • The Book of Leviticus (King James Version)
  • The Light of Tabor: Toward a Monistic Christology — David Bentley Hart

2024

  • Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy — David Masciotra (finished) (Read my review here)
  • A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There — Aldo Leopold (finished)
  • Unshackling Democracy: Embracing Term Limits, Empowering Citizens — Gerrick D. Wilkins (Read my review here)
  • The Plot Against America — Philip Roth
  • The Decline of the Secular University — C. John Sommerville
  • Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor — Alec Wilkinson (Read my review here)
  • The Complete Maus (Graphic Novel) — Art Spiegelman
  • Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002 — Martín Espada
  • Educated: A Memoir — Tara Westover
  • Tom Lake (Audiobook) — Ann Patchett
  • Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality — Matthew L. Harris (Read my review here)
  • Notes on the Assemblage (Poems) — Juan Felipe Herrera
  • ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education — Charles J. Sykes
  • Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction — Benjamin Percy
  • A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences — Dan Allosso & Salvatore F. Allosso
  • Eye of God — Aeternus Costin
  • North Star: The Life and Legacy of Jean-Marie Mouchet — John Firth (Read my review here)
  • A Doll’s House — Henrik Ibsen
  • South Korea: The Price of Efficiency and Success — John Gonzalez and Young Lee (Read my review here)
  • Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet — Jamie Ford
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
  • Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One: God — Saint Thomas Aquinas
  • Along Came Hell, or So I Thought — Lois Young
  • Mightier Than the Sword: How Three Obscure Treaties Sanctioned the Enslavement of Millions and the Exploitation of Continents for More Than 400 Years — Lorraine Atkin
  • New Iceland and Beyond: A 175-Year Icelandic-Canadian Saga, Book 1 — Robert C. A. Fredericksson (Read my review here)
  • Stepping Stones for the Heart — Ann Paulson (Read my review here)
  • Letters of the New Testament (King James Version)
  • The Gospel According to Mark (King James Version)
  • Seven Women and the Secrets of Their Greatness (Audiobook) — Eric Metaxas
  • Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics — Ross Douthat
  • Before We Were Free — Julia Alvarez
  • Light Shift: Restoring Self-Worth When You’ve Been Hurt by the Church — Elizabeth Campbell
  • The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus — Dale C. Allison, Jr.
  • The Oresteia — Aeschylus, tr. Robert Lowell
  • Origin (Audiobook) — Dan Brown
  • Everybody, Always (Audiobook) — Bob Goff
  • Post Office (Audiobook) — Charles Bukowski
  • A Teacher’s Quest 2.0: Serving Students and Saving the Schools — Brian L. Murphy
  • The Marriage Portrait (Audiobook) — Maggie O’Farrell
  • Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters — Elie Wiesel
  • The Poisonwood Bible (Audiobook) — Barbara Kingsolver
  • College You: Get Much More Out of College — Chiara Bacigalupa, Shelly Albaum, Antonia Bacigalupa Albaum, Gianna Album (Read my review here)
  • Dracula (Audiobook) — Bram Stoker
  • The Heiress (Audiobook) — Rachel Hawkins
  • When the Roman Bough Breaks — Jeff Nottingham (Read my review here)
  • The Dearly Beloved (Audiobook) — Cara Wall
  • Europe Without Borders: A History — Isaac Stanley-Becker (Read my review here)
  • Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (Audiobook) — Eric Metaxas
  • The Shadow of the Broad Brim: The Life and Legacy of C. H. Spurgeon — Richard E. Day
  • The Gospel According to Matthew (King James Version)
  • Walk in Love: Episcopal Beliefs & Practices — Scott Gunn & Melody Wilson Shobe
  • Georg Lukács – George Lichtheim 

2023

  • The Turn of the Screw – Henry James (finished)
  • The American Church Experience – Thomas A. Askew and Richard V. Pierard
  • A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture – King Charles III 
  • Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion
  • White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America – Nancy Isenberg
  • Book Reports: A Music Critic on His First Love, Which Was Reading – Robert Christgau
  • Idiot Psalms (Poems) – Scott Cairns
  • The World Without Us – Alan Weisman 
  • The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays – John Erskine
  • The Republic – Plato, tr. Desmond Lee
  • The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox – Stephen Jay Gould
  • The Bronx River in History & Folklore – Stephen Paul DeVillo
  • Supreme Court Decisions (Penguin Civic Classics) – ed. Jay M. Feinman
  • The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State – Adrian Wooldridge & John Micklethwait 
  • Vermonters: A Book of Biographies – ed. Walter H. Crockett (finished)
  • The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • What We Owe the Future — William MacAskill
  • One Crazy Summer — Rita Williams-Garcia*
  • The Crossover (Graphic Novel) – Kwame Alexander & Dawud Anyabwile
  • Bestiary (Poems) — Donika Kelly
  • Voices of Lost Souls: Writings Under Divine Destiny (Poems) — Malik Santiago
  • Life & Death (Poems) — Robert Creeley
  • Howl and Other Poems — Allen Ginsberg
  • Little Pieces of Poetry: Selected Poems 1998-2019 — Garrett Buhl Robinson
  • Alexander Hamilton (Audiobook) — Ron Chernow
  • 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology, Sixth Edition — ed. Samuel Cohen
  • Why? The Purpose of the Universe — Philip Goff (Read my review here)
  • Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (Audiobook) — Eric Metaxas
  • The Elements of Style — William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White
  • Tuckahoe Marble: The Rise and Fall of an Industry, 1822-1930 — Louis Torres
  • Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Audiobook) — Eric Metaxas
  • A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life & Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland — Troy Senik
  • Letter to a Christian Nation — Sam Harris
  • Franklin Pierce — Michael F. Holt
  • The Horizon (Poems) — A. O. Odimayo (Read my review here)
  • The Shadow of the Wind (Audiobook) — Carlos Ruiz Zafón
  • My Religion (Audiobook) — Leo Tolstoy
  • The Reason for God (Abridged) (Audiobook) — Timothy Keller
  • The Gospel of Judas: Second Edition — ed. Rodolfe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst
  • The Earth Is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe — Abraham Joshua Heschel
  • Beautiful Exiles (Audiobook) — Meg Waite Clayton
  • Roman Catholicism — H. B. Coxon
  • Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction — Joseph Dan
  • Voices of Reason: Calming the Conflicts in Political Discussions — Bill Entzminger (Read my review here)
  • Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous — George Berkeley
  • God Is Not Great — Christopher Hitchens
  • The Evening and the Morning (Audiobook) — Ken Follett
  • Therapon (Poems) — Dan Beachy-Quick & Bruce Bond
  • The Plot (Audiobook) — Jean Hanff Korelitz
  • The Jewish State — Theodor Herzl
  • River City Fires (Poems) — Derek Annis
  • Camino Island (Audiobook) — John Grisham
  • Time and the Other and Additional Essays — Emmanuel Levinas
  • 210 Degrees Celsius: 16 Ways the Truckers Ignited Canada for the Long Haul — Barry W. Bussey (Read my review here)
  • The Old Man and the Sea — Ernest Hemingway
  • The Boy From the Woods — Harlan Coben
  • A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
  • Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of Eastchester, Tuckahoe, & Bronxville, NY 1664-2014 — ed. Eloise L. Morgan
  • Camino Winds (Audiobook) — John Grisham
  • The Books of the Twelve Minor Prophets (King James Version) (finished)

2022

  • Lunch Poems – Frank O’Hara (finished)
  • The Gospel of Luke (King James Version) (finished)
  • Dune – Frank Herbert (finished)
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God (Audiobook) – Zora Neale Hurston
  • Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits – Kevin Roose
  • The Book of Judges (King James Version)
  • The Book of Ruth (King James Version)
  • Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn 
  • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Audiobook) – Yuval Noah Harari 
  • Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert 
  • King Henry VI Part One – Shakespeare 
  • Educated: A Memoir (Audiobook) – Tara Westover
  • Foundation – Isaac Asimov 
  • The Life of Franklin Pierce – Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
  • Norse Mythology (Audiobook) – Neil Gaiman
  • Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook – Maria Montessori 
  • Sidewalk Critic: Lewis Mumford’s Writings on New York – ed. Robert Wojtowicz
  • The First Book of Samuel (King James Version)
  • What the Schools Teach and Might Teach – John Franklin Bobbitt
  • Education Myths – Jay P. Greene 
  • The New Atlantis – Francis Bacon 
  • Kids in the Syndrome Mix of ADHD, LD, Autism Spectrum, Tourette’s, Anxiety, and More! 2nd Edition – Martin L. Kutscher
  • How the Other Half Learns – Robert Pondiscio
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Frederick Douglass 
  • A Higher Loyalty (Audiobook) – James Comey
  • The Second Book of Samuel (King James Version)
  • The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros
  • The Autistic Brain – Temple Grandin
  • The First Book of Kings (King James Version) 
  • Apology – Plato, tr. Benjamin Jowett 
  • Off the Edge – Kelly Weill 
  • Poetics – Aristotle, tr. S. H. Butcher
  • Pearl of Great Price (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
  • Songs of Innocence and of Experience – William Blake
  • The American Religion – Harold Bloom
  • Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Audiobook) – Isabel Wilkerson
  • Symposium – Plato, tr. Benjamin Jowett
  • Love, Poverty, and War – Christopher Hitchens 
  • The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible – Harold Bloom 
  • A Brief History of the Freemasons – Jasper Ridley (finished)
  • The Second Book of Kings (King James Version)
  • The Book of Ezra (King James Version)
  • Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World – Mildred Pitts Walter*
  • The Book of Nehemiah (King James Version)
  • The Book of Esther (King James Version)
  • The Book of Daniel (King James Version)
  • The Knowledge Deficit – E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
  • Children of Dune – Frank Herbert 
  • The Topeka School (Audiobook) – Ben Lerner 
  • The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction – J. L. Heilbron
  • The Popular Vote (Poems) – Star Black
  • The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time (Audiobook) – Will Durant, ed. John Little
  • Whole Earth Discipline – Stewart Brand
  • Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
  • Citizen: An American Lyric – Claudia Rankine
  • Sticks and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization – Lewis Mumford
  • A Short History of Europe: From Pericles to Putin – Simon Jenkins 
  • Fire & Blood – George R. R. Martin

2021

  • Crown and Country – David Starkey (finished)
  • Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson*
  • The Best Presidential Writing: From 1789 to the Present – ed. Craig Fehrman
  • World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments – Aimee Nezhukumatathil (finished)
  • Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 – ed. Merwin Roe
  • The Twelve Caesars – Suetonius 
  • Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning (finished)
  • King Henry IV Part Two – Shakespeare
  • Andrew Jackson – Sean Wilentz
  • The Book of Revelation (King James Version) (finished)
  • Hello, Universe – Erin Entrada Kelly*
  • Travels With Charley in Search of America (Audiobook) – John Steinbeck 
  • The Selected Poems of Donald Hall – Donald Hall
  • Crito – Plato
  • Four Quartets – T. S. Eliot
  • The Book of Exodus (King James Version) 
  • Poetry’s Catbird Seat: The Consultantship in Poetry in the English Language at the Library of Congress, 1937-1987 – William McGuire
  • The Book of Numbers (King James Version)
  • The Book of Deuteronomy (King James Version)
  • King Henry V – Shakespeare 
  • The Origins of the Modern World (Audiobook) – Robert B. Marks
  • The Wild Swans at Coole (Poems) – W. B. Yeats (finished)
  • We, the People: The Story of the United States Capitol – Lonnelle Aikman
  • The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 B.C.-1492 A.D. – Simon Schama
  • The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
  • Because of Winn Dixie – Kate DiCamillo*
  • Front Desk (Audiobook) – Kelly Yang*
  • Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote – Craig Fehrman
  • The Problems of Philosophy – Bertrand Russell
  • Children of the Longhouse – Joseph Bruchac*
  • Ethics in the Real World – Peter Singer 
  • The Education of Henry Adams – Henry Adams 
  • Calvin Coolidge – David Greenberg 
  • The Waste Land – T. S. Eliot
  • Pictures of the Gone World (Poems) – Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • Prufrock and Other Observations (Poems) – T. S. Eliot
  • The Book of Joshua (King James Version)
  • Dedication of a Statue of General Franklin Pierce – ed. Henry Harrison Metcalf
  • Amina’s Voice – Hena Khan*
  • Clayton Byrd Goes Underground – Rita Williams-Garcia*
  • A History of the World in 100 Objects – Neil MacGregor
  • Poems 1920 – T. S. Eliot
  • The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility – Stewart Brand
  • When I Was a Child I Read Books – Marilynne Robinson (finished)
  • The U. S. Civil War: A Very Short Introduction – Louis P. Masur 

2020

  • Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan
  • Labyrinths – Jorge Luis Borges (finished)
  • Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition – Jan Shipps (finished)
  • Poet-Critics and the Administration of Culture – Evan Kindley 
  • Poets In Their Youth – Eileen Simpson
  • Maxims – La Rochefoucauld 
  • Our Purpose in Speaking (Poems) – William Orem
  • Sight Lines (Poems) – Arthur Sze
  • When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities (Poems) – Chen Chen
  • Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief – Lawrence Wright
  • The Shining – Stephen King (finished)
  • The Book of Genesis (King James Version)
  • White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985 – Allen Ginsberg
  • Repetition Nineteen (Poems) – Mónica de la Torre
  • 13th Balloon (Poems) – Mark Bibbins
  • The Age of Reason – Thomas Paine (finished)
  • San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets – ed. David Meltzer (finished)
  • San Francisco Poems – Lawrence Ferlinghetti 
  • From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life – Jacques Barzun (finished)
  • Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction – Alan Taylor  
  • Violence – Slavoj Žižek
  • The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction – William Doyle
  • Three Poems – Hannah Sullivan
  • The Man I Was Supposed to Be (Poems) – John Struloeff
  • Aesop’s Fables – tr. George Fyler Townsend
  • Jersey Mercy (Poems) – Laura McCullough
  • Selected Poems, Secular and Sacred – Richard Crashaw
  • On Writing – Stephen King
  • Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution – Ruth Scurr
  • The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
  • The Hanging God (Poems) – James Matthew Wilson
  • Brute (Poems) – Emily Skaja
  • Some Imagist Poets: An Anthology – ed. Amy Lowell
  • Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
  • The Selected Poems: Expanded Edition – A. R. Ammons
  • Fear: Trump in the White House – Bob Woodward 
  • The Dutch House (Audiobook) – Ann Patchett 
  • Pirates and Lost Treasures of Coastal Maine – Greg Latimer
  • The Poet X (Audiobook) – Elizabeth Acevedo
  • The Library Book – Susan Orlean
  • North of Boston (Poems) – Robert Frost
  • Dubliners – James Joyce
  • Eye Level (Poems) – Jenny Xie 
  • Chamber Music (Poems) – James Joyce
  • He Held Radical Light – Christian Wiman
  • The Quick and the Dead – Louis L’Amour
  • 44 Poems for You – Sarah Ruhl 
  • The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets – David Lehman
  • Hidden History of Vermont – Mark Bushnell
  • The Souls of Black Folk – W. E. B. DuBois
  • Notes Toward the Definition of Culture – T. S. Eliot
  • The 100 Best Poems of All Time – ed. Leslie Pockell
  • Poems and Fragments – Sappho, tr. Stanley Lombardo

2019

  • The Sonnets – Ted Berrigan (finished)
  • Heroes: Mass Murder & Suicide – Franco Berardi
  • Robert Lowell: A Biography – Ian Hamilton
  • Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev 
  • Outlines of Mormon Philosophy – Lycurgus A. Wilson
  • Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History – David B. Goldstein
  • Eclogues – Virgil 
  • Little Glass Planet (Poems) – Dobby Gibson
  • Tap Out (Poems) – Edgar Kunz
  • Four Reincarnations (Poems) – Max Ritvo
  • Illuminations – Rimbaud (tr. John Ashbery)
  • A Season in Hell – Rimbaud
  • The Antichrist – Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Lives of the Mind – Roger Kimball
  • Against Everything – Mark Greif (finished)
  • The Twenty-Ninth Year (Poems) – Hala Alyan
  • Deaf Republic (Poems) – Ilya Kaminsky
  • Human Hours (Poems) – Catherine Barnett
  • A History of Medieval Europe – R. H. C. Davis
  • Common Sense – Thomas Paine
  • American Faith (Poems) – Maya C. Popa
  • Furthest Ecology (Poems) – Adam Fagin
  • Kabbalah and Criticism – Harold Bloom
  • King Henry IV Part One – Shakespeare
  • Aster and the Accidental Magic (Graphic Novel) – Thom Pico & Karensac
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Night Angler (Poems) – Geffrey Davis
  • American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church – Alex Beam
  • How the Irish Saved Civilization – Thomas Cahill (finished)
  • Be With (Poems) – Forrest Gander
  • The Vegetarian – Han Kang
  • Pyramid Texts – Gamal al-Ghitani 

2018

  • Tao te Ching – Lao Tzu
  • Season of Migration to the North – Tayeb Salih
  • Four Ways of Modern Poetry – ed. Nathan A. Scott, Jr.
  • The Taming of the Shrew – Shakespeare
  • The Gospel of Thomas – tr. Willis Barnstone
  • Housekeeping – Marilynne Robinson
  • King Lear – Shakespeare
  • Tenth of December – George Saunders
  • Brown (Poems) – Kevin Young (Read my review here)
  • Advice to a Prophet (Poems) – Richard Wilbur
  • Tropic of Squalor (Poems) – Mary Karr (Read my review here)
  • What Are We Doing Here? – Marilynne Robinson
  • House Crossing (Poems) – Laurie L. Patton (Read my review here)
  • A Boy’s Will (Poems) – Robert Frost
  • As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
  • The First Book of Nephi (The Book of Mormon)
  • Epistle to the Galatians (New International Version)
  • American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Poems) – Terrance Hayes
  • Leaving the Atocha Station – Ben Lerner
  • Don’t Let Me Be Lonely – Claudia Rankine
  • The Transformation – Juliana Spahr
  • The Truth About Animals – Lucy Cooke

2017

  • Persuasion – Jane Austen (finished)
  • The Gospel According to Mark (New International Version) 
  • Euthyphro – Plato 
  • Old School – Tobias Wolff
  • On Tyranny – Timothy Snyder
  • Learning to Die in the Anthropocene – Roy Scranton
  • Beyond Good and Evil – Friedrich Nietzsche 
  • Goodbye, Columbus – Philip Roth
  • “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” – Walter Benjamin
  • Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
  • Relativity: Special & General Theory – Albert Einstein
  • Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction – Alan Taylor
  • Inferno – Dante
  • The Church of Our Fathers – Roland H. Bainton
  • The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky 
  • The Book of Ruth (New International Version)
  • Ion – Plato 
  • Epistle of Jude (King James Version)
  • The Sixth Extinction – Elizabeth Kolbert
  • Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
  • Mere Christianity – C. S. Lewis
  • Four Quartets – T.S. Eliot
  • The Abolition of Man – C. S. Lewis
  • Opening the Bible – Thomas Merton 

2016

  • Middlemarch – George Eliot (finished)
  • Between the World & Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Slaughter-House Five – Kurt Vonnegut
  • Roger’s Version – John Updike
  • Memoirs of a Leavisite: The Rise and Fall of Cambridge English – David Ellis
  • The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking – Olivia Laing
  • Prometheus Bound – Aeschylus 
  • Twelfth Night – Shakespeare
  • The Birth of Tragedy – Friedrich Nietzsche
  • The Waste Land and Other Poems – T.S. Eliot
  • Lyrical Ballads (1798) – William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • In Defense of a Liberal Education – Fareed Zakaria
  • Paradise Lost – John Milton
  • Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse 
  • God Help the Child – Toni Morrison
  • The City in Which I Love You (Poems) – Li-Young Lee
  • Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
  • Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals – Immanuel Kant 
  • The Gospel According to Matthew (New International Version)
  • The Book of Lamentations (New International Version)
  • Discourse on Inequality – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • Doubt – J. P. Shanley