On the way home from South Korea, I lost one box of books—the Odyssey I read crossing the Aegean, Lu Xun's Call to Arms someone gave me in China, a de Tocqueville full of notes ... Other nameless treasure slipped away. Now I read on a Kindle and list my invisible books.
BOOKS IN 2024
January
How Fiction Works—James Wood
Travel as a Political Act—Rick Steves
The Creative Act: A Way of Being—Rick Rubin
The Mother of All Questions—Rebecca Solnit
City Planning: A Very Short Introduction—Carl Abbott
BOOKS IN 2023
January
Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy—Jessica Fern
Vagina Obscura—Rachel E. Gross
How to Think More About Sex—Alain de Botton
February
The Sex Lives of African Women—Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
Druids: A Very Short Introduction
March
Museum of Broken Relationships—Drazen Brubisic and Olinka Vištica
A Book of Migrations—Rebecca Solnit
April
Orwell’s Roses—Rebecca Solnit
May
Dante and the Early Astronomer—Tracy Daugherty
An ABZ of Love—Inge Hegeler
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model—Richard Schwarz
June
Worn: A People’s History of Clothing—Sofi Thanhauser
A Field Guide to Getting Lost—Rebecca Solnit
July
Errors and Expectations—Mina Shaughnessy
August
Men Explain Things to Me—Rebecca Solnit
September
Navigation: A Very Short Introduction
November
The Long Road of Woman’s Memory—Jane Addams
Regarding the Pain of Others—Susan Sontag
December
The Guide to Getting It On—Paul Joannides
BOOKS IN 2022
January
All About Love—bell hooks
February
The Overstory—Richard Powers
March
Hamlet
Egyptian Mythology—Gary J. Shaw
A Woman without a Country—Eavan Boland
April
Pachinko—Min Jin Lee
May
On Photography—Susan Sontag
June
The World Atlas of Wine—Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson
July
Ulysses—Unbound—Terence Killeen
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas—Gertrude Stein
Waves and Beaches—William Bascom and Kim McCoy
The Book of Pleasures—Clarice Lispector
August
Mating in Captivity—Esther Perel
September
The Clothing of Books—Jhumpa Lahiri
Fifty Maps and the Stories They Tell—Jerry Brotton and Nick Millea
The Wisdom of Trees—Max Adams
October
Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem—Michael Schmidt
Field Work—Seamus Heaney
Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications That Shaped the City and Its Image—The Caxton Club
November
The Wife—Sigrid Undset
How to Tell a Story—The Moth
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex—Mary Roach
Sex at Dawn—Calcida Jethá and Christopher Ryan
December
Anxious People—Frederick Backman
Wanderlust—Rebecca Solnit
BOOKS IN 2021
January
The Hidden Life of Trees—Peter Wohlleben
Wild Stories from the Irish Uplands—John G. O'Dwyer
Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow—Faïza Guène
February
Thinking with Type—Ellen Lupton
March
Everything Inside—Edwidge Danticat
The Girl Who Smiled Beads—Clemantine Wamariya
Dubliners—James Joyce
May
Purple Hibiscus—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Make Her Love Me—Patrick Easley
June
Legends of the American Desert—Alex Shoumatoff
July
The Songlines—Bruce Chatwin
August
The Body Keeps the Score—Bessel Van Der Kolk
Inroads—Joe Voigts
September
Attached—Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents—Lindsay C. Gibson
How the Irish Saved Civilization—Thomas Cahill
Milk and Honey—Rupi Kaur
The Golden Thread—Kassia St. Clair
October
Restorative Practices Handbook—Bob Costello
Anam Cara—John O’Donohue
November
High Conflict—Amanda Ripley
December
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running—Haruki Murakami
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking—Susan Cain
BOOKS IN 2020
January
Jerusalem: A Biography—Simon Sebag Montefiore
Go Tell It on the Mountain—James Baldwin
Calendar of Wisdom—Leo Tolstoy
February
A Tale of Love and Darkness—Amos Oz
March
Anam Cara—John O’Donohue
April
Eat Pray Love—Elizabeth Gilbert
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—Annie Dillard
The Wild Edge of Sorrow—Francis Weller
May
Primo Levi—Ian Thompson
The Art of Memoir—Mary Karr
June
A Poet’s Dublin—Eavan Boland
July
Manuscript—Dave Pritchett
August
The Secret Lives of Color—Kassia St. Clair
September
The Year of Magical Thinking—Joan Didion
December
Come as You Are—Emily Nagoski
BOOKS IN 2019
January
Los ingrávidos—Valeria Luiselli
Como agua para chocolate—Laura Esquivel
All about Coffee (Selections)—William Ukers
El Mono Gramatico—Octavio Paz
February
Rocks: A Very Short Introduction
March
The Emotionally Destructive Marriage—Leslie Vernick
After the Affair
Surviving an Affair
The Complete Money Guide—Dave Ramsey
Stag’s Leap—Sharon Olds
The State of Affairs—Esther Perel
April
The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction—Martin P. Bunton
May
June
Un indovino mi disse—Tiziano Terzani
July
Purgatorio—Dante Alighieri
August
Teacher Man—Frank McCourt
September
Love Poems—Yehuda Amichai
October
Israel—Eyewitness Guide
November
A War without Chocolate—Betty Dagher Majaj
My Michael—Amos Oz
December
Gilgamesh
The Outsiders—S.E. Hinton
Judaism: A Very Short Introduction
BOOKS IN 2018
January
Le Petit Prince—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
February
Modern Italian Grammar: A Practical Guide—Anna Proudfoot and Francesco Cardo
Italian Short Stories for Beginners—Olly Richards
Italian Short Stories for Intermediate Learners—Olly Richards
501 Italian Verbs—John Colaneri
Ascent of Mount Ventoux—Petrarch
Julius Caesar—Shakespeare
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation—Noel Riley Fitch
March
French Short Stories for Beginners—Olly Richards
Histoires à lire le soir—Marc Thil
French: Short Stories for Intermediate Level—Frédéric Bibard
Spleen de Paris—Charles Baudelaire
"The Drunken Boat"—Arthur Rimbaud
Modern French Grammar—Margaret Lang and Isabelle Perez
501 French Verbs—Christopher Kendris
Pêcheur d'Islande—Pierre Loti
April
Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction—Jack Hart
The English Language: A Very Short Introduction
Linguistics—A Very Short Introduction
Croatia—Lonely Planet
The Mirror Maker—Primo Levi
How Niels and Festie Faced the Skyfire—A.C. Davis
501 German Verbs—Henry Strutz
Modern German Grammar—Ruth Whittle
German Short Stories for Beginners—Olly Richards
May
Door into the Dark—Seamus Heaney
Wintering Out—Seamus Heaney
North—Seamus Heaney
Angela's Ashes—Frank McCourt
Pilgrim Paths in Ireland: A Guide—John G. O'Dwyer
Waiting for Godot—Samuel Beckett
The Voyage of Máel Dúin
The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot
June
La casa en la arena—Pablo Neruda
Around the World in 72 Days—Nellie Bly
Nothing Is Real—Giorgio Cavagnaro
Spanish: Short Stories for Intermediate Level—Claudia Orea
The Redress of Poetry—Seamus Heaney
501 Spanish Verbs—Christopher Kendris
Modern Spanish Grammar—Jaun Kattán-Ibarra
Antigone—Sophocles
A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf—John Muir
Unos Poemas—Sor Juana Inés de las Cruz
July
La casa de los espíritus—Isabel Allende
Nueva historia mínima de México—Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo
Spanish English: Bilingual Visual Dictionary
The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives—Lajos Egri
El Laberinto de Soledad—Octavio Paz
Los Niños Perdidos (Un Ensayo en Cuarenta Preguntas)—Valeria Luiselli
Papeles Falsos—Valeria Luiselli
Muerte Sin Fin—José Gorostiza
August
How to Read Water—Tristan Gooley
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man—John Perkins
Mission Drift—Chris Horst and Peter Greer
Poemas—Roberto Sosa
Honduras—Lonely Planet
September
A Book of Mediterranean Food—Elizabeth David
A Year in Provence—Peter Mayle
L’Auberge rouge—Honoré de Balzac
Terre des hommes—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
French English: Bilingual Visual Dictionary
French Visual Phrasebook
Letters on Cézanne—Rainer Maria Rilke
L’Inondation—Émile Zola
Boule de Suif—Guy de Maupassant
Troubadour Poems from the South of France—William Doremus Paden
Mirèio—Frédéric Mistral
October
Inferno—Dante Alighieri
I fioretti di San Francesco
Italian Short Stories for Beginners—Manuella Miranda
Italian Dialogues for Beginners
Italian English: Bilingual Visual Dictionary
Short Stories in Italian: New Penguin Parallel Texts
Io Che Vi Parlo: Conversazione con Giovanni Tesio—Primo Levi
La tregua—Primo Levi
November
Le città invisibili—Italo Calvino
The Drowned and the Saved—Primo Levi
The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi
Pilgrim’s Progress—John Bunyan
Kalevala—Elias Lönnrot
December
The London Scene—Virginia Woolf
In Memoriam A.H.H.—Alfred Lord Tennyson
Favourite Irish Fairy Tales—Soinbhe Lally
The Islander—Tomás Ó Criomhthain
An Old Woman’s Reflections—Peig Sayers
A Hive for the Honeybee—Soinbhe Lally
Versos Sencillos—José Martí
Selections—Federico García Lorca
BOOKS IN 2017
January
A History of Food—Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat
A Late Dinner—Paul Richardson
Soup & Bread—Martha Bayne
Eats, Shoots & Leaves—Lynne Truss
The Art of Memory—Francis Yates
Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student—Edward P. Corbett and Robert J. Connors
Kristin Lanvransdatter I: The Wreath—Sigrid Undset
February
Silence—Shūsaku Endō
We Refugees—Hannah Arendt
Aura—Carlos Fuentes
Pedro Páramo—Juan Rulfo
La Estación Violenta—Octavio Paz
La Paz de los Sepulcros—Jorge Volpi
Conversación y Repaso: Intermediate Spanish
Letters—Epicurus
Letters—Seneca
March
Incidents of Travel in the Yucatán, Volume 1—John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood
The Popol Vuh
Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs—Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke
Writing in Maya Glyphs: A Non-Technical Introduction to Maya Glyphs—Mark Pitts
Hieroglyphic Decipherment Guide—Inga E. Calvin
The Sea Around Us—Rachel Carson
A Month in the Country—J. L. Carr
Kafka: A Very Short Introduction
Mexico—Lonely Planet
The Souls of Black Folk—W. E. B. Du Bois
Under the Jaguar Sun—Italo Calvino
Breaking the Maya Code—Michael D. Coe
Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia—Rigoberta Menchú
April
In Patagonia—Bruce Chatwin
An Account of Magellan's Voyage 1518-1521 (Patagonia Section)—Antonio Pigafetta
Argentina—Lonely Planet
Trekking in Patagonia—Lonely Planet
Voyage of the Beagle—Charles Darwin
Walden (in Spanish)—Henry David Thoreau
May
The Land of the Blessed Virgin: Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia—W. Somerset Maugham
Chile—Lonely Planet
Racism: A Very Short Introduction
How to Lie with Statistics—Darrell Huff
Moments of Reprieve—Primo Levi
Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction
Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada—Pablo Neruda
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
American Politics: A Very Short Introduction
June
Residencia en la Tierra—Pablo Neruda
A un Sembrador—Gabriela Mistral
Ternura—Gabriela Mistral
Hillbilly Elegy—J.D. Vance
Ayer Soñé con Valparaíso: Crónicas Porteñas—Manuel Peña Muñoz
Historias de Aquí y de Allá—Luis Sepúlveda
Estrella Distante—Roberto Bolaño
Mi País Inventado—Isabel Allende
July
Gracias a la Vida—Violeta Parra
Bestiario—Julio Cortázar
El Aleph—Jorge Luis Borges
Poemas y Antipoemas—Nicanor Parra
Desolación—Gabriela Mistral
August
Cartas a un Joven Novelista—Mario Vargas Llosa
The Lost City of the Incas—Hiram Bingham
Alturas de Macchu Picchu—Pablo Neruda
Hombres de Maíz—Miguel Ángel Asturias (only half)
September
Gabito: el niño que soñó a Macondo—Aída García Márquez
Cien Años de Soledad—Gabriel García Márquez
Searching for Sunday—Rachel Held Evans
Influencing Hemingway—Nancy Sindelar
Lecture on James Joyce's Ulysses—Vladimir Nabokov
Joyce's Dublin: A Walking Guide to Ulysses—James F. McCarthy and Danis Rose
October
Dublin—Lonely Planet
The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide through Ulysses—Harry Blamires
Death of a Naturalist—Seamus Heaney
Selected Poems—W.B. Yeats
The Celts: A Very Short Introduction
Selected Sermons—Laurence Stern
The Book of Kells—Bernard Maheen
Modern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction
Táin Bó Cúailnge
Sun Dancing: A Medieval Vision: Seven Centuries on Skellig Michael—Geoffrey Moorhouse
November
Ulysses—James Joyce
The Road to Wigan Pier—George Orwell
The Canterbury Tales (Norton Critical Edition)—Chaucer
The Waves—Virginia Woolf
December
Practicing the Way of Jesus in the college ministry at the University Church of Christ: A Thesis—Andy Gann
The Romantic Poets and Their Circle—Richard Holmes
A Christmas Carol—Charles Dickens
Ways of Seeing—John Berger
French (A1)—Wikibooks
French Phrasebook—Lonely Planet
Morocco—Lonely Planet
The Story of the Glittering Plain—William Morris
How to Write a Sentence—Stanley Fish
The Travels—Ibn Battuta
Books in 2016
January
Moby-Dick—Herman Melville (at the 25-hour Moby-Dick Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts)
Ghosts of Spain—Giles Tremlett
February
Tales of the Alhambra—Washington Irving (in the Alhambra!)
March
Challenging Students at Fort Worth Christian School to Engage the Economically Disadvantaged in Their Community—James Hensley
The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies—Robert Kirk (in Scotland)
The Second Common Reader—Virginia Woolf
April
Walden—Henry David Thoreau
Music: A Very Short Introduction
Tao Te Ching—Laozi
Gypsy Ballads—Federico García Lorca (in Andalucia)
Spain—Insight Guides
Driving over Lemons—Chris Stewart (in Andalucia)
Getting to Yes—Roger Fisher and William L. Ury
May
Paradiso—Dante (in Florence)
Doce Cuentos Peregrinos—Gabriel García Márquez
June
C1 Spanish
July
Freud's Travels—Daniela Finzi (in Vienna)
Alemán para el Viajero
Homage to Catalonia—George Orwell (in Catalonia)
*The Truce—Primo Levi
Deutsche Grammatik & Rechtschreibung—PONS
Economics: A Very Short Introduction
August
Dasda: Deutsch als Fremdsprache für Jugendliche Grundkurs Lehrbuch—Katja Baginski
Letters—Vincent van Gogh (in Amsterdam)
Tagebuch—Anne Frank (in Amsterdam)
Hedda Gabler—Henrik Ibsen (in Oslo)
September
"Babette's Feast"—Isak Dinesen (in Copenhagen)
Hamlet—Shakespeare (at Elsinore where it's set!)
October
Social Work—A Very Short Introduction
Between the World and Me—Ta-Nehisi Coates
November
Soledades, Galerias, Otros Poemas—Antonio Machado
December
The Castle—Franz Kafka (in Prague at his home and the Café Louvre!)
M Train—Patti Smith
Books in 2015
January
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism—Max Weber
Writing Fiction—Janet Burroway
The Writing Life—Annie Dillard
Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction
Memoir from the House of the Dead—Dostoevsky
The Narrow Road to the Deep North—Matsuo Basho
The Summing Up—W. Somerset Maugham
Snow Country—Yasunari Kawabata
February
The Fall of Language in the Age of English—Minae Mizumura
In the Basement of the Ivory Tower—Professor X
Black Like Me—John Howard Griffin
Cane—Jean Toomer
Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well—Pellegrino Artusi
Journalism: A Very Short Introduction
Management: A Very Short Introduction
March
Organizations: A Very Short Introduction
Toxic Charity—Bob Lupton
Tender Buttons—Gertrude Stein
Animal Farm—George Orwell
My Larger Education—Booker T. Washington
April
Walden—Henry David Thoreau
Guatemala—Lonely Planet
For the Time Being—Annie Dillard
Education: A Very Short Introduction
Photography: A Very Short Introduction
Advertising: A Very Short Introduction
May
Law: A Very Short Introduction
Siddhartha—Herman Hesse
Libre Soy: Portraits of a New Guatemala—Allison Voigts
June
The Vocation of a Teacher—Wayne C. Booth
We Could Almost Eat Outside—Phillippe Delerm
Other People's Trades—Primo Levi
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler—Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities—Italo Calvino
Up from Slavery—Booker T. Washington
Architecture: A Very Short Introduction
Koran: A Very Short Introduction
The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction
A True History of the Conquest of New Spain—Bernal Diaz
The Maya—Michael D Coe
July
On Becoming a Person—Carl Rogers
Reading the Past: Maya Glyphs—S.D. Houston
The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other—Tzvetan Todorov
Esperanza
August
El Peregrino—Paulo Coehlo
Reading the Maya Glyphs—Michael D Coe
Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies—Bartholome de las Casas
Maya Art and Architecture—Mary Ellen Miller
Twenty Years at Hull House—Jane Addams
Pedagogy of Hope—Paulo Freire
September
Georgics—Virgil
Origin of Inspiration—Samuel Adoquei
The Maya Scribe and His World—Michael D. Coe
The Ten Commandments and Beyond—Bob Epley
When Helping Hurts—Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert
The Book of Strangers (The Book of the Literature of Strangers)
The Red and the Black—Stendahl
Celebration of Awareness—Ivan Illich
The Monkey Wrench—Primo Levi
October
Education and Experience—John Dewey
Fragments—Heraclitus
Tools for Coviviality—Ivan Illich
Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, and Philosophers—Leonard Koren
Meditations—Marcus Aurelius
The House Beautiful—Frank Lloyd Wright
Steering the Craft—Ursula K. Le Guin
The Prince—Machiavelli
November
Women at The Hague—Jane Addams
Chicago—Lonely Planet
Jane Addams' Travel Medicine Kit—Terri Kapsalis
Siddhartha—Herman Hesse
Ha Jin's Introduction to Lu Xun (Lu Hsun)
Spain—Lonely Planet
Kindergarten Chats—Louis Sullivan
A System of Architectural Ornament—Louis Sullivan
Journals—Thoreau
Holy the Firm—Annie Dillard
A Gift of Love—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Courage to Teach—Parker Palmer
Excerpts from Weber Selections in Translation—Max Weber
The Other Face of the Moon—Claude Lévi-Strauss
La Casa en Mango Street—Sandra Cisneros
December
A Storyteller and a City—Kenny J. Williams
Deschooling Society—Ivan Illich
I and Thou—Martin Buber
Morphology of the Folk Tale—Vladimir Propp
The Pillow Book—Sei Shōnagon
International Migration: A Very Short Introduction
A Path Appears—Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Collection of Sand—Italo Calvino
Stride toward Freedom—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Books in 2014
If This Was a Man—Primo Levi
Man's Search for Meaning—Victor Frankl
The Return of the Prodigal Son—Henri Nouwen
Walden—Henry David Thoreau
Logic: A Very Short Introduction
Computer: A Very Short Introduction
Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction
Ethics: A Very Short Introduction
The Art of Public Speaking—Lucas
The Art of Public Speaking—Dale Carnagie
The Empire Writes Back—Bill Ashcroft
Lectures on Russian Literature—Vladimir Nabokov
The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep
Living by Fiction—Annie Dillard
The Encantadas—Herman Melville
The Common Reader—Virginia Woolf
Memory: A Very Short Introduction
Siddhartha—Herman Hesse
How to Shit Around the World—Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth
Writing: A Very Short Introduction
Fashion: A Very Short Introduction
Animal Vegetable Miracle—Barbara Kingsolver
Lincoln's Speeches
Rhetorica ad Herennium
The History of Writing Instruction
The Periodic Table—Primo Levi
BOOKS IN 2013
The Institutes of Oratory—Quintilian
Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres—Hugh Blair
Republic—Plato
Walden—Henry David Thoreau
Of Grammatology—Jacques Derrida
Democracy in America—Alexis de Tocqueville
The Tempest—Shakespeare
Tristes Tropiques—Claude Lévi-Strauss
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword—Ruth Benedict
The Feminine Mystique—Betty Friedan
Dispatches—Michael Herr
The Things They Carried—Tim O'Brien
An Actor Prepares—Constantin Stanislavski
A Pilgrimage to Angkor—Pierre Loti