The Slush Pile Goes On Forever, and the Party Never Ends*
This post is an electronic copy of my slush pile, aka the list of books I mean to get around to reading one day. Because this list is very large and changes very frequently, it doesn't make sense for me to post it over and over again. In a new concept for this journal, instead I will make this a permanent post. I will update this specific post whenever I finish something from it or when I add new items. For entertainment value, compare it to my annotated slush pile from 2018 and see what's still on the list and what isn't.
I have made a rough attempt to organize this list by author, genre and other useful distinctions, but nobody should pretend this is truly in a coherent order that makes sense to anyone other than me.
And as a reminder, you can see the ongoing list of all the books I've read since I started keeping track here.
This doesn't include anything I want to re-read, which may be a weakness, cognizant as I am of Paul Graham's thought that
Reading and experience are usually "compiled" at the time they happen, using the state of your brain at that time. The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life. Which means it is very much worth reading important books multiple times. I always used to feel some misgivings about rereading books. I unconsciously lumped reading together with work like carpentry, where having to do something again is a sign you did it wrong the first time. Whereas now the phrase "already read" seems almost ill-formed.
*With apologies to Robert Earl Keen.
On Hold, Delete Once Read
Allison Joseph - 2/27/24 - https://poets.org/poem/incognito-grief-blues
A Bell for Adano
Isaac Babel - Red Cavalry
AE Housman - A Shropshire Lad
Leo Tolsoy - Death of II
Arthur Allen - Vaccine (sister)
Aimee Nezhukumatathil - Bite by Bite (4/30/24, Bookshop.org email)
Favorite Authors
In 2019 I highlighted a few authors I particularly enjoy and would like to read more of. Books listed should be seen as "read one of these next" not "the only things left to read."
Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace, The Robber Bride, Hag-Seed
Bill Bryson - Neither Here Nor There, Notes From a Big Country, African Diary
Lois McMaster Bujold - Demon Daughter
Junot Diaz - all caught up at the moment
Charles Dickens - Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickelby, Hard Times
James Ellroy - Cladestine
Ernest Hemingway - To Have and Have Not
Stephen King - The Institute, The Outsider, Elevation, If It Bleeds, Later, Fairy Tale, Holly, On Writing
Jhumpa Lahiri - In Other Words, The Clothing of Books, Translating myself and others
Cormac McCarthy - Child of God, The Passenger, Stella Maris
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
Tom Robbins - Another Roadside Attaction, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards, Villa Incognito
JK Rowling - Troubled Blood, The Ink Black Heart
Lionel Shriver - Big Brother, Checker & the Deraileurs
John Steinbeck - Cup of Gold, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, The Wayward Bus, The Winter of our Discontent
Studs Terkel - Coming of Age, Hope Dies Last, Touch and Go, Chicago, Giants of Jazz
Kurt Vonnegut - God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Breakfast of Champions, Jailbird, Cat's Cradle, Sirens of Titan
Jesmyn Ward - all caught up
Other Authors Worth Noting
Michael Lewis
Nick Hornby
John Hersey
Baseball
I love baseball. I love books about baseball. There are a lot of good ones left to read.
When in doubt, check lists like this one and pull out items I haven't read before. Some highlights that I listed previously.
Roger Angell - Any of the "A Baseball Companion Books"
Tony Kubek & Terry Pluto - Sixty-One
David Halberstam - Summer of 49
Bob Uecker & Mickey Herkowitz - Catcher in the Wry
Roger Kahn - The Boys of Summer
Bill Veeck & Ed Linn - Veeck as in Wreck
Earl Weaver & Terry Pluto - Weaver on Strategy
Bill James - Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame
Jules Tygiel - Baseball's Great Experiment
Cait Murphy - Crazy '08
Dan Epstein - Big Hair & Plastic Grass
Thomas Boswell - Why Time Begins on Opening Day
Jim Brosnan - The Long Season
Satchel Paige - Maybe I'll Pitch Forever
Ted Williams - the Science of Hitting
Charles Einstein - Willie's Time
Jimmy Breslin - Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?
Danny Peary - We Played the Game
Eliot Asinof - 8 Men Out
Marcos Breton & Jose Luis Villegas - The Away Game
Robert Whiting - You Gotta Have Wa
Mike Bryan - Baseball Lives
Bill Lee - The Wrong Stuff
Doris Kearns Goodwin - Wait Till Next Year
Donald Honig - Baseball when the grass was real
Bart Giamatti - Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (in The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, 9/30/24. in Home Plate definition)
And others:
Charles Einstein - The Fireside Book of Baseball, the Second Fireside Book of Baseball, the Third Fireside Book of Baseball, the New Baseball Reader - 6/10/24 (read the collection)
Mike Shannon - Diamond classics : essays on 100 of the best baseball books ever published 6/10/24 - while researching the Einstein books above.
Anthony Castrovince - Fans Guide Baseball Analytics
Alan Schwarz - The Numbers Game
Bill Libby - Charlie O and the Angry As
If These Walls Could Talk: Oakland A's: Stories from the Oakland A's Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box
Jonathan Eig - Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig
Sparky Lyle - The Bronx Zoo
The Art of Fielding
Jason Turbow - The Baseball Codes
Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era
The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking
Ballparks: A Journey Through the Fields of the Past, Present, and Future
Robert K. Adair - The Physics of Baseball
Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game
Infinite Baseball
We would have played for nothing
Dale Tafoya - Billy Ball
Leonard Koppett - the man in the dugout
Jonathan Mayo - Smart Lucky and Wrong
Ben Lindbergh & sam Miller - The Only Rule Is It Has to Work
Nicholas Dawidoff - Baseball: A Literary Anthology
Paul Dickson - The Joy of Keeping Score
Mark Kurlansky - The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris
Dan Barry - Bottom of the 33rd (rec by Jazzbo early in 2024)
David Block - Baseball Before We Knew It (3/31/24, from The Dickson Baseball Dictionary)
Tom Dunkel - Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball's Color Line (5/5/24 via Fangraphs comment)
Jerry Izenberg - Larry Doby in Black and White (7/21/24 via Fangraphs)
Quincy Trouppe - 20 Years Too Soon (EJ, 8/17/24)
Luke Epplin - Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball (EJ, 8/17/24)
Kevin Kerrane - Dollar Sign on the Muscle (Dickson Baseball Dictionary, 11/25/24)
Howard Bryant - Rickey (assorted obits, 12/23/24)
Comics
Harvey Pekar - American Splendor, others
Miracleman
Fables spinoffs
- From the Pages of Fables (2016-2017) Vol. 2: The Unsentimental Education
Ruins
Kieron Gillen - Three, Once & Future
The Unwritten
Finder
Locke & Key
Saga of the Swamp Thing
Saga - any new ones since I read it
Garth Ennis - War Stories 5+ / Battlefields
Hellboy / BPRD - the stuff I haven't read
Harvey Pekar - American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, More American Splendor, The New American Splendor Anthology
Ryan North - How to Invent Everything
Ryan North - How to Take Over the World
Science Fiction / Fantasy
Annalee Newitz - The Future of Another Timeline
Honorverse - I've read the mainline books, but there are a few others I haven't read yet.
Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman
Valente - The Refrigerator Monologues
Butler - Parable of the Sower / Talent
Katharine Kerr - The Silver Mage
Arthur c Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth
The Last Ringbearer
Omar El Akkad - American War
Jason Hough - The Darwin Elevator
Moses Ose Utomi - The Lies of the Ajungo (4/26/24 from Facebook saved links)
NK Jemisin - The City We Becamse (10/28/2024 via Slate article)
Classics
The Caine Mutiny
Updike - Rabbit
Thoreau - Walking
Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (sister)
Turgenev - (Hemingway)
History
Israel: A Simple guide to the Most Understood Country on earth (PJ Library magazine 7/30/24)
James Shapiro - The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War (added 6/6/24 after reading Arena)
Adam Smyth - The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives (added 5/26/24, Smithsonian)
Scott Ellsworth - The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas (added 5/25/24, Fangraphs)
Alexander Rose - Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World (added 5/25/24, Fangraphs)
Charles Spencer - The White Ship (added 3/13/24, Slate)
Clint Smith - How the Word is Passed
Jack Belden - Still Time to Die
John Hersey - Algiers Hotel Incident
The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
The Social History of the Machine Gun
Christine Corton - London Fog: A Biography
In the Shadow of the Sword
Adam Rogers - Proof
Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.
America, Empire of Liberty: A New History of the United States
The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD
botticini, Eckstein - The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History
Nicholas Rankin - Ian Fleming's Commandos
Unauthorized biography of the potato
Bernard Cornwell - Waterloo: The History of 4 days, 3 armies and 3 battles
Brian Seibert - What the Eye Hears: A History of tap Dancing
Andrea Wulf - The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt
rise & fall of the roman empire
rise & fall of the 3rd reich
Villehardouin's chronicle of the Fourth Crusade
William Ellis - The Cuyahoga
The History of the World in Six Glasses
Antonia Fraser - Cromwell Bio
Burnett - Trying Leviathan
Daniel Schulman - The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street (Jenny Brown)
Carl Nightingale - Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities (from Dara Horn)
John McPhee - Annals of the Former World (sister)
Takaki - A Different Mirror (sister)
David Grann - The Wager (colleen)
Lewis Packwood - Curious Video Game Machines - 10/24/2024 - https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/oct/24/how-one-engineer-beat-the-ban-on-home-computers-in-socialist-yugoslavia
Memoir / Biography / Autobiography
Werner Herzog - Every Man for Himself and God Against All (10/30/24, reading A Guide for the Complexed
Richard Wright - Black Boy
George Plimpton - Paper Lion
William Shirer - Berlin Diary
Ken Jennings - Maphead - 10/20/2024 - mentioned in Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling
Ron Chernow - Hamilton
Willaim Souder - Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck (4/26/24, from saved Facebook post by Brandt)
Current Events / Social
Pamela Prickett, Stefan Timmermans - The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels (12/5/24 Atlantic article)
Alex Kotlowitz - There Are No Children Here (sister)
Andrea Elliott - Invisible Child
Matthew Desmond - Poverty, by America
Mara Karlin - The Inheritance
Adam Minter - Secondhand
George Packer - the Unwinding
Adam Gopnik - A Thousand Small Sanities (see his other books too)
The Almost Nearly Perfect People
Upstate Girls
Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media
Neil Postman - The Disappearance of Childhood
Rosa Brooks - How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything
Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects That Changed the Modern World
Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
The McDonalidization of Society - 1/1/24 (sister)
Bart Giamatti - A Free and Ordered Space (via The Bulwark)
Benjamin Herold - Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs (Atlantic)
Thomas Modley - Vectors - 4/11/24 (via Soldier & Sailor Tour Tickets)
Pop Science
Ben Goldfarb - Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
John Napier - Hands
Mark Essig - Lesser Beasts
Hugh Howey - Wool
Erika Howsare - The Age of Deer (LA Times)
David Brooks - How to Know a Person - 7/30/24 (Facebook comment)
From reading Bryson "The Body"
David J. Linden - Touch
Nina Jablonski - Skin
David McNeill - The Face
Jeremy Taylor - Body by Darwin
Carl Zimmer - Microcosm
A. Alvarez - Night
Paul Martin - Counting Sheep
Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Gene: An Intimate History, The Emperor of All Maladies
Sherrington - Man on His Nature
Art
Marilyn Stoksrad - Art: A Brief History
Taschen - art books
Taschen - Funk & Soul Covers -
Music
Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock
Joe Oestreich - Hitless Wonder: A Life in Minor-League Rock and Roll
Our Band Can Be Your Life
360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story
Lives of the Great Composers
Dylan - Chronicles, v.1
Ted Gioia - How to Listen to Jazz
Aaron Carnes - In Defense of Ska (4/26/24, Facebook saved link)
Marc Wasserman - Skaboom!: An American Ska & Reggae Oral History (4/26/24, Facebook saved link)
Novels / Short Stories
Alice Munro - Lives of Girls and Women
Mark Twain's Autobiography: 1910-2010
Adania Shibli - Minor Detail
Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of the Utmost Happiness
Tarayi Jones - An American Marriage
Steve martin - An Object of Beauty
Adam Ross - Mr. Peanut
Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
Bernard Malamud - The Fixer
Chava Rosenfarb - The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto (from Dara Horn)
Poetry / Drama
Lawrence Weinstein - Grammar For a Full Life (4/26/24 Facebook saved link)
Judi Dench - Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent (4/26/24 Facebook ad)
Maureen McLane - My Poets (6/17/24, via https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56406/best-laid)
Edgar Lee Masters - Spoon River Anthology
Dudley Randall - the Black Poets
Philip Larkn - High Windows, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47594/an-arundel-tomb
Stanley Moss - God Breaketh Not All Men's Hearts Alike - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48614/you-and-i-56d229feb6ab2
Muriel Rukeyser - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars
Elaine Equie - Best American Poetry - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/156640/in-an-unrelated-6169b6cb64801
Devon Johnston - Sources - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149704/dragons-5cacc312098c9
Robert Hass - The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52358/all-the-time-i-pray-to-buddha
Richard Michelson - More Money than God - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90404/counting-to-six-million
Jack Spicer - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51258/any-fool-can-get-into-an-ocean-
Danez Smith - 12/18/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57585/dinosaurs-in-the-hood
Dan Vera - 12/10/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153025/emily-dickinson-at-the-poetry-slam
Diane Seuss - 11/27/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/161499/juke
Ted Kooser - 11/13/2024 - https://poets.org/poem/legacy-5
Tanaya Winder - 11/4/2024 - (great first couplet) https://poets.org/poem/girls-who-run-through-storms-buffalos-knowing-its-quickest-way-through
Solmaz Sharif - 10/25/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1580548/social-skills-training
Allison Albino - 10/25/2024 - https://poets.org/poem/cast-iron
Yasmine Ameli - 10/09/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1600472/bedtime-story-1
Christian J. Collier - 9/11/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1584149/the-compline
Sonia Sanchez - 9/10/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/155821/morning-song-and-evening-walk
Ada Limon - 9/8/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162174/calling-things-what-they-are
Peter Pereira - 9/7/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41964/anagrammer
Ariana Brown - 9/6/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/161185/a-division-of-gods
Kyle Tran Myhre - 8/6/24 - https://poets.org/poem/when-it-really-just-wind-and-not-furious-vexation
Kathi Wolfe - 7/29/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58791/tasting-braille
Nora Hikari - 7/8/24 - https://poets.org/poem/imago-dei
Lucille Clifton - 7/02/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49491/jasper-texas-1998
Christina Olivares - 6/13/24 - https://poets.org/poem/preserving-ecosystem
Eileen Myles - 6/6/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54620/peanut-butter
Hari Alluri - 5/1/24 - https://poets.org/poem/spiral
Camille T. Dungy - 4/25/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/146218/naming-what-has-risen
Frank Marshall Davis - 4/7/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/161537/lady-day-6544187379765
Yehuda Amichai - 2/28/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58628/a-pity-we-were-such-a-good-invention
David Hernandez - 2/25/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147366/we-would-never-sleep
Jessica Care More - 2/23/24 - https://poets.org/poem/wild-beauty
Roberto Carlos Garica - 2/21/24 - https://poets.org/poem/tempest
Jai Hamid Bashir - 2/16/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/156304/and-the-word-for-moonlight-is-my-name
Asimov's Shakespeare
Worth repeating?
Erika Meitner - Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore / Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57958/yiddishland
3/27/24 - https://poets.org/poem/just-darkness-got-very-dark-another-data-point
Work Related
Stephen Few - Now You See It
John Gall - The Systems Bible
Steve McConnell - Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Development Schedules
Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister - Peopleware
Rothman & Derby - Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
"Getting to yes..." Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton
The Design of Everyday Things
Other Authors
Jane Austen
David Gerrold
Herman Wouk
James Salter
Will Trevor
Charles Sheffield
Cookbooks
Indian Instant Pot® Cookbook: Traditional Indian Dishes Made Easy and Fast
Kids
Lauren Ipsum
Paolo Bacigalupi - Zombie Baseball Beatdown
Uncategorized
The file was huge, and I got tired of classifying it. Will do more as I go along.
Note Books of Captain Georges - Renoir
Irwin Shaw - the Young Lions
Greil Marcus - Stranded, Dead Elvis
Jane Mayer - Dark Money
The Berlin Stories
The Worst Journey in the World
How to Stop Time - Matt Haig
Moss Roberts translation of Romance of 3 Kingdoms
John Reed - Insurgent Mexico
Joan Turner Beifuss in At The River I Stand
William Henry Hudson - Far Away and Long Ago
Asimov's Shakespeare
Shadrach in the Furnace - Silverberg
Houllebecq - The Elementary Particles
Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom
2084: The End of the World
Jane Jacobs - Dark Age Ahead
The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (A Brookings Classic)
AB Guthrie - The Big Sky
Bellevue - Oshinsky
The Geek Feminist Revolution
David France - How to Survive a Plague
Brian Alexander - Glass House
Donna Tart (Kelly)
Charles Koch - The Science of Success, Good Profit
JD Vance - Hillbilly Elegy
Sonny Liew - The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
Margo Jefferson - Negroland
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
Maceline Loridan-Ivens - But You Did Not Come Back
Gary Younge - Another Day in the Death of America
Edward Dusinberre - Beethoven for a Later Age
Ted Gioia - How to Listen to Jazz
Tom Wainwright - Narconomics
Gary Taubes - The Case Against Sugar
The Attention Merchants - Tim Wu
Nir Baram - Good People
A SQUARE MEAL: A Culinary History of the Great Depression - By Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt
The Comfort of Crows
Robert Moor - On Trails
Charlotte Wood - The Natural Way of Things
Peter Singer - Ethics in the Real World
Tim Harford - Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
Stacia Kane's Downside Ghosts
Alena Gradeon - The Word Exchange
Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football
Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon
House of Leaves
Harlot's ghost
The Good Earth
Gravity's Rainbow
Peter Doran - Breaking Rockefeller
Darkness at Noon
Rick Lyman - Watching Movies: The Biggest Names in Cinema Talk about the Films that Matter Most
Edward Wilson-Lee - Shakespeare in Swahililand
The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans
George Orwell - Catalonia, Wigan Pier
No Picnic on Mount Kenya - Felice Benuzzi
The Pulse v.3: Fear (comic)
Joe Hill
Elena Ferrante
Stuffocation
The Invisibles (business book)
Molly Crabapple - Drawing Blood
How Bad Do You Want It? Matt Fitzgerald
Nate Jackson - Slow Getting Up
Anthony Bourdain - Medium Raw, The Nasty Bits
Ari Shavit - My Promised Land
Mao's On Guerilla Warfare
Maria Konnikova - The Confidence Game
The Plot Against America
The Well Built City Trilogy by his colleague Jeffery Ford
Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands
Paine - Common Sense
Gail Carson Levine- Forgive Me I Meant To Do It
Gail Carson Levine - Tell the Wolves I'm Home
John Dos Passos - USA Trilogy
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Pohl - Gateway
Carter Beats the Devil
The Devil's Dictionary
THE YOUNG GIRL'S HANDBOOK OF GOOD MANNERS FOR USE IN EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS By Pierre Louÿs
Michael Cunningham - A Wild Swan and Other Tales
Bo Lidegaard - Countrymen
Drunk Tank Pink
Big Box Swindle
Final Salute
The Art of Audit - Roel Janssen
Jerry Kaplan - Humans Need Not Apply
America against America
12 Against the Gods
Klosterman: Eating the Dinosaur, Downtown Owl, IV
The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters
From Secondary List from My Phone, Also Uncategorized
Naomi Alderman - The Power
David Wallace-Wells - The Uninhabitable Earth
Sandra Postel - Replenish
Martin f Doyle - The Source
Peter Moore - Endeavor
American Eve / The Girl on the Velvet Swing
Jared diamond - upheaval
Hugh Macdonald - music in 1853
Jon meacham - songs of America
I have made a rough attempt to organize this list by author, genre and other useful distinctions, but nobody should pretend this is truly in a coherent order that makes sense to anyone other than me.
And as a reminder, you can see the ongoing list of all the books I've read since I started keeping track here.
This doesn't include anything I want to re-read, which may be a weakness, cognizant as I am of Paul Graham's thought that
Reading and experience are usually "compiled" at the time they happen, using the state of your brain at that time. The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life. Which means it is very much worth reading important books multiple times. I always used to feel some misgivings about rereading books. I unconsciously lumped reading together with work like carpentry, where having to do something again is a sign you did it wrong the first time. Whereas now the phrase "already read" seems almost ill-formed.
*With apologies to Robert Earl Keen.
On Hold, Delete Once Read
Allison Joseph - 2/27/24 - https://poets.org/poem/incognito-grief-blues
A Bell for Adano
Isaac Babel - Red Cavalry
AE Housman - A Shropshire Lad
Leo Tolsoy - Death of II
Arthur Allen - Vaccine (sister)
Aimee Nezhukumatathil - Bite by Bite (4/30/24, Bookshop.org email)
Favorite Authors
In 2019 I highlighted a few authors I particularly enjoy and would like to read more of. Books listed should be seen as "read one of these next" not "the only things left to read."
Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace, The Robber Bride, Hag-Seed
Bill Bryson - Neither Here Nor There, Notes From a Big Country, African Diary
Lois McMaster Bujold - Demon Daughter
Junot Diaz - all caught up at the moment
Charles Dickens - Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickelby, Hard Times
James Ellroy - Cladestine
Ernest Hemingway - To Have and Have Not
Stephen King - The Institute, The Outsider, Elevation, If It Bleeds, Later, Fairy Tale, Holly, On Writing
Jhumpa Lahiri - In Other Words, The Clothing of Books, Translating myself and others
Cormac McCarthy - Child of God, The Passenger, Stella Maris
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
Tom Robbins - Another Roadside Attaction, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards, Villa Incognito
JK Rowling - Troubled Blood, The Ink Black Heart
Lionel Shriver - Big Brother, Checker & the Deraileurs
John Steinbeck - Cup of Gold, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, The Wayward Bus, The Winter of our Discontent
Studs Terkel - Coming of Age, Hope Dies Last, Touch and Go, Chicago, Giants of Jazz
Kurt Vonnegut - God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Breakfast of Champions, Jailbird, Cat's Cradle, Sirens of Titan
Jesmyn Ward - all caught up
Other Authors Worth Noting
Michael Lewis
Nick Hornby
John Hersey
Baseball
I love baseball. I love books about baseball. There are a lot of good ones left to read.
When in doubt, check lists like this one and pull out items I haven't read before. Some highlights that I listed previously.
Roger Angell - Any of the "A Baseball Companion Books"
Tony Kubek & Terry Pluto - Sixty-One
David Halberstam - Summer of 49
Bob Uecker & Mickey Herkowitz - Catcher in the Wry
Roger Kahn - The Boys of Summer
Bill Veeck & Ed Linn - Veeck as in Wreck
Earl Weaver & Terry Pluto - Weaver on Strategy
Bill James - Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame
Jules Tygiel - Baseball's Great Experiment
Cait Murphy - Crazy '08
Dan Epstein - Big Hair & Plastic Grass
Thomas Boswell - Why Time Begins on Opening Day
Jim Brosnan - The Long Season
Satchel Paige - Maybe I'll Pitch Forever
Ted Williams - the Science of Hitting
Charles Einstein - Willie's Time
Jimmy Breslin - Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?
Danny Peary - We Played the Game
Eliot Asinof - 8 Men Out
Marcos Breton & Jose Luis Villegas - The Away Game
Robert Whiting - You Gotta Have Wa
Mike Bryan - Baseball Lives
Bill Lee - The Wrong Stuff
Doris Kearns Goodwin - Wait Till Next Year
Donald Honig - Baseball when the grass was real
Bart Giamatti - Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (in The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, 9/30/24. in Home Plate definition)
And others:
Charles Einstein - The Fireside Book of Baseball, the Second Fireside Book of Baseball, the Third Fireside Book of Baseball, the New Baseball Reader - 6/10/24 (read the collection)
Mike Shannon - Diamond classics : essays on 100 of the best baseball books ever published 6/10/24 - while researching the Einstein books above.
Anthony Castrovince - Fans Guide Baseball Analytics
Alan Schwarz - The Numbers Game
Bill Libby - Charlie O and the Angry As
If These Walls Could Talk: Oakland A's: Stories from the Oakland A's Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box
Jonathan Eig - Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig
Sparky Lyle - The Bronx Zoo
The Art of Fielding
Jason Turbow - The Baseball Codes
Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era
The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking
Ballparks: A Journey Through the Fields of the Past, Present, and Future
Robert K. Adair - The Physics of Baseball
Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game
Infinite Baseball
We would have played for nothing
Dale Tafoya - Billy Ball
Leonard Koppett - the man in the dugout
Jonathan Mayo - Smart Lucky and Wrong
Ben Lindbergh & sam Miller - The Only Rule Is It Has to Work
Nicholas Dawidoff - Baseball: A Literary Anthology
Paul Dickson - The Joy of Keeping Score
Mark Kurlansky - The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris
Dan Barry - Bottom of the 33rd (rec by Jazzbo early in 2024)
David Block - Baseball Before We Knew It (3/31/24, from The Dickson Baseball Dictionary)
Tom Dunkel - Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball's Color Line (5/5/24 via Fangraphs comment)
Jerry Izenberg - Larry Doby in Black and White (7/21/24 via Fangraphs)
Quincy Trouppe - 20 Years Too Soon (EJ, 8/17/24)
Luke Epplin - Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball (EJ, 8/17/24)
Kevin Kerrane - Dollar Sign on the Muscle (Dickson Baseball Dictionary, 11/25/24)
Howard Bryant - Rickey (assorted obits, 12/23/24)
Comics
Harvey Pekar - American Splendor, others
Miracleman
Fables spinoffs
- From the Pages of Fables (2016-2017) Vol. 2: The Unsentimental Education
Ruins
Kieron Gillen - Three, Once & Future
The Unwritten
Finder
Locke & Key
Saga of the Swamp Thing
Saga - any new ones since I read it
Garth Ennis - War Stories 5+ / Battlefields
Hellboy / BPRD - the stuff I haven't read
Harvey Pekar - American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, More American Splendor, The New American Splendor Anthology
Ryan North - How to Invent Everything
Ryan North - How to Take Over the World
Science Fiction / Fantasy
Annalee Newitz - The Future of Another Timeline
Honorverse - I've read the mainline books, but there are a few others I haven't read yet.
Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman
Valente - The Refrigerator Monologues
Butler - Parable of the Sower / Talent
Katharine Kerr - The Silver Mage
Arthur c Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth
The Last Ringbearer
Omar El Akkad - American War
Jason Hough - The Darwin Elevator
Moses Ose Utomi - The Lies of the Ajungo (4/26/24 from Facebook saved links)
NK Jemisin - The City We Becamse (10/28/2024 via Slate article)
Classics
The Caine Mutiny
Updike - Rabbit
Thoreau - Walking
Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (sister)
Turgenev - (Hemingway)
History
Israel: A Simple guide to the Most Understood Country on earth (PJ Library magazine 7/30/24)
James Shapiro - The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War (added 6/6/24 after reading Arena)
Adam Smyth - The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives (added 5/26/24, Smithsonian)
Scott Ellsworth - The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas (added 5/25/24, Fangraphs)
Alexander Rose - Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World (added 5/25/24, Fangraphs)
Charles Spencer - The White Ship (added 3/13/24, Slate)
Clint Smith - How the Word is Passed
Jack Belden - Still Time to Die
John Hersey - Algiers Hotel Incident
The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
The Social History of the Machine Gun
Christine Corton - London Fog: A Biography
In the Shadow of the Sword
Adam Rogers - Proof
Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.
America, Empire of Liberty: A New History of the United States
The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD
botticini, Eckstein - The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History
Nicholas Rankin - Ian Fleming's Commandos
Unauthorized biography of the potato
Bernard Cornwell - Waterloo: The History of 4 days, 3 armies and 3 battles
Brian Seibert - What the Eye Hears: A History of tap Dancing
Andrea Wulf - The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt
rise & fall of the roman empire
rise & fall of the 3rd reich
Villehardouin's chronicle of the Fourth Crusade
William Ellis - The Cuyahoga
The History of the World in Six Glasses
Antonia Fraser - Cromwell Bio
Burnett - Trying Leviathan
Daniel Schulman - The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street (Jenny Brown)
Carl Nightingale - Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities (from Dara Horn)
John McPhee - Annals of the Former World (sister)
Takaki - A Different Mirror (sister)
David Grann - The Wager (colleen)
Lewis Packwood - Curious Video Game Machines - 10/24/2024 - https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/oct/24/how-one-engineer-beat-the-ban-on-home-computers-in-socialist-yugoslavia
Memoir / Biography / Autobiography
Werner Herzog - Every Man for Himself and God Against All (10/30/24, reading A Guide for the Complexed
Richard Wright - Black Boy
George Plimpton - Paper Lion
William Shirer - Berlin Diary
Ken Jennings - Maphead - 10/20/2024 - mentioned in Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling
Ron Chernow - Hamilton
Willaim Souder - Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck (4/26/24, from saved Facebook post by Brandt)
Current Events / Social
Pamela Prickett, Stefan Timmermans - The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels (12/5/24 Atlantic article)
Alex Kotlowitz - There Are No Children Here (sister)
Andrea Elliott - Invisible Child
Matthew Desmond - Poverty, by America
Mara Karlin - The Inheritance
Adam Minter - Secondhand
George Packer - the Unwinding
Adam Gopnik - A Thousand Small Sanities (see his other books too)
The Almost Nearly Perfect People
Upstate Girls
Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media
Neil Postman - The Disappearance of Childhood
Rosa Brooks - How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything
Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects That Changed the Modern World
Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
The McDonalidization of Society - 1/1/24 (sister)
Bart Giamatti - A Free and Ordered Space (via The Bulwark)
Benjamin Herold - Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs (Atlantic)
Thomas Modley - Vectors - 4/11/24 (via Soldier & Sailor Tour Tickets)
Pop Science
Ben Goldfarb - Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
John Napier - Hands
Mark Essig - Lesser Beasts
Hugh Howey - Wool
Erika Howsare - The Age of Deer (LA Times)
David Brooks - How to Know a Person - 7/30/24 (Facebook comment)
From reading Bryson "The Body"
David J. Linden - Touch
Nina Jablonski - Skin
David McNeill - The Face
Jeremy Taylor - Body by Darwin
Carl Zimmer - Microcosm
A. Alvarez - Night
Paul Martin - Counting Sheep
Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Gene: An Intimate History, The Emperor of All Maladies
Sherrington - Man on His Nature
Art
Marilyn Stoksrad - Art: A Brief History
Taschen - art books
Taschen - Funk & Soul Covers -
Music
Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock
Joe Oestreich - Hitless Wonder: A Life in Minor-League Rock and Roll
Our Band Can Be Your Life
360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story
Lives of the Great Composers
Dylan - Chronicles, v.1
Ted Gioia - How to Listen to Jazz
Aaron Carnes - In Defense of Ska (4/26/24, Facebook saved link)
Marc Wasserman - Skaboom!: An American Ska & Reggae Oral History (4/26/24, Facebook saved link)
Novels / Short Stories
Alice Munro - Lives of Girls and Women
Mark Twain's Autobiography: 1910-2010
Adania Shibli - Minor Detail
Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of the Utmost Happiness
Tarayi Jones - An American Marriage
Steve martin - An Object of Beauty
Adam Ross - Mr. Peanut
Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
Bernard Malamud - The Fixer
Chava Rosenfarb - The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto (from Dara Horn)
Poetry / Drama
Lawrence Weinstein - Grammar For a Full Life (4/26/24 Facebook saved link)
Judi Dench - Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent (4/26/24 Facebook ad)
Maureen McLane - My Poets (6/17/24, via https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56406/best-laid)
Edgar Lee Masters - Spoon River Anthology
Dudley Randall - the Black Poets
Philip Larkn - High Windows, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47594/an-arundel-tomb
Stanley Moss - God Breaketh Not All Men's Hearts Alike - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48614/you-and-i-56d229feb6ab2
Muriel Rukeyser - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars
Elaine Equie - Best American Poetry - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/156640/in-an-unrelated-6169b6cb64801
Devon Johnston - Sources - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149704/dragons-5cacc312098c9
Robert Hass - The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52358/all-the-time-i-pray-to-buddha
Richard Michelson - More Money than God - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90404/counting-to-six-million
Jack Spicer - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51258/any-fool-can-get-into-an-ocean-
Danez Smith - 12/18/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57585/dinosaurs-in-the-hood
Dan Vera - 12/10/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153025/emily-dickinson-at-the-poetry-slam
Diane Seuss - 11/27/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/161499/juke
Ted Kooser - 11/13/2024 - https://poets.org/poem/legacy-5
Tanaya Winder - 11/4/2024 - (great first couplet) https://poets.org/poem/girls-who-run-through-storms-buffalos-knowing-its-quickest-way-through
Solmaz Sharif - 10/25/2024 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1580548/social-skills-training
Allison Albino - 10/25/2024 - https://poets.org/poem/cast-iron
Yasmine Ameli - 10/09/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1600472/bedtime-story-1
Christian J. Collier - 9/11/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1584149/the-compline
Sonia Sanchez - 9/10/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/155821/morning-song-and-evening-walk
Ada Limon - 9/8/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162174/calling-things-what-they-are
Peter Pereira - 9/7/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41964/anagrammer
Ariana Brown - 9/6/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/161185/a-division-of-gods
Kyle Tran Myhre - 8/6/24 - https://poets.org/poem/when-it-really-just-wind-and-not-furious-vexation
Kathi Wolfe - 7/29/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58791/tasting-braille
Nora Hikari - 7/8/24 - https://poets.org/poem/imago-dei
Lucille Clifton - 7/02/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49491/jasper-texas-1998
Christina Olivares - 6/13/24 - https://poets.org/poem/preserving-ecosystem
Eileen Myles - 6/6/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54620/peanut-butter
Hari Alluri - 5/1/24 - https://poets.org/poem/spiral
Camille T. Dungy - 4/25/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/146218/naming-what-has-risen
Frank Marshall Davis - 4/7/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/161537/lady-day-6544187379765
Yehuda Amichai - 2/28/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58628/a-pity-we-were-such-a-good-invention
David Hernandez - 2/25/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147366/we-would-never-sleep
Jessica Care More - 2/23/24 - https://poets.org/poem/wild-beauty
Roberto Carlos Garica - 2/21/24 - https://poets.org/poem/tempest
Jai Hamid Bashir - 2/16/24 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/156304/and-the-word-for-moonlight-is-my-name
Asimov's Shakespeare
Worth repeating?
Erika Meitner - Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore / Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57958/yiddishland
3/27/24 - https://poets.org/poem/just-darkness-got-very-dark-another-data-point
Work Related
Stephen Few - Now You See It
John Gall - The Systems Bible
Steve McConnell - Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Development Schedules
Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister - Peopleware
Rothman & Derby - Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
"Getting to yes..." Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton
The Design of Everyday Things
Other Authors
Jane Austen
David Gerrold
Herman Wouk
James Salter
Will Trevor
Charles Sheffield
Cookbooks
Indian Instant Pot® Cookbook: Traditional Indian Dishes Made Easy and Fast
Kids
Lauren Ipsum
Paolo Bacigalupi - Zombie Baseball Beatdown
Uncategorized
The file was huge, and I got tired of classifying it. Will do more as I go along.
Note Books of Captain Georges - Renoir
Irwin Shaw - the Young Lions
Greil Marcus - Stranded, Dead Elvis
Jane Mayer - Dark Money
The Berlin Stories
The Worst Journey in the World
How to Stop Time - Matt Haig
Moss Roberts translation of Romance of 3 Kingdoms
John Reed - Insurgent Mexico
Joan Turner Beifuss in At The River I Stand
William Henry Hudson - Far Away and Long Ago
Asimov's Shakespeare
Shadrach in the Furnace - Silverberg
Houllebecq - The Elementary Particles
Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom
2084: The End of the World
Jane Jacobs - Dark Age Ahead
The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (A Brookings Classic)
AB Guthrie - The Big Sky
Bellevue - Oshinsky
The Geek Feminist Revolution
David France - How to Survive a Plague
Brian Alexander - Glass House
Donna Tart (Kelly)
Charles Koch - The Science of Success, Good Profit
JD Vance - Hillbilly Elegy
Sonny Liew - The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
Margo Jefferson - Negroland
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
Maceline Loridan-Ivens - But You Did Not Come Back
Gary Younge - Another Day in the Death of America
Edward Dusinberre - Beethoven for a Later Age
Ted Gioia - How to Listen to Jazz
Tom Wainwright - Narconomics
Gary Taubes - The Case Against Sugar
The Attention Merchants - Tim Wu
Nir Baram - Good People
A SQUARE MEAL: A Culinary History of the Great Depression - By Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt
The Comfort of Crows
Robert Moor - On Trails
Charlotte Wood - The Natural Way of Things
Peter Singer - Ethics in the Real World
Tim Harford - Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
Stacia Kane's Downside Ghosts
Alena Gradeon - The Word Exchange
Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football
Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon
House of Leaves
Harlot's ghost
The Good Earth
Gravity's Rainbow
Peter Doran - Breaking Rockefeller
Darkness at Noon
Rick Lyman - Watching Movies: The Biggest Names in Cinema Talk about the Films that Matter Most
Edward Wilson-Lee - Shakespeare in Swahililand
The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans
George Orwell - Catalonia, Wigan Pier
No Picnic on Mount Kenya - Felice Benuzzi
The Pulse v.3: Fear (comic)
Joe Hill
Elena Ferrante
Stuffocation
The Invisibles (business book)
Molly Crabapple - Drawing Blood
How Bad Do You Want It? Matt Fitzgerald
Nate Jackson - Slow Getting Up
Anthony Bourdain - Medium Raw, The Nasty Bits
Ari Shavit - My Promised Land
Mao's On Guerilla Warfare
Maria Konnikova - The Confidence Game
The Plot Against America
The Well Built City Trilogy by his colleague Jeffery Ford
Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands
Paine - Common Sense
Gail Carson Levine- Forgive Me I Meant To Do It
Gail Carson Levine - Tell the Wolves I'm Home
John Dos Passos - USA Trilogy
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Pohl - Gateway
Carter Beats the Devil
The Devil's Dictionary
THE YOUNG GIRL'S HANDBOOK OF GOOD MANNERS FOR USE IN EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS By Pierre Louÿs
Michael Cunningham - A Wild Swan and Other Tales
Bo Lidegaard - Countrymen
Drunk Tank Pink
Big Box Swindle
Final Salute
The Art of Audit - Roel Janssen
Jerry Kaplan - Humans Need Not Apply
America against America
12 Against the Gods
Klosterman: Eating the Dinosaur, Downtown Owl, IV
The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters
From Secondary List from My Phone, Also Uncategorized
Naomi Alderman - The Power
David Wallace-Wells - The Uninhabitable Earth
Sandra Postel - Replenish
Martin f Doyle - The Source
Peter Moore - Endeavor
American Eve / The Girl on the Velvet Swing
Jared diamond - upheaval
Hugh Macdonald - music in 1853
Jon meacham - songs of America