I’m a sucker for books like Michiko Kakutani’s Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Reread. Admittedly, the books recommended in this volume are diverse and not always appealing to my reading tastes. But rest assured, there is something for everyone in this book. Of course, some of these choices are a little bizarre. I did enjoy the mini-essays about each book.
How many of these books have you read? GRADE: A-
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction –13
Americanah by Chimamnda Ngozi Adichie — 21
The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander — 24
Muhammad Ali Books: –27
The Greatest: My Own Story by Muhammad Ali
The Muhammad Ali Reader, edited by Gerald Early
King of the World by David Remnick
The Tribute: Muhammad Ali, 1942-2016 by Sports Illustrated
Experience by Martin Amis –30
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson — 33
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt — 35
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood — 39
Collected Poems by W. H. Auden –42
Continental Drift by Russell Banks — 44
Books by Saul Bellow — 46
The Adventures of Augie March
Herzog
The Actual: A Novella
The Image by Daniel J. Boorstin — 48
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges — 50
The Moth Presents: All These Wonders, edited by Catherine Burns — 53
The Plague by Albert Camus — 56
The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro. — 58
Pursuits of Happiness by Stanley Cavell — 60
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast — 62
Books by Bruce Chatwin — 65
In Petagonia
What Am I Doing Here
The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark — 69
Books About Foreign Policy and the World — 72
The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce
A World in Disarray by Richard Haass
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat –76
Underworld by Don DeLillo — 79
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao — 81
Books by Joan Didion — 84
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
The White Album
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers — 88
The Collected stories of Deborah Eisenberg — 91
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot — 93
Books by Joseph J. Ellis — 95
Founding Brothers
American Cration
Revolutionary Summer
American Dialogue
The Founders on American Democracy — 98
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton
George Washington’s Farewell Address
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison — 103
As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner — 106
The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante — 108
Books by David Finkel — 111
The Good Soldiers
Thank You for Your Service
Books About 9/11 and the War on Terror — 114
The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
Anatomy of Terror by Ali Soufan
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — 119
Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan — 122
The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857 — 126
Sinatra! The Song Is You by Will Friedwald — 128
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez — 131
The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner — 133
The Peripheral by William Gibson — 137
The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz — 139
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand — 141
The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter — 143
The Odyssey by Homer — 145
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren — 148
The Liar’s Club by Mary Kart — 151
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. — 155
On Writing by Stephen King — 158
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston — 161
The Language of the Third Reich by Victor Klemperer — 164
Books About Democracy and Tyranny —167
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
The Sixth Extinction by Eliabeth Kolbert — 171
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri — 174
Books by Jaron Lanier — 177
You Are Not a Gadget
Dawn of the New Everything
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle — 180
Abraham Lincoln Books — 182
The Speeches of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher
Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills
Lincoln by Fred Kaplan
Lincoln’s Sword by Douglas Moore
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez — 186
Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy — 189
Atonement by Ian McEwan — 191
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville — 194
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore — 197
Books by Toni Morrison — 201
Song of Solomon
Beloved
Books by Vladimir Nabokov — 203
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Dmitri Nabokov
Speak, Memory
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi — 206
A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul — 209
Born a Crime Trevor Noah — 211
Books by Barack Obama — 214
Dreams from My Father
We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama, edited by E. J. Dionne, Jr., & Joy-Ann Reid
There There by Tommy Orange — 218
1984 by George Orwell — 220
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy — 223
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon — 225
Life by Keith Richards with James Fox — 227
The Life of Picasso by John Richardson — 231
Books About Work and Vocation — 234
Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow
The Right Kind of Crazy by Adam Steltzner with William Patrick
The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks
Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson — 241
American Pastoral by Philip Roth — 243
The Harry Potter Novels by J. K. Rowling — 245
Books by Salman Rusdie — 248
Midnight’s Children
The Moor’s Last Sigh
Books by Oliver Sacks — 251
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales
An Anthropologist on Mars
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak — 253
Books by Dr. Seuss — 255
Horton Hears a Who!
The Cat in the Hat
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Green Eggs and Ham
The Lorax
Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
The Plays of William Shakespeare — 257
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley — 261
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart — 264
White Teeth by Zadie Smith — 266
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor — 269
The Palm at the End of the Mind by Wallace Stevens — 272
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt — 275
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville — 277
The Lord of the Rings — J. R. R. Tolkien — 280
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh — 283
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong — 285
The Poetry of Derek Walcott, 1948-2013 — 287
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace — 289
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren — 292
Educated by Tara Westover — 294
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead — 297
The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig — 299
