This is a list of the books I've read since May 22, 2013.

Read

  1. American Rust — Phillip Meyer (6/6/13)
  2. IQ84 — Haruki Murakami (7/15/13)
  3. Civilwarland In Bad Decline — George Saunders (7/20/13)
  4. The Little Friend — Donna Tartt (8/19/13)
  5. Black Swan Green — David Mitchell (8/27/13)
  6. Flatscreen — Adam Wilson (9/1/13)
  7. Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel García Márquez (9/24/13)
  8. True Grit — Charles Portis (10/9/13)
  9. Pastoralia — George Saunders (10/12/13)
  10. In Persuasion Nation — George Saunders (10/16/13)
  11. Tenth of December — George Saunders (10/22/13)
  12. A Man In Full — Tom Wolfe (11/9/13)
  13. The Prince — Niccolò Machiavelli (11/9/13)
  14. The White Man's Burden — William Easterly (11/16/13)
  15. The Crossing — Cormac McCarthy (11/17/13)
  16. Invisible Cities — Italo Calvino (11/18/13)
  17. Cities on the Plain — Cormac McCarthy (11/22/13)
  18. Pnin — Vladimir Nabokov (11/27/13)
  19. Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov (12/6/13)
  20. The Vanishers — Heidi Julavits (12/8/13)
  21. Predictably Irrational — Dan Ariely (12/12/13)
  22. Captive Audience — Susan Crawford (12/13/13)
  23. The Circle — Dave Eggers (12/23/13)
  24. Nausea — Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Lloyd Alexander (1/3/14)
  25. I Am A Strange Loop — Douglas Hofstadter (1/11/14)
  26. Under the Jaguar Sun — Italo Calvino (1/12/14)
  27. This Is How You Lose Her — Junot Díaz (1/14/14)
  28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — Ken Kesey (1/20/14)
  29. The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox — Stephen Jay Gould (1/20/14)
  30. Numbers In The Dark (And Other Stories) — Italo Calvino (1/29/14)
  31. Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography — Errol Morris (2/17/14)
  32. Imagined Communities — Benedict Anderson (2/19/14)
  33. In Cold Blood — Truman Capote (2/26/14)
  34. Notes From Underground — Fyodor Dostoevsky (2/28/14)
  35. Farther Away — Jonathan Franzen (3/7/14)
  36. Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity — David Foster Wallace (3/9/14)
  37. Chance — Amir D. Aczel (3/10/14)
  38. Falling Man — Don DeLillo (3/16/14)
  39. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America — George Packer (3/17/14)
  40. Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine — Tom Wolfe (3/18/14)
  41. Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry (3/23/14)
  42. Mao II — Don DeLillo (4/14/14)
  43. REAMDE — Neal Stephenson (4/14/14)
  44. The Design of Everyday Things — Donald Norman (4/17/14)
  45. The Son — Philip Meyer (4/26/14)
  46. A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson (5/4/14)
  47. The Odyssey — Homer (5/12/14)
  48. Six Degrees of Separation — Duncan J. Watts (5/13/14)
  49. Heir to the Glimmering World — Cynthia Ozick (5/28/14)
  50. The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen (6/2/14)
  51. Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World — Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu (6/5/14)
  52. The Braindead Megaphone — George Saunders (6/9/14)
  53. Dept. of Speculation — Jenny Offill (6/10/14)
  54. Oblivion — David Foster Wallace (6/18/14)
  55. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World — Haruki Murakami (6/23/14)
  56. The Death and Life of Great American Cities — Jane Jacobs (7/1/14)
  57. The Master Switch — Tim Wu (7/14/14)
  58. Bright Lights, Big City — Jay McInerney (7/15/14)
  59. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger — Marc Levinson (7/23/14)
  60. The Bonfire of the Vanities — Tom Wolfe (8/6/14)
  61. Foreign Bodies — Cynthia Ozick (8/11/14)
  62. Congratulations, By the Way — George Saunders (8/11/14)
  63. Last Evenings on Earth — Roberto Bolaño (8/13/14)
  64. The Cannibal Galaxy — Cynthia Ozick (8/14/14)
  65. The Road — Cormack McCarthy (8/14/14)
  66. Tender Is the Night — F. Scott Fitzgerald (8/25/14)
  67. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — Brad Stone (8/28/14)
  68. Nazi Literature in the Americas — Roberto Bolaño (8/29/14)
  69. Outer Dark — Cormac McCarthy (8/30/14)
  70. The Messiah of Stockholm — Cynthia Ozick (9/8/14)
  71. Child of God — Cormac McCarthy (9/8/14)
  72. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men — David Foster Wallace (9/9/14)
  73. The Shawl — Cynthia Ozick (9/11/14)
  74. Stealth of Nations — Robert Neuwirth (9/20/14)
  75. The Puttermesser Papers — Cynthia Ozick (10/1/14)
  76. The Sunset Limited — Cormac McCarthy (10/5/14)
  77. 1776 — David McCullough (10/9/14)
  78. The Stonemason — Cormac McCarthy (10/10/14)
  79. Shakespeare — Bill Bryson (10/20/14)
  80. Player Piano — Kurt Vonnegut (10/29/14)
  81. The Plague — Albert Camus (11/5/14)
  82. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight — Vladimir Nabokov (11/10/14)
  83. Average Is Over — Tyler Cowen (11/18/14)
  84. The Bone Clocks — David Mitchell (11/19/14)
  85. Under the Volcano — Malcolm Lowry (11/25/14)
  86. The Second Machine Age — Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (12/3/14)
  87. Bend Sinister — Vladimir Nabokov (12/15/14)
  88. Suttree — Cormac McCarthy (12/19/14)
  89. Legends of the Fall — Jim Harrison (12/20/14)
  90. Whiskey Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life — Heather Greene (12/27/14)
  91. Dispatches — Michael Herr (12/28/14)
  92. How Asia Works — Joe Studwell (1/1/15)
  93. Killer Angels — Michael Shaara (1/5/15)
  94. Doctor Faustus [A & B texts] — Christopher Marlowe (1/6/15)
  95. Wetlands — Charlotte Roche (1/6/15)
  96. The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood — Edward Jay Epstein (1/26/15)
  97. Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage — Michael R. Veach (1/27/15)
  98. Too Big to Fail — Andrew Ross Sorkin (1/28/15)
  99. The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World — Michael Spence (1/31/15)
  100. V — Thomas Pynchon (2/3/15)
  101. The Crying of Lot 49 — Thomas Pynchon (2/5/15)
  102. The Lean Startup — Eric Ries (2/11/15)
  103. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov (2/15/15)
  104. Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskeymaking — Henry G. Crowgey (2/19/15)
  105. Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit — Dane Huckelbridge (3/5/15)
  106. Number9Dream — David Mitchell (3/17/15)
  107. Galveston — Nic Pizzolatto (3/22/15)
  108. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K. Dick (4/11/15)
  109. The Assistant — Bernard Malamud (4/12/15)
  110. Ghostwritten — David Mitchell (4/17/15)
  111. The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life, His Own — David Carr (4/24/15)
  112. The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century — Steven Watts (4/29/15)
  113. Marat/Sade — Peter Weiss (5/1/15)
  114. Red Harvest — Dashiell Hammett (5/17/15)
  115. A Visit from the Goon Squad — Jennifer Egan (6/22/15)
  116. The Long Goodbye — Raymond Chandler (6/29/15)
  117. The Big Sleep — Raymond Chandler (7/1/15)
  118. The Dain Curse — Dashiell Hammett (7/12/15)
  119. Gravity's Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon (7/13/15)
  120. The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett (7/14/15)
  121. I Spit On Your Graves — Boris Vian (7/16/15)
  122. Cooked — Michael Pollan (7/31/15)
  123. Moby Dick — Herman Melville (8/12/15)
  124. The Botany of Desire — Michael Pollan (8/13/15)
  125. Vineland — Thomas Pynchon (8/14/15)
  126. Ragtime — E.L. Doctorow (8/21/15)
  127. Big Sur — Jack Kerouac (8/30/15)
  128. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Díaz (9/5/15)
  129. The Revenant — Michael Punke (9/10/15)
  130. Make Room! Make Room! — Harry Harrison (9/14/15)
  131. The Dark Net — Jamie Bartlett (9/19/15)
  132. The Omnivore's Dilemma — Michael Pollan (9/22/15)
  133. Pym — Mat Johnson (10/15/15)
  134. Empire of Mud: The Secret History of Washington, D.C. — J.D. Dickey (11/15/15)
  135. American Nations: A History of The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America — Colin Woodard (11/29/15)
  136. Purity — Jonathan Franzen (12/13/15)
  137. Slade House — David Mitchell (12/13/15)
  138. To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism — Evgeny Morozov (12/23/15)
  139. Sister Carrie — Theodore Dreiser (12/28/15)
  140. One Summer: America, 1927 — Bill Bryson (12/30/15)
  141. The Martian — Andy Weir (12/30/15)
  142. The Thin Man — Dashiell Hammett (12/31/15)
  143. The Keep — Jennifer Egan (1/2/16)
  144. Go Set A Watchman — Harper Lee (1/7/16)
  145. What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America — Thomas Frank (1/12/16)
  146. Signifying Rappers — David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello (1/20/16)
  147. Let the Great World Spin — Colum McCann (2/9/16)
  148. The Price of Inequality — Joseph E. Stiglitz (3/10/16)
  149. Empire of Cotton — Sven Beckert (3/15/16)
  150. This Town — Mark Leibovich (4/16/16)
  151. The Door — Magda Szabó (4/23/16)
  152. Washington, D.C. — Gore Vidal (5/7/16)
  153. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom — Evgeny Morozov (5/24/16)
  154. The Wisdom of the Crowds — James Surowiecki (6/6/16)
  155. The Billionaire's Vinegar — Benjamin Wallace (6/22/16)
  156. The North Water — Ian McGuire (6/25/16)
  157. The Signal and The Noise — Nate Silver (6/25/16)
  158. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking — Susan Cain (7/12/16)
  159. The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 — Lionel Shriver (7/25/16)
  160. Lord of Misrule — Jaimy Gordon (7/26/16)
  161. Light in August — William Faulkner (7/28/16)
  162. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality — Manjit Kumar (7/29/16)
  163. City of Saints and Madmen — Jeff Vandermeer (7/29/16)
  164. Team of Rivals — Doris Kearns Goodwin (7/31/16)
  165. Judgement of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine — George M. Taber (8/7/16)
  166. The Sport of Kings — C.E. Morgan (8/10/16)
  167. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears — Dinaw Mengetsu (8/24/16)
  168. Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City — Natalie Hopkinson (8/24/16)
  169. Heroes of the Frontier — Dave Eggers (9/1/16)
  170. The Underground Railroad — Colson Whitehead (9/5/16)
  171. Look At Me — Jennifer Egan (9/13/16)
  172. Sweetbitter — Stephanie Danler (10/11/16)
  173. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk — Ben Fountain (10/18/16)
  174. Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right — Arlie Russell Hochschild (11/11/16)
  175. The Nix — Nathan Hill (11/13/16)
  176. A Gambler's Anatomy — Jonathan Lethem (11/18/16)
  177. R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) — Karel Čapek (11/22/16)
  178. The Mortficiations — Derek Palacio (11/26/16)
  179. The Plot Against America — Philip Roth (11/26/16)
  180. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies — Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras (11/28/16)
  181. The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics — John B. Judis (12/4/16)
  182. Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams — Alfred Lubrano (12/6/16)
  183. The Executioner's Song — Norman Mailer (12/10/16)
  184. Do Not Say We Have Nothing — Madeleine Thien (12/11/16)
  185. The Mothers — Brit Bennett (12/13/16)
  186. Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 — Volker Ullrich (12/23/16)
  187. Zero K — Don DeLillo (12/23/16)
  188. They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement — Wesley Lowery (12/24/16)
  189. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails — Sarah Bakewell (12/26/16)
  190. An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies — Tyler Cowen (12/27/16)
  191. The Windup Girl — Paolo Bacigalupi (12/28/16)
  192. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads — Tim Wu (12/28/16)
  193. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right — Jane Mayer (12/29/16)
  194. Darkness At Noon — Arthur Koestler, translated by Daphne Hardy (1/5/17)
  195. Before the Fall — Noah Hawley (1/7/17)
  196. Today Will Be Different — Maria Semple (1/8/17)
  197. When Breath Becomes Air — Paul Kalanithi (1/10/17)
  198. Reorg: How To Get It Right — Stephen Heidari-Robinson, Suzanne Heywood (1/12/17)
  199. Moonglow — Michael Chabon (1/14/17)
  200. Listen, Liberal: Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? — Thomas Frank (1/15/17)
  201. Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency — David Greenberg (1/16/17)
  202. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said — Philip K. Dick (1/18/17)
  203. The Vegetarian — Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (1/22/17)
  204. Thirsty Dragon: China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Best Wines — Suzanne Mustacich (1/26/17)
  205. War & Turpentine — Stefan Hertmans (1/29/17)
  206. The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home — Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung (1/30/17)
  207. News of the World — Paulette Jiles (1/31/17)
  208. Zone One — Colson Whitehead (2/7/17)
  209. The Association of Small Bombs — Karan Mahajan (2/10/17)
  210. Sag Harbor — Colson Whitehead (2/12/17)
  211. Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy — Adam Sheingate (2/13/17)
  212. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? — Horace McCoy (2/13/17)
  213. Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World — Robert D. Kaplan (2/18/17)
  214. Apex Hides the Hurt — Colson Whitehead (2/18/17)
  215. Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader — Herminia Ibarra (2/19/17)
  216. The King in Yellow — Robert W. Chambers (2/19/17)
  217. The Upstarts: How Uber, Aribnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World — Brad Stone (2/20/17)
  218. Ham On Rye — Charles Bukowski (2/21/17)
  219. Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS — Joby Warrick (2/26/17)
  220. The Girls — Emma Cline (2/26/17)
  221. Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman (2/26/17)
  222. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City — Matthew Desmond (3/5/17)
  223. The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death — Colson Whitehead (3/5/17)
  224. The Fall Guy — James Lasdun (3/7/17)
  225. Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp - on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking of American Politics — Kenneth P. Vogel (3/11/17)
  226. Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders (3/11/17)
  227. 10:04 — Ben Lerner (3/11/17)
  228. Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United — Zephyr Teachout (3/12/17)
  229. Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street — Sheelah Kolhatkar (3/14/17)
  230. White Trash. The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America — Nancy Isenberg (3/16/17)
  231. Post Office — Charles Bukowski (3/17/17)
  232. What Is Populism? — Lan-Werner Müller (3/18/17)
  233. Human Acts — Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (3/19/17)
  234. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America — Christopher Hitchens (3/20/17)
  235. Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul — Stuart Brown with Christopher Vaughan (3/21/17)
  236. Letters to a Young Contrarian — Christopher Hitchens (3/25/17)
  237. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia — Mohsin Hamid (3/26/17)
  238. The Outsiders — S.E. Hinton (3/26/17)
  239. Who owns the Future? — Jaron Lanier (4/2/17)
  240. Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power — Steve Coll (4/5/17)
  241. Burr — Gore Vidal (4/8/17)
  242. Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't — George Lakoff (4/8/17)
  243. A Gentleman in Moscow — Amore Towles (4/13/17)
  244. Swing Time — Zadie Smith (4/14/17)
  245. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy — Cathy O'Neil (4/16/17)
  246. Outline — Rachel Cusk (4/16/17)
  247. 4 3 2 1 — Paul Auster (4/22/17)
  248. The Gene: An Intimate History — Siddhartha Mukherjee (4/22/17)
  249. Woes of the True Policeman — Roberto Bolaño (4/23/17)
  250. Autumn — Ali Smith (4/27/17)
  251. Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro (5/1/17)
  252. Flash Boys — Michael Lewis (5/3/17)
  253. Underground Airlines — Ben H. Winters (5/12/17)
  254. The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative — Florence Williams (5/12/17)
  255. Homage to Catalonia — George Orwell (5/14/17)
  256. Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead — Laszlo Bock (5/18/17)
  257. Fever Dream — Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (5/19/17)
  258. Distant Star — Roberto Bolaño (5/21/17)
  259. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari (5/24/17)
  260. John Henry Days — Colson Whitehead (5/27/17)
  261. Propaganda — Edward Bernays (5/27/17)
  262. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Started The Civil War — Tony Horwitz (5/29/17)
  263. It Can't Happen Here — Sinclair Lewis (6/4/17)
  264. Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries — Kory Stamper (6/8/17)
  265. Mischling — Affinity Konar (6/12/17)
  266. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business — John Mackey, Raj Sisodia (6/12/17)
  267. Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London — Mohsin Hamid (6/12/17)
  268. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right — Atul Gawande (6/13/17)
  269. The End of Advertising: Why It Had to Die, and the Creative Resurrection to Come — Andrew Essex (6/16/17)
  270. Open City — Teju Cole (6/18/17)
  271. The Intuitionist — Colson Whitehead (6/18/17)
  272. Invitation to a Beheading — Vladimir Nabokov (6/19/17)
  273. Trumped: The 2016 Election That Broke All the Rules — Larry J. Sabato et al (6/21/17)
  274. Imagine Me Gone — Adam Haslett (6/24/17)
  275. The Hike — Drew Magary (6/24/17)
  276. Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It — Larrie D. Ferreiro (6/25/17)
  277. A Moveable Feast — Ernest Hemingway (6/26/17)
  278. The Colossus of New York — Colson Whitehead (6/27/17)
  279. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered — E.F. Schumacher (7/10/17)
  280. The Reluctant Fundamentalist — Mohsin Hamid (7/12/17)
  281. Capitalism: A Ghost Story — Arundhati Roy (7/13/17)
  282. The Post-Birthday World — Lionel Shriver (7/16/17)
  283. The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assissination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy — Larry J. Sabato (7/23/17)
  284. American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road — Nick Bilton (7/24/17)
  285. Ass-holes: A Theory of Donald Trump — Aaron James (7/24/17)
  286. The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information — Frank Pasquale (7/25/17)
  287. American War — Omar El Akkad (7/25/17)
  288. Antwerp — Roberto Bolaño (7/26/17)
  289. Alpha Dogs: The Americans Who Turned Political Spin Into A Global Business — James Harding (7/27/17)
  290. Days Without End — Sebastian Barry (7/28/17)
  291. Moth Smoke — Mohsin Hamid (7/28/17)
  292. A Cool Million — Nathanael West (7/28/17)
  293. The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times — Arlie Russell Hochschild (7/30/17)
  294. Some Rise By Sin — Philip Caputo (8/2/17)
  295. Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few — Robert B. Reich (8/3/17)
  296. The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America — Frances Fitzgerald (8/4/17)
  297. Churchill and Orwell — Thomas E. Ricks (8/6/17)
  298. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America — Barbara Ehrenreich (8/7/16)
  299. How to Do Things with Words — J.L. Austin (8/8/17)
  300. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces — Radley Balko (8/8/17)
  301. Money: The Unauthorized Biography — Felix Martin (8/10/17)
  302. 100% Money and the Public Debt — Irving Fisher (8/11/17)
  303. Time Travel: A History — James Gleick (8/12/17)
  304. The Walking — Laleh Khadivi (8/15/17)
  305. Exit West — Mohsin Hamid (8/23/17)
  306. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation — Gene Roberts, Hank Klibanoff (8/24/17)
  307. Pond — Claire-Louise Bennett (8/30/17)
  308. The Euro: How A Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe — Joseph E. Stiglitz (8/31/17)
  309. Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency — Joshua Green (9/2/17)
  310. By Night in Chile — Roberto Bolaño (9/3/17)
  311. The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage — Jared Yates Sexton (9/4/17)
  312. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought In Twentieth Century America — Richard Rorty (9/11/17)
  313. The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success — Emma Seppälä (9/11/17)
  314. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data — Charles Wheelan (9/17/17)
  315. Ill Will — Dan Chaon (9/19/17)
  316. Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy — Gary May (9/19/17)
  317. The Retreat of Western Liberalism — Edward Luce (9/20/17)
  318. Seven Brief Lessons On Physics — Carlo Rovelli (9/24/17)
  319. Out in the Open — Jesús Carrasco (9/25/17)
  320. No Place for Amateurs: How Political Consultants are Reshaping American Democracy — Dennis W. Johnson (9/29/17)
  321. The Threat Matrix: The FBI At War in the Age of Global Terror — Garrett M. Graff (9/29/17)
  322. Universal Harvester — John Darnielle (9/30/17)
  323. Hopscotch — Julio Cortázar (10/1/17)
  324. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate — Al Franken (10/4/17)
  325. Everything I Never Told You — Celeste Ng (10/12/17)
  326. The Age of Acquiesence — Steve Fraser (10/17/17)
  327. Monsieur Pain — Roberto Bolaño (10/17/17)
  328. On Liberty — John Stuart Mill (10/19/17)
  329. Manhattan Beach — Jennifer Egan (10/20/17)
  330. On Trails: An Exploration — Robert Moor (10/25/17)
  331. Woman No. 17 — Edan Lepucki (10/28/17)
  332. Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide — Cass R. Sunstein (10/28/17)
  333. The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You — Sylvia Tara (10/28/17)
  334. The Short American Century: A Postmortem — Ed. Andrew J. Bacevich (11/3/17)
  335. The Golden House — Salman Rushdie (11/5/17)
  336. The Story of My Teeth — Valeria Luiselli (11/10/17)
  337. Wolf in White Van — John Darnielle (11/16/17)
  338. Cork Dork — Bianca Bosker (11/20/17)
  339. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (11/23/17)
  340. Chokehold: Policing Black Men — Paul Butler (11/23/17)
  341. Down and Out in Paris and London — George Orwell (11/25/17)
  342. Stumbling on Happiness — Daniel Gilbert (11/27/17)
  343. Redeployment — Phil Klay (11/28/17)
  344. The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China — Philip Ball (12/11/17)
  345. The Naked and the Dead — Norman Mailer (12/14/17)
  346. The Idiot — Elif Batuman (12/17/17)
  347. The Return — Roberto Bolaño (12/19/17)
  348. A Kind of Freedom — Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (12/21/17)
  349. The Orphan Master's Son — Adam Johnson (12/23/17)
  350. It's Even Worse Than It Looks — Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein (12/24/17)
  351. New People — Danzy Senna (12/25/17)
  352. My Absolute Darling — Gabriel Tallent (12/25/17)
  353. Quiet Until the Thaw — Alexandra Fuller (12/27/17)
  354. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets — Michael J. Sandel (12/28/17)
  355. America's Congress: Actions in the Public Sphere, James Madison Through Newt Gingrich — David R. Mayhew (12/28/17)
  356. A Dream of John Ball — William Morris (12/29/17)
  357. Nostromo — Joseph Conrad (1/3/18)
  358. The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century — Christopher D. McKenna (1/5/18)
  359. So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government — Robert G. Kaiser (1/9/18)
  360. Little Fires Everywhere — Celeste Ng (1/13/18)
  361. A Canticle for Leibowitz — Walter M. Miller Jr. (1/13/18)
  362. Life After Life — Kate Atkinson (1/23/18)
  363. Who Rules the World? — Noam Chomsky (1/26/18)
  364. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century — Timothy Snyder (1/26/18)
  365. War and the American Presidency — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1/26/18)
  366. Zeno's Conscience — Italo Svevo (3/6/18)
  367. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia — Masha Gessen (3/7/18)
  368. Sing, Unburied, Sing — Jesmyn Ward (3/9/18)
  369. Blockchain Revolution — Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott (3/12/18)
  370. The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro (3/15/18)
  371. Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic — Sam Quinones (3/18/18)
  372. Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It — Richard V. Reeves (3/18/18)
  373. London Fields — Martin Amis (3/19/18)
  374. History of Wolves — Emily Fridlund (3/20/18)
  375. The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream — Tyler Cowen (3/20/18)
  376. The Origins of Creativity — Edward O. Wilson (3/25/18)
  377. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care — T.R. Reid (3/27/18)
  378. Democracy: An American Novel — Henry Adams (3/27/18)
  379. The Skating Rink — Roberto Bolaño (3/28/18)
  380. Orfeo — Richard Powers (3/31/18)
  381. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius — Dave Eggers (4/8/18)
  382. On the Edge of Reason — Miroslav Krleža (4/8/18)
  383. Debt: The First 5,000 Years — David Graeber (4/13/18)
  384. When We Were Orphans — Kazuo Ishiguro (4/15/18)
  385. The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business — Duff McDonald (4/17/18)
  386. The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist — Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington (4/20/18)
  387. A Brief History of Seven Killings — Marlon James (4/21/18)
  388. A Pale View of Hills — Kazuo Ishiguro (4/21/18)
  389. The Book of Joan — Lidia Yuknavitch (4/24/18)
  390. Motherless Brooklyn — Jonathan Lethem (4/27/18)
  391. Sputnik Sweetheart — Haruki Murakami (5/4/18)
  392. Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding-And How We Can Improve the World Even More — Charles Kenny (5/6/18)
  393. March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam — Barbara W. Tuchman (5/6/18)
  394. How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life — Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky (5/14/18)
  395. The Ghost Notebooks — Ben Dolnick (5/21/18)
  396. Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance — Adair Turner (5/24/18)
  397. The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism — Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak (6/1/18)
  398. The Book of Night Women — Marlon James (6/5/18)
  399. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity — Carlo Rovelli (6/6/18)
  400. Time To Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent — Edward Luce (6/18/18)
  401. Janesville: An American Story — Amy Goldstein (6/19/18)
  402. Transit — Rachel Cusk (6/20/18)
  403. Orwell on Truth — George Orwell (6/21/18)
  404. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World — Adam Grant (6/28/18)
  405. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion — Jonathan Haidt (6/28/18)
  406. Into the Hundred: Trails and Tales of Maine's 100 Mile Wilderness — Christopher Keene (7/1/2018)
  407. A Wild Sheep Chase — Haruki Murakami (7/4/2018)
  408. The Black Dahlia — James Ellroy (7/4/2018)
  409. On Grand Strategy — John Lewis Gaddis (7/5/2018)
  410. The Bellwether — Kyle Kondik (7/9/2018)
  411. Orlando — Virginia Woolf (7/9/2018)
  412. The Good Lord Bird — James McBride (7/10/2018)
  413. The White Boy Shuffle — Paul Beatty (7/14/2018)
  414. The Mountain Lion — Jean Stafford (7/14/2018)
  415. The Undoing Project — Michael Lewis (7/15/2018)
  416. Dark Territory: The Secret History of the Cyber War — Fred Kaplan (7/16/2018)
  417. Superbosses — Sydney Finkelstein (7/16/2018)
  418. The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels — Jon Meacham (7/17/2018)
  419. The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt (7/18/2018)
  420. Pachinko — Min Jin Lee (8/3/2018)
  421. Augustus — John Williams (8/12/2018)
  422. The Undercover Economist — Tim Hartford (9/29/2018)
  423. The Lords of Strategy — Walter Kiechel III (9/29/2018)
  424. Country Dark — Chris Offutt (11/23/2018)
  425. A High Wind in Jamaica — Richard Hughes (11/24/2018)
  426. Washington Black — Esi Edugyan (12/2/2018)
  427. The Crash of 2008 and What It Means — George Soros (12/2/2018)
  428. How to Change Your Mind — Michael Pollan (12/14/2018)
  429. Lake Success — Gary Shteyngart (12/17/2018)
  430. The Fifth Risk — Michael Lewis (12/17/2018)
  431. An Artist of the Floating World — Kazuo Ishiguro (12/19/2018)
  432. There There — Tommy Orange (12/20/2018)
  433. Cherry — Nico Walker (12/22/2018)
  434. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert C. Cialdini (12/29/2018)
  435. A Short History of Drunkenness — Mark Forsyth (1/4/2019)
  436. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World — Anand Giridharadas (1/12/2019)
  437. The Efficiency Paradox — Edward Tenner (1/13/2019)
  438. Station 11 — Emily St. John Mandel (1/23/2019)
  439. The Orchard Keeper — Cormac McCarthy (1/31/2019)
  440. John Crow's Devil — Marlon James (2/1/2019)
  441. Homegoing — Yaa Gyasi (2/7/2019)
  442. Skippy Dies — Paul Murray (2/14/2019)
  443. Dogeaters — Jessice Hagedorn (2/23/2019)
  444. That's What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together — Joanne Lipman (2/23/2019)
  445. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success — Carol Dweck (3/2/2019)
  446. Kudos — Rachel Cusk (3/3/2019)
  447. Obliquity — John Kay (3/4/2019)
  448. The Dreamers — Karen Thompson Walker (3/6/2019)
  449. The Narrow Road to the Deep North — Richard Flanagann (3/18/2019)
  450. Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's King of Beer — William Knoedelseder (3/26/2019)
  451. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives — Leonard Mlodinow (3/23/2019)
  452. Leadership B.S. — Jeffrey Pfeffer (4/9/2019)
  453. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup — John Carreyrou (4/18/2019)
  454. The Culture Map — Erin Meyer (4/20/2019)
  455. The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths — Mariana Mazzucato (4/20/2019)
  456. The Hunter — Julia Leigh (6/3/2019)
  457. Women Talking — Miriam Toews (6/13/2019)
  458. The Sympathizer — Viet Thanh Nguyen (6/18/2019)
  459. City of Glass — Paul Auster (6/24/2019)
  460. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves — Karen Russell (6/30/2019)
  461. AI Superpowers — Kai-Fu Lee (7/1/2019)
  462. The Overstory — Richard Powers (7/8/2019)
  463. The Buried Giant — Kazuo Ishiguro (7/11/2019)
  464. Measure What Matters — John Doerr (7/12/2019)
  465. Underland: A Deep Time Journey — Robert Macfarlane (7/16/2019)
  466. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers — Geoffrey A. Moore (7/16/2019)
  467. Trillion Dollar Coach — Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle (7/19/2019)
  468. The Nickel Boys — Colson Whitehead (7/21/2019)
  469. The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection — Michael Harris (7/23/2019)
  470. The Blue Wave: The 2018 Midterms and What They Mean for the 2020 Elections — Edited by Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik (7/24/2019)
  471. The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom — Stephen M. Stigler (7/24/2019)
  472. Stories from 2045: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work — Edited by Calum Chace (7/29/2019)
  473. The Universal Subject of Our Time — Darius Nikbin (7/30/2019)
  474. Ohio — Stephen Markley (8/4/2019)
  475. Fire on the Mountain — John N. Maclean (8/5/2019)
  476. The Fourth Industrial Revolution — Klaus Schwab (8/5/2019)
  477. Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society — Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl (8/6/2019)
  478. The Iron Heel — Jack London (8/8/2019)
  479. Orange World — Karen Russell (8/13/2019)
  480. The Organized Mind — Daniel J. Levitin (8/14/2019)
  481. The Curse of Bigness — Tim Wu (8/15/2019)
  482. The Algorithmic Leader — Mike Walsh (8/19/2019)
  483. Warlight — Michael Ondaatje (9/3/2019)
  484. Come Closer — Sara Gran (10/14/2019)
  485. Moneyland — Oliver Bullough (11/11/2019)
  486. The Testaments — Margaret Atwood (11/25/2019)
  487. Friday Black — Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (11/27/2019)
  488. Platform Revolution — Geoffrey G Parker, Marshall Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary (11/28/2019)
  489. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf — John H. Coates (11/28/2019)
  490. Disappearing Earth — Julia Phillips (11/29/2019)
  491. The Memory Police — Yōko Ogawa (11/29/2019)
  492. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? — Graham Allison (11/29/2019)
  493. My Year of Rest and Relaxation — Ottessa Moshfegh (12/3/2019)
  494. Killing Commendatore — Haruki Murakami (12/4/2019)
  495. Less — Andrew Sean Greer (12/6/2019)
  496. The Alchemist — Paul Coehlo (12/22/2019)
  497. Good Economics for Hard Times — Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (12/23/2019)
  498. A Man Lies Dreaming — Lavie Tidhar (12/28/2019)
  499. McGlue — Ottessa Moshfegh (12/30/2019)
  500. Inland — Téa Obrecht (12/30/2019)
  501. The Second Sleep — Robert Harris (1/1/2020)
  502. A Dot in the Universe — Lucy Ellmann (1/3/2020)
  503. Where the Crawdads Sing — Delia Owens (1/6/2020)
  504. Night Boat to Tangier — Kevin Barry (1/11/2020)
  505. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead — Olga Tokarczuk (1/28/2020)
  506. The Round House — Louise Erdrich (1/31/2020)
  507. Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America — Chris Arnade (2/17/2020)
  508. Eileen — Ottessa Moshfegh (3/16/2020)
  509. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty — Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (3/17/2020)
  510. Cold Earth — Sarah Moss (3/19/2020)
  511. Exhalation — Ted Chiang (3/20/2020)
  512. All My Puny Sorrows — Miriam Toews (3/22/2020)
  513. Snow — Orhan Pamuk (3/23/2020)
  514. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland — Patrick Radden Keefe (3/24/2020)
  515. Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future — Paul Krugman (3/25/2020)
  516. The Last Lecture — Randy Pausch (3/25/2020)
  517. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland (3/28/2020)
  518. The Years of Rice and Salt — Kim Stanley Robinson (3/30/2020)
  519. Ghost Wall — Sarah Moss (3/30/2020)
  520. Deacon King Kong — James McBride (4/3/2020)
  521. The Exhibition of Persephone Q — Jessi Jezewska Stevens (4/5/2020)
  522. Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong — Emily Oster (4/6/2020)
  523. Bodies of Light — Sarah Moss (4/6/2020)
  524. The Everlasting — Katy Simpson Smith (4/10/2020)
  525. Homesick for Another World — Ottessa Moshfegh (4/13/2020)
  526. The Science of Mom: A Research-Based Guide to Your Baby's First Year — Alice Callahan (4/13/2020)
  527. The Topeka School — Ben Lerner (4/15/2020)
  528. Machine Platform Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future — Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson (4/17/2020)
  529. If He Hollers Let Him Go — Chester B. Himes (4/17/2020)
  530. Super Sad True Love Story — Gary Shteyngart (4/19/2020)
  531. The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality — Angus Deaton (4/24/2020)
  532. The Glass Hotel — Emily St. John Mandel (4/26/2020)
  533. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China — Evan Osnos (4/28/2020)
  534. House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again — Atif Mian and Amir Sufi (4/30/2020)
  535. Norwich: One Tiny Vermont Town's Secret to Happiness and Excellence — Karen Crouse (4/30/2020)
  536. Gold Fame Citrus — Claire Vaye Watkins (5/5/2020)
  537. Bring Out the Dog — Will Mackin (5/9/2020)
  538. Factotum — Charles Bukowski (5/9/2020)
  539. The Ostrich Paradox — Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther (5/9/2020)
  540. Shuggie Bain — Douglas Stuart (5/11/2020)
  541. VC: An American History — Tom Nicholas (5/12/2020)
  542. Son of a Gun: A Memoir — Justin St. Germain (5/12/2020)
  543. The Transmigration of bodies — Yuri Herrera (5/12/2020)
  544. Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age — William Deringer (5/12/2020)
  545. Lost Children Archive — Valeria Luiselli (5/14/2020)
  546. Train Dreams — Denis Johnson (5/14/2020)
  547. Treasure Island!!! — Sara Levine (5/17/2020)
  548. Battleborn — Claire Vaye Watkins (5/19/2020)
  549. Sweet Days of Discipline — Fleur Jaeggy (5/20/2020)
  550. Can American Capitalism Survive?: Why Greed Is Not Good, Opportunity Is Not Equal, and Fairness Won't Make Us Poor — Steven Pearlstein (5/26/2020)
  551. Ficciones — Jorge Luis Borges (5/28/2020)
  552. Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool — Emily Oster (5/29/2020)
  553. The Red Lotus — Chris Bohjalian (5/31/2020)
  554. The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread — Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall (6/7/2020)
  555. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids — Bryan Caplan (6/17/20)
  556. The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature — David George Haskell (6/18/2020)
  557. Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting — Joshua Gans (6/23/2020)
  558. A Thousand Moons — Sebastian Barry (6/24/2020)
  559. Death in Her Hands — Ottessa Moshfegh (6/29/2020)
  560. Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine — Hannah Fry (6/30/2020)
  561. The Ghost Stories of M.R. James — Montague Rhodes James (7/11/2020)
  562. My Documents — Alejandro Zambra (7/12/2020)
  563. Simon the Fiddler — Paulette Jiles (7/14/2020)
  564. This America — Jill Lepore (7/16/2020)
  565. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line — Deepa Anappara (7/16/2020)
  566. The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson (7/17/2020)
  567. A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe's Encounter with North America — Sam White (7/20/2020)
  568. Hurricane Season — Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes (8/7/2020)
  569. Fleishman Is In Trouble — Taffy Brodesser-Akner (8/13/2020)
  570. The Dead Girls — Jorge Ibargüengoitia (8/19/2020)
  571. The Babysitter at Rest — Jen George (8/20/2020)
  572. The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed — John Vaillant (8/25/2020)
  573. Bunny — Mona Awad (8/30/2020)
  574. Convenience Store Woman — Sayaka Murata (8/31/2020)
  575. Ways of Going Home — Alejandro Zambra (8/31/2020)
  576. The White Book — Han Kang (9/2/2020)
  577. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden — Denis Johnson (9/2/2020)
  578. White Tears — Hari Kunzru (9/6/2020)
  579. Stories of Your Life and Others — Ted Chiang (9/7/2020)
  580. Come West and See — Maxim Loskutoff (9/10/2020)
  581. Cool for America — Andrew Martin (9/10/2020)
  582. Nobody Move — Denis Johnson (9/13/2020)
  583. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming — David Wallace-Wells (9/13/2020)
  584. New Waves — Kevin Nguyen (9/21/2020)
  585. Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity — Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods (9/22/2020)
  586. When These Mountains Burn — David Joy (9/26/2020)
  587. The Discomfort of Evening — Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison (9/27/2020)
  588. The Wall — John Lanchester (10/3/2020)
  589. Ruthie Fear — Maxim Loskutoff (10/4/2020)
  590. One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger — Matthew Yglesias (10/7/2020)
  591. Severance — Ling Ma (10/7/2020)
  592. China: The Bubble that Never Pops — Thomas Orlik (10/10/2020)
  593. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid — Michael Ondaatje (10/10/2020)
  594. Terms of Disservice: How Silicon Valley is Destructive by Design — Dipayan Ghosh (10/11/2020)
  595. The Last Great Road Bum — Héctor Tobar (10/13/2020)
  596. Gods Without Men — Hari Kunzru (10/19/2020)
  597. Threshold — Rob Doyle (10/22/2020)
  598. Stronghold: One Man's Quest to Save the World's Wild Salmon — Tucker Malarkey (10/23/2020)
  599. Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age — Brad Smith (10/23/2020)
  600. Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero — Tyler Cowen (10/26/2020)
  601. Norwood — Charles Portis (10/28/2020)
  602. Out Stealing Horses — Per Petterson (10/29/2020)
  603. Braised Pork — An Yu (10/30/2020)
  604. Leave the World Behind — Rumaan Alam (10/31/2020)
  605. Missionaries — Phil Klay (11/6/2020)
  606. Felon: Poems — Reginald Dwayne Betts (11/6/2020)
  607. California — Edan Lepucki (11/9/2020)
  608. Fraternity: Stories — Benjamin Nugent (11/10/2020)
  609. The Pacific Alone: The Untold Story of Kayaking's Boldest Voyage — Dave Shively (11/11/2020)
  610. Ghost Stories — Muriel Spark (11/14/2020)
  611. The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket — Benjamin Lorr (11/17/2020)
  612. The End We Start From — Megan Hunter (11/18/2020)
  613. Shadowbahn — Steve Erickson (11/20/2020)
  614. I'm Thinking of Ending Things — Iain Reid (11/20/2020)
  615. Here Are the Young Men — Rob Doyle (11/22/2020)
  616. What Happens at Night — Peter Cameron (11/22/2020)
  617. The Hole — Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd (11/22/2020)
  618. The Adventures of China Iron — Cabezón Cámara, translated by Fiona Mackintosh & Iona Macintyre (11/27/2020)
  619. The Last — Hanna Jameson (12/1/2020)
  620. How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter About Visual Information — Alberto Cairo (12/3/2020)
  621. Luster — Raven Leilani (12/6/2020)
  622. On The Beach — Nevil Shute (12/8/2020)
  623. Tender is the Flesh — Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses (12/13/2020)
  624. Cuyahoga — Pete Beatty (12/15/2020)
  625. Red Pill — Hari Kunzru (12/20/2020)
  626. Stillicide — Cynan Jones (12/21/2020)
  627. The Silence — Don DeLillo (12/21/2020)
  628. Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places — Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood, and Dan Richards (12/21/2020)
  629. Moon of the Crusted Snow — Waubgeshig Rice (12/22/2020)
  630. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears — Laura Van Den Berg (12/23/2020)
  631. The Arrest — Jonathan Lethem (12/26/2020)
  632. Daddy — Emma Cline (12/26/2020)
  633. The Memory Monster — Yishai Sarid, translated by Yardenne Greenspan (12/28/2020)
  634. The Woman Upstairs — Claire Messud (12/30/2020)
  635. The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with The Unexplained — Colin Dickey (12/31/2020)
  636. They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Flying Saucers — Sarah Scoles (1/1/2021)
  637. Absurdistan — Gary Shteyngart (1/4/2021)
  638. The Virgins — Pamela Erens (1/5/2021)
  639. The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect — Judea Pearl and Dana MacKenzie (1/5/2021)
  640. The Devil All the Time — Doland Ray Pollock (1/7/2021)
  641. The Outlaw Album — Daniel Woodrell (1/10/2021)
  642. Knockemstiff — Donald Ray Pollock (1/10/2021)
  643. Rest and Be Thankful — Emma Glass (1/13/2021)
  644. The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous — Joseph Henrich (1/15/2021)
  645. Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream — Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson (1/17/2021)
  646. What Tech Calls Thinking — Adrian Daub (1/17/2021)
  647. Vesper Flights — Helen Macdonald (1/18/2021)
  648. The Cooking Gene — Michael W. Twitty (1/22/2021)
  649. The Nightworkers — Brian Selfon (1/24/2021)
  650. Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time — Ben Ehrenreich (1/30/2021)
  651. Hysteria — Jessica Gross (2/1/2021)
  652. Ring Shout — P. Djèlí Clark (2/2/2021)
  653. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate An American Town (and Some Bears) — Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling (2/5/2021)
  654. Interior Chinatown — Charles Yu (2/7/2021)
  655. That Old Country Music — Kevin Barry (2/8/2021)
  656. Sisters — Daisy Johnson (2/9/2021)
  657. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea — Barbara Demick (2/12/2021)
  658. Milltown: Reckoning with What Remains — Kerri Arsenault (2/12/2021)
  659. God Land — Lyz Lenz (2/16/2021)
  660. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed — Mariana Enriquez (2/17/2021)
  661. Dinosaurs on Other Planets — Danielle McLaughlin (2/22/2021)
  662. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art — Rebecca Wragg Sykes (2/28/2021)
  663. Snow — John Banville (3/7/2021)
  664. The Office of Historical Corrections — Danielle Evans (3/8/2021)
  665. The Only Good Indians — Stephen Graham Jones (3/10/2021)
  666. The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again — Robert D. Putnam with Shaylyn Romney Garrett (3/12/2021)
  667. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself — Peter Ho Davies (3/13/2021)
  668. Homeland Elegies — Ayad Akhtar (3/17/2021)
  669. Milk Blood Heat — Dantiel W. Moniz (3/18/2021)
  670. A Certain Hunger — Chelsea G. Summers (3/20/2021)
  671. Fates and Furies — Lauren Groff (3/21/2021)
  672. The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) — Katie Mack (3/23/2021)
  673. An Inventory of Losses — Judith Schalansky (3/24/2021)
  674. Fake Accounts — Lauren Oyler (3/26/2021)
  675. Poetics of Work — Noémi Lefebvre, translated by Sophie Lewis (3/28/2021)
  676. Outlawed — Anna North (3/28/2021)
  677. Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates (3/31/2021)
  678. Land of Big Numbers — Te-Ping Chen (4/2/2021)
  679. Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear — Dr. Carl L. Hart (4/4/2021)
  680. The Committed — Viet Thanh Nguyen (4/5/2021)
  681. The Cold Millions — Jess Walter (4/12/2021)
  682. Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last — Wright Thompson (4/14/2021)
  683. A Crooked Tree — Una Mannion (4/16/2021)
  684. Multiple Choice — Alejandro Zambra (4/17/2021)
  685. Summerwater — Sarah Moss (4/20/2021)
  686. Welcome to Your Child's Brain — Sandra Aamodt, PH.D. and Sam Wang, PH.D. (4/23/2021)
  687. Animal, Vegetable, Junk — Mark Bittman (4/26/2021)
  688. Stubborn Attachments — Tyler Cowen (4/28/2021)
  689. Wild Swims — Dorthe Nors, translated by Misha Hoekstra (4/28/2021)
  690. Cowboy Graves — Roberto Bolaño (4/29/2021)
  691. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know — Adam Grant (4/30/2021)
  692. Remote Control — Nnedi Okorafor (5/3/2021)
  693. Liar's Dictionary — Eley Williams (5/4/2021)
  694. A World Without Email — Cal Newport (5/7/2021)
  695. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler — Italo Calvino (5/7/2021)
  696. Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding — Daniel E. Lieberman (5/9/2021)
  697. Pickard County Atlas — Chris Harding Thornton (5/11/2021)
  698. Peaces — Helen Oyeyemi (5/13/2021)
  699. Hades, Argentina — Daniel Loedel (5/17/2021)
  700. A Thousand Brains — Jeff Hawkins (5/18/2021)
  701. The Plotters — Un-Su Kim (5/25/2021)
  702. Come On Up — Jordi Nopca (5/26/2021)
  703. First Person Singular — Haruki Murakami (5/31/2021)
  704. Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro (6/16/2021)
  705. Reality and Other Stories — John Lanchester (6/18/2021)
  706. Antiquities — Cynthia Ozick (6/21/2021)
  707. Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America — Alec MacGillis (7/6/2021)
  708. The Uncollected Stories of — Allan Gurganus (7/13/2021)
  709. At Night All Blood Is Black — David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis (7/16/2021)
  710. American Dervish — Ayad Akhtar (7/19/2021)
  711. Hardly War — Don Mee Choi (7/20/2021)
  712. The Killing Hills — Chris Offutt (7/26/2021)
  713. With Teeth — Kristen Arnett (7/28/2021)
  714. Site Fidelity — Claire Boyles (7/29/2021)
  715. Eat the Hand that Feeds You — Caribbean Fragoza (8/1/2021)
  716. Hamnet — Maggie O'Farrell (8/15/2021)
  717. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty — Patrick Radden Keefe (8/18/2021)
  718. A Ghost in the Throat — Doireann Ní Ghríofa (8/19/2021)
  719. Rabbit Island — Elvira Navarro, translated by Christina MacSweeney (8/21/2021)
  720. The Invisible Circus — Jennifer Egan (8/24/2021)
  721. China Room — Sunjeev Sahota (9/18/2021)
  722. Razorblade Tears — S.A. Cosby (10/5/2021)
  723. Should We Stay or Should We Go — Lionel Shriver (10/10/2021)
  724. Our Country Friends — Gary Shteyngart (6/25/2022)
  725. The Good Father — Noah Hawley (6/25/2022)
  726. Lapvona — Ottessa Moshfegh (7/17/2022)
  727. Matrix — Lauren Groff (7/27/2022)
  728. Trust — Hernan Diaz (8/21/2022)
  729. Origin — Jennifer Raff (12/26/2022)
  730. The Lemon — S.E. Boyd (1/1/2023)
  731. Downers Grove — Michael Hornburg (1/11/2023)
  732. How High We Go in the Dark — Sequoia Nagamatsu (2/10/2023)
  733. Weasels in the Attic — Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd (2/15/2023)
  734. Afterparties — Anthony Veasna So (3/6/2023)
  735. Dogwalker — Arthur Bradford (3/6/2023)
  736. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness — Claire Vaye Watkins (3/8/2023)
  737. Opioid, Indiana — Brian Allen Carr (3/9/2023)
  738. Bliss Montage — Ling Ma (3/14/2023)
  739. Horse — Geraldine Brooks (3/16/2023)
  740. Jesus' Son — Denis Johnson (3/20/2023)
  741. The Candy House — Jennifer Egan (3/27/2023)
  742. The Answers — Catherine Lacey (4/10/2023)
  743. The Alignment Problem — Brian Christian (5/20/2023)
  744. The Death of Sweet Mister — Daniel Woodrell (5/27/2023)
  745. Shy — Max Porter (7/1/2023)
  746. The Passenger — Cormac McCarthy (7/7/2023)
  747. Paradais — Fernanda Melchor (7/12/2023)
  748. Ketchup — Sam Pink (7/22/2023)
  749. The Disappearance of Josef Mengele — Oliver Guez (7/24/2023)
  750. Open Throat — Henry Hoke (7/29/2023)
  751. The Fell — Sarah Moss (7/31/2023)
  752. Signs Preceeding the End of the World — Yuri Herrera (8/12/2023)
  753. This is Not Miami — Fernanda Melchor (11/15/2023)
  754. Fourth of July Creek — Smith Henderson (1/1/2024)
  755. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love — Raymond Carver (1/2/2024)
  756. The Gates of the Alamo — Stephen Harrigan (7/7/2024)
  757. Bad Foundations — Brian Allen Carr (2/5/2024)
  758. Illium — Lea Carpenter (3/10/2024)
  759. The Maid's Version — Daniel Woodrell (3/11/2024)
  760. Tomato Red — Daniel Woodrell (3/28/2024)
  761. Trees — Percival Everett (7/5/2024)
  762. Space Invaders — Nona Fernandez (7/22/2024)
  763. Song for the Unraveling of the World — Brian Evenson (7/23/2024)
  764. James — Percival Everett (8/12/2024)
  765. North Woods — Daniel Mason (8/13/2024)
  766. Dinosaurs — Lydia Millet (8/20/2024)
  767. Time's Mouth — Edan Lepucki (9/10/2024)
  768. Allegheny Front — Matthew Neill Null (9/18/2024)
  769. Disruptions — Steven Millhauser (9/19/2024)
  770. Nicked — M.T. Anderson (9/22/2024)
  771. Martyr! — Kaveh Akbar (9/26/2024)
  772. Rejection — Tony Tulathimutte (9/27/2024)
  773. The History of Sound — Ben Shattuck (9/29/2024)
  774. Jesus Saves — Darcey Steinke (10/3/2024)
  775. The Heart in Winter — Kevin Barry (10/16/2024)
  776. Fire Exit — Morgan Talty (10/17/2024)
  777. Night Watch — Jayne Anne Phillips (10/26/2024)
  778. Season of the Swamp — Yuri Herrera (10/28/2024)
  779. It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over — Anne de Marcken (10/28/2024)
  780. Old God's Time — Sebastian Barry (11/5/2024)
  781. Suicide Blonde — Darcey Steinke (11/6/2024)
  782. Bongwater — Michael Hornburg (11/11/2024)
  783. Dark Lies the Night — Kevin Barry (11/14/2024)
  784. Enchanted Night — Steven Millhauser (12/23/2024)
  785. Ship Fever — Andrea Barrett (1/15/2025)
  786. Dark Dark — Samantha Hunt (1/22/2025)
  787. Lanny — Max Porter (5/29/2025)
  788. Milk — Darcey Steinke (6/10/2025)
  789. The Bear — Andrew Krivak (6/19/2025)
  790. The Unworthy — Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses(6/30/2025)
  791. Fulfillment — Lee Cole (7/4/2025)
  792. You Glow in the Dark — Liliana Colanzi (7/8/2025)
  793. Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of Ghost Stories — edited by Rowan Routh (7/8/2025)
  794. The Book of George — Kate Greathead (7/9/2025)
  795. Kingdom Cons — Yuri Herrera (7/12/2025)
  796. Vera, Or Faith: A Novel — Gary Shteyngart (7/13/2025)
  797. Mixtape Hyperborea — Adem Luz Rienspects (7/13/2025)
  798. Strange Pictures — Uketsu (7/14/2025)
  799. Wild Dark Shore — Charlotte McConaghy (7/15/2025)
  800. The Dog Stars — Peter Heller (7/21/2025)
  801. The Antidote — Karen Russell (7/29/2025)
  802. The Black Album — Matthew Pegas (7/30/2025)
  803. A Children's Bible — Lydia Millet (7/30/2025)
  804. The Sun On My Head — Giovani Martins (8/1/2025)
  805. Burn — Peter Heller (8/3/2025)
  806. Twist — Colum McCann (8/5/2025)
  807. Night Gaunts — Joyce Carol Oates (8/6/2025)
  808. The Midcoast — Adam White (8/7/2025)
  809. Early Works — Andrew Martin (8/7/2025)
  810. Gag Reflex — Elle Nash (8/10/2025)
  811. Sweet Lamb of Heaven — Lydia Millet (8/18/2025)
  812. Far North — Marcel Theroux (8/24/2025)
  813. The Pesthouse — Jim Crace (8/26/2025)
  814. Atavists — Lydia Millet (8/31/2025)
  815. Pan — Michael Clune (9/2/2025)
  816. Mermaids in Paradise — Lydia Millet (9/7/2025)
  817. Such Small Hands — Andrés Barba, translated by Lisa Dillman (9/14/2025)
  818. People Like Us — Jason Mott (9/16/2025)
  819. Senselessness — Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver (9/21/2025)
  820. Liberation Day — George Saunders (9/23/2025)
  821. You Are Having A Good Time — Amie Barrodale (9/30/2025)
  822. Good and Evil and Other Stories — Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (10/3/2025)
  823. Young God — Katherine Faw Morris (10/3/2025)

2013 Total: 23
2014 Total: 68
2015 Total: 51
2016 Total: 52
2017 Total: 162
2018 Total: 78
2019 Total: 66
2020 Total: 135
2021 Total: 88
2022 Total: 6
2023 Total: 24
2024 Total: 31


Florilegium


We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.
— Roberto Bolaño, "Dentist"

The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition.
— Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Suttree it is our understanding that at curfew rightly decreed by law and in that hour wherein night draws to its proper close and the new day commences and contrary to conduct befitting a person of your station you betook yourself to various low places within the shire of McAnally and there did squander several ensuing years in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees.
— Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

It was like turning up in the middle of some black looneytune where the Duck had all the lines.
— Michael Herr, Dispatches

Philosophy is odious and obscure;
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
'Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.
— Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

"I am the twentieth century," she read. Profane rolled away and stared at the pattern in the rug.
"I am the ragtime and the tango; sans—serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's—hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanicless buildings of government; the café—dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone; the touristlady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the traveling clock which always tells me the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night."
"That sounds about right," said Profane.
"I don't know." She made a paper airplane out of the poem and sailed it across the room on strata of her own exhaled smoke. "It's a phony college—girl poem. Things I've read for courses. Does it sound alright?"
"Yes."
"You've done so much more. Boys do."
"What?"
"You've had all these fabulous experiences. I wish mine would show me something."
"Why."
"The experience, the experience. Haven't you learned?"
Profane didn't have to think long. "No," he said, "offhand I'd say I haven't learned a goddamn thing."
— Thomas Pynchon, V

Cammed each night out of that safe furrow the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered? What voices over—heard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost?
— Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Don't forget that the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self—policing, and can be entrusted to non—professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw materials to be recorded into History, so that children may be more prepared for the adult world. Best if all, mass—death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Imagine coal, down in the earth, dead black, no light, the very substance of death. Death ancient, prehistoric, species we will never see again. Growing older, blacker, deeper, in layers of perpetual night.
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

For magic words a girl might do magic tricks.
— Bernard Malamud, The Assistant

And what's the point of a revolution
without general copulation
— Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.
— Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

We are digits in God's computer, she not so much as thought as hummed to herself to a sort of standard gospel tune, And the only thing we're good for, to be dead or to be living, is the only thing He sees. What we cry, what we contend for, in our world of toil and blood, it all lies beneath the notice of the hacker we call God.
— Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum.
— Erasmus Rotterdamus, Adagia

The Party denied the free will of the individual—and at the same time it exacted his willing self—sacrifice. It denied his capacity to choose between two alternatives—and at the same time it demanded that he should constantly choose the right one. It denied his power to distinguish good and evil—and at the same time it spoke pathetically of guilt and treachery. The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, a wheel in the clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and could not be stopped or influenced—and the Party demanded that the wheel should revolt against the clockwork and change its course. There was somewhere an error in the calculation; the equation did not work out.
— Arthur Koestler (Translated by Daphne Hardy), Darkness At Noon

The nephew, who was apparently the factory foreman, made a sweeping gesture toward the courtayrd, where sparse grass grew between the rocks, and animal hides awaited tanning in another building. A large horse cart hurtled past, filled with barrels. They're taking that wonderful stuff to a processing plan, he said, where they filter it and take care of the smell. From there, it goes to every corner of the country, where they use it in all sorts of products. It's what they rub on their noses and their dainty little cheeks. He snickered. It's in your bottle of gum arabic, and it's in the candies you suck on like manna from heaven. It's in the jam your mother makes for you; she spreads it on your sandwich, you're none the wiser. You're full of the stuff that comes pissing and dribbling out of those heads, dear boys, you're full of that rot, but you don't know it, because they can deoderize and filter and disinfect it until you no longer realize it's death you're sucking into your hungry little mouths, it's this sludge that those ladies of fashion are rubbing into their tender bosoms—fine bubbles of saliva sprayed from his mouth—it's all one and the same thing, but nobody knows. Good thing, too, otherwise the world would stop turning.
— Stefan Hertmans, War & Turpentine

Some people were born unsupplied with a human conscience and those people need killing.
— Paulette Jiles, News of the World

Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself.
Well, the rabble could. The rabble would.
He would lead the rabble in managing.
The thing would be won.
— George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

...I might seem like one of those droning megalomaniacs who can't forgive the laziness or the shortsightedness or the hedonism of their electorates. Brecht caught this attitude very well in 1953, when he noticed a Communist leaflet upbraiding the Berliners for their thoughtless uprising against Stalinism, and dryly suggested that perhaps the Party ought to dissolve the people and select another one. One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no "people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience, that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming the appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either.
— Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

We're all information, all of us, whether readers or writers, you or I. The DNA in our cells, the bio—electric currents in our nerves, the chemical emotions in our brains, the configurations of atoms within us and of subatomic particles within them, the galaxies and whirling constellations we perceive not only when looking outward but also when looking in, it's all, every last bit and byte of it, information.
— Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

On ne peut penser et ecrire qu'assis [One cannot think and write except when seated] (G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
— Friederich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Nature is mourning for its Murdered, and Afflicted Children. Hung be the Heavens in Scarlet.
— John Brown, A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever.
— Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

We moving on up in the world like elevators
— Outkast, Elevators

Comme un fou se croit Dieu,
Nous nouse croyons mortels.
Delaland: Discours sur les ombres
— Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

1st Gent. Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.
2nd Gent. Ay, truly: but I think it is the world that brings the iron.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch

Be the thing, not the thing that interrupts the thing.
— Andrew Essex

Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don't care about that. World is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long dreary stretches where nothing going on but chicory drinking and whisky and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there.
— Sebastian Barry, Days Without End

Now I tell them that in the days to come poor men shall be able to become lords and masters and do—nothings; and oft will it be seen that they shall do so; and it shall be even for that cause that their eyes shall be blinded to the running of themselves by others, because they shall hope in their souls that they may each live to rob others: and this shall be the very safeguard of all rule and law in those days.
— William Morris, A Dream of John Ball

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
— William Morris, A Dream of John Ball

Public affairs, moreover, is a highly important realm in the much of what virtually anybody by any standard would consider to be politically important originates, is substantially caused, and happens within it —that is, endogenous to it.
— David R. Mayhew, America's Congress: Actions in the Public Sphere, James Madison Through Newt Gingrich

After all, with his English parentage and English upbringing, he perceived that he was an adventurer in Costaguana, the descendent of adventurers enlisted in a foreign legion, of men who had sought fortune in a revolutionary war, who had planned revolutions, who had believed in revolutions. For all the uprightness of his character, he had something of an adventurer's easy morality which takes count of personal risk in the ethical appraising of his action. He was prepared, if need be, to blow up the whole San Tomé mountain sky—high out of the territory of the Republic. This resolution expressed the tenacity of his character, the remorse of that subtle conjugal infidelity through which his wife was no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts, something of his father's imaginative weakness, and something, too, of the spirit of a buccaneer throwing a lighted match into the magazine rather than surrender his ship.
— Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

Disease is a conviction. And I was born with that conviction.

I forgive the doctor for seeing life itself as a manifestation of sickness. Life does resemble sickness a bit, as it proceeds by crises and lyses, and has daily improvements and setbacks. Unlike other sicknesses, life is always fatal. It doesn't tolerate therapies. It would be like stopping the holes that we have in our bodies, believing them wounds. We would die of strangulation the moment we were treated.
— Italo Svevo, Zeno's Conscience

For some time now I have thought it possible to believe that America was going insane. In her own way. And why not?
Countries go insance like people go insane; and all over the world countries reclined on couches or sat in darkened rooms chewing dihydrocodeine and Temazepam or lay in boiling baths or twisted in straitjackets or stood there banging their heads against the padded walls. Some had been insane all their lives, and some had gone insane and then gotten better again and then gone insane again. America: America had had her neuroses before, like when she tried giving up drink, like when she started finding enemies within, like when she thought she could rule the world; but she had always gotten better again. But now she was going insane, and that was the necessary condition.
In a way she was never like anywhere else. Most places just are something, but America had to mean something too, hence her vulnerability — to make—believe, to false memory, false destiny. And finally it looked as though the riveting struggle with illusion was over, and America had lost.
— Martin Amis, London Fields

This is the moment when the two whited sepulchres at either end of the Avenue reel with the thick atmosphere of bargain and sale. The old is going; the new is coming. Wealth, office, power are at auction. Who bids highest? Who hates with most venom? Who intrigues with most skill? Who has done the dirtiest, the meanest, the darkest, and the most political work? He shall have his reward.
— Henry Adams, Democracy

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. I don't think this matters so long as one knows what one is doing, and why.
— George Orwell, War—time Diary, 14 March 1942

And yet I know it is useless. The winds and rain of time will at last crumble the most solid stone, and there is no wall that can be built to protect the human heart from its own weakness. For it was not Arminius and his horde; it was Varus in his weakness who slaughtered fifteen thousand Roman soldiers, as it is the Roman Sybarite in his life of shade who invites the slaughter of thousands more. The barbarian waits, and we grow weaker in the security of our ease and pleasure.
— John Williams, Augustus

Captain Jonsen, however, had his own idea of how to enliven a parochial bazaar that is proving a frost. He went on board, and mixed several gallons of that potion known in alcoholic circles as Hangman's Blood (which is compounded of rum, gin, brandy, and porter). Innocent (merely beery) as it looks, refreshing as it tastes, it has the property of increasing rather than allaying thirst, and so, once it has made a breach, soon demolishes the whole fort.
— Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica

I have learnt many things over these past years. I have learnt much in contemplating the world of pleasure, and recognizing its fragile beauty. But I now feel it is time for me to progress to other things. Sensei, it is my belief that in such troubled times as these, artists must learn to value something more tangible than those pleasurable things that disappear with the morning light. It is not necessary that artists always occupy a decadent and enclosed world. My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World

The art world turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine. I might as well have worked on Wall Street. Speculation and opinions drove not only the market but the products, sadly, the values of which were hinged not to the ineffable quality of art as a sacred human ritual - a value impossible to measure, anyway - but to what a bunch of rich assholes thought would "elevate" their portfolios and inspire jealousy and, delusional as they all were, respect.
— Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

That's when I first learned that it wasn't enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.
— Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Hume offered perhaps the first thorough diagnosis of a fundamental dilemma of the quantitative age: the more people believe numbers cannot lie, the easier it is to lie with numbers. The more we trust in numbers, the more they let us down.
— William Deringer, Calculated Values

It's a wonder all that talk that goes on in lives and never much considered or remembered. Never prompted too much by actual thought and no matter. Just the merciful birdsong of whatever bird we are.
— Sebastian Barry, A Thousand Moons

They handed over spider plants in terra-cotta, six-packs, books, bottles of wine. Yuppies in embryo, miming their parents' manners. In twenty years, they'd have country houses and children with pretentious literary names and tennis lessons and ugly cars and liaisons with hot young interns. Hur ricanes of entitlement, all swirl and noise and destruction, nothing at their centers.
— Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms, to move within the transit layout made for you during the morning and evening rush, winding through the crowds of fellow commuters. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To eat at its restaurants. To drink at its bars To shop at its stores. To pay its sales taxes. To give a dollar to its homeless.
To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?
The first toasty cigarette of the day, leaning against the out side of the building, near the entrance of revolving doors, before heading upstairs to the office. The cold of a winter morning, and the smell of exhaust from all the cars and trucks down Lake Shore Drive, and the wind from the lake.
— Ling Ma, Severance

I still believe in amor fati - I wouldn't exchange my existence for any other. Nietzsche wrote that anyone who has a why in life can put up with almost any how. For you as long as you are working, you have a why: when reach the end of a project, the why dissolves. You are left alone with yourself, in all the pain from which the work had offered relief. But there is another perspective, more comforting and no less valid: with the completion of every book, it gets easier to disappear.
— Rob Doyle, Threshold

"Couldn't anyone have stopped it?"
"I don't know Some kinds of silliness you just can't stop," he said. "I mean, if a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honour requires them to drop cobalt bombs upon their neighbour, well, there's not much that you or I can do about it. The only possible hope would have been to educate them out of their silliness."
"But how could you have done that, Peter? I mean, they'd all left school."
"Newspapers," he said. "You could have done some thing with newspapers. We didn't do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault, and no Government was wise enough to stop us having them that way. But something might have been done with newspapers, if we'd been wise enough."
— Nevil Shute, On The Beach

Urlet's answer perplexes him. He never would have thought the man capable of judging someone for eating a person. "Does this pose a moral dilemma for you? Do you find it atrocious?" he asks.
"Not at all. The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions, and sublimities characteristic of our condition astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperat ing shade of gray if we were all flawless
"But then why do you consider it atrocious?" "Because it is. But that's what's incredible that we accept our excesses, that we normalize them, that we embrace our primitive essence."
Urlet pauses to pour more wine and offers him some. He doesn't accept, says he has to drive. Urlet resumes, speaking slowly. He touches the band around his ring finger, moves it. "After all, since the world began, we've been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we've been literally gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical."
— Agustina Bazterrica, Tender is the Flesh

I think we all are forever looking for costumes. We are naked and fearful fools in search of disguises, with pockets to hide our sins in. Actor's rags.
— Pete Beatty, Cuyahoga

It's not that I'm important or special, just that up until now there have been two tracks or timelines: the one that Rei and this little group of our friends live on, in which the future is predictable, an extrapolation from the past, a steady progression in which we are gradually turning into our own mothers and fathers, men and women who make plans and save for retirement, who go to our kids' schools and participate in parent-teacher conferences, our adult bodies too big for the child-size furniture. Then there's the second track, the occult track on which all this normality is a paper screen over some thing bloody and atavistic that is rising up out of history to meet us. I am the ragged membrane, the porous barrier between the two. Somehow, through me, through my negligence, the second track has contaminated the first. My madness, the madness for which I've been medicated and therapized and involuntarily detained, is about to become everyone's madness. The proof of my sanity, my fitness to exist in the ordinary timeline of parent-teacher conferences and 401(k)s, was an acceptance that the two streams must never cross, that it was my job to keep them separate. I have not done that. Now all our throats are bared to the knife.
— Hari Kunzru, Red Pill

In short, you don't seem to be a Reader Who Rereads. You remember very well everything you have read (this is one of the first things you communicated about yourself); perhaps for you each book becomes identified with your reading of it at a given moment, once and for all. And as you preserve them in your memory, so you like to preserve the books as objects, keeping them near you.
— Italo Calvino, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler

Mito pushed the platter closer to him. The food looked like someone had sliced up a rubber hose and slapped on some hot pepper paste. That unmistakable tripe smell wafted up from the platter. He frowned, while Mito's chopsticks never stopped moving.
"Every time I eat tripe here," she gushed, "I can't help picturing God's intestines. The intestines of a God that human beings have never seen and can't imagine. The dirty, smelly, and disgusting things hidden inside the holy, sacred, and divine. Shame hiding behind grace. Ugliness hidden behind beauty. The complex web of lies lurking behind what we think is truth. And yet human beings try to deny that every living thing has to have intestines."
"Snap out of it," Reseng said. "It's just pig guts."
— Kim Un-su, The Plotters


"From all ill dreams defend our sight, from fears and terrors of the night. And keep us on guard. Be wary, man is a malleable creature, we must be wary of men.” —Goethe
— Oliver Guez, The Disappearance of Josef Mengele