My Favorites…
Novels & Memoirs
Sun House, by David James Duncan
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
If We Were Villains, by M.L. Rio
The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus
1984, by George Orwell
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
Ordinary People, by Judith Guest
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
Health & Science
Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To, by David A. Sinclair
Gut Feelings: The Microbiome & Our Health, by Alessio Fasano & Susie Flaherty
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohannon
I Contain Multitudes, by Ed Yong
10% Human, by Alanna Colleen
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, by Anna Lembke
The Comfort Crisis, by Michael Easter
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Fungi: A Very Short Introduction, by Nicholas P. Money
Outlive, by Peter Attia
This is Your Brain on Birth Control, by Sarah Hill
How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, by Lisa Feldman Barrett
It’s All in Your Mouth: Biological Dentistry & the Surprising Impact of Oral Health on Whole Body Wellness, by Dominik Nischwitz
Love’s Executioner, by Irvin D. Yalom
Outdoors
Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by John Krakauer
Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain, by Bruce Tremper
Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills
Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, & Spirit, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Fox & I, by Catherine Raven
Novels
Harry Potter: The Complete Collection, by J.K. Rowling
The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell
1984, by George Orwell
Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Fear & Loathing in Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Old Man & the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner
One Day, by David Nicholls
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
Normal People, by Sally Rooney
Headshot, by Rita Bullwinkel
The Idiot, by Elif Batuman
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang
Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen
The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Daisy Jones & the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Adult, by Bronwyn Fischer
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Emmuska Orczy
Severance, by Ling Ma
Fresh Water for Flowers, by Valerie Perrin
Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn
Hang the Moon, by Jeannette Walls
White Noise, by Don DeLillo
Deep Cuts, by Holly Brickley
Memoirs
I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance
Educated, by Tara Westover
The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank
The Philosopher and the Wolf, by Mark Rowlands
Novelist as a Vocation, by Haruki Murakami
Drinking Games, by Sarah Levy
The Tell, by Amy Griffin
Becoming Myself, by Irvin D. Yalom
Philosophy
Brief Answers to the Big Questions, by Stephen Hawking
Man’s Search For Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
Why? The Purpose of the Universe, by Philip Goff
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, by Hector Garcia Puigcerver
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing & Life, by Anne Lamott
Life Lessons, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler
How to Do Nothing, by Jenny Odell
Do Nothing, by Celeste Headlee
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig
Psychology
In an Unspoken Voice, by Peter A. Levine
The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel
Cultish, by Amanda Montell
The Myth of Normal, by Gabor Mate
No Bad Parts, by Richard C. Schwartz
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb
Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life, by Christie Tate
The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
An Anthropologist on Mars, by Oliver Sacks
Science
Estrogen Matters: Why Taking Hormones in Menopause Can Improve Women’s Well-Being and Lengthen Their Lives - Without Raising the Risk of Breast Cancer, by Avrum Bluming and Carol Tavris
Your Brain on Art, by Ivy Ross & Susan Magsamen
Microbiomes: A Very Short Introduction, by Angela E. Douglas
Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, by Frans de Waal
Why We Dream, by Alice Robb
Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake
How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Healing Adaptogens, by Tero Isokauppila & Danielle Ryan Broida
Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, by Bethany Brookshire
Spirituality
The Surrender Experiment, by Michael A. Singer
Finding Your Own North Star, by Martha Beck
The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin
You Are the Universe, by Deepak Chopra & Menas C. Kafatos
Radical Acceptance, by Tara Brach
The Awakened Brain, by Lisa Miller
The Transcendent Brain, by Alan Lightman
Short Stories and Essay Collections
Slow Days, Fast Company, by Eve Babitz
The Wood at Midwinter, by Susanna Clarke
The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green
Bliss Montage, by Ling Ma
The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami