The non-univeristy reading list

 

I have read the books listed below since my college career began on 30 September 1999. Some books have been read more than once, however, they are listed only once below. If you know me, you can probably guess which books have received multiple readings. None of these books are related to my institutional education at the University of California (quite unfortunate, is it not?):

The Hazards of Good Breeding (Jessica Shattuck)
The Quality of Life Report
(Meghan Daum)
Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville
(Stephen Jay Gould)
Tepper isn't Going Out
(Calvin Trillin)
Haussmann, or the Distinction
(Paul Lafarge)
The Spooky Art
(Norman Mailer)
Like Life
(Lorrie Moore)
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
(Sarah Vowell)
Gravity's Rainbow
(Thomas Pynchon)
Fever Pitch
(Nick Hornby)
Kitchen Confidential
(Anthony Bourdain)
Songbook
(Nick Hornby)
R.E.M. | Fiction
(David Buckley)
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
(Richard Feynman)
Our Posthuman Future
(Francis Fukuyama)
The History of Sexuality: An Introduction
(Michel Foucoult)
Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism
(Joan Acocella)
The Disuniting of America
(Arthur Schlesinger)
Child of My Heart
(Alice McDermott)
The Last Commissioner
(Fay Vincent)
Doing School
(Denise Clark Pope)
You Shall Know Our Velocity
(Dave Eggers)
The Cheese Monkeys
(Chip Kidd)
How to Be Alone
(Jonathan Franzen)
Making a Literary Life
(Carolyn See)
You are Not a Stranger Here
(Adam Haslett)
The Dressing Station
(Jonathan Kaplan)
Fast Food Nation
(Eric Schlosser)
The Curse of the Bambino
(Dan Shaughnessy)
Tender is the Night
(F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Severed Trust: Why American Medicine Hasn't been Fixed
(George Lundberg)
A Fan's Notes
(Frederick Exley)
Twelve (Nick McDonnell)
The Doctor Stories
(William Carlos Williams)
The Black Veil
(Rick Moody)
How to be Good (Nick Hornby)
As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)
My Misspent Youth (Meghan Daum)
The Metaphysical Club (Louis Menand)
The Season of Lillian Dawes (Katherine Mosby)
Enough About You (David Shields)
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (Atul Gawande)
Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer)
Boonville (Robert Mailer Anderson)
Mystery and Manners (Flannery O'Connor)
Genes, Girls, and Gamow: after The Double Helix (James D. Watson)
You Can't Go Home Again (Thomas Wolfe)
Assorted Fire Events (David Means)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)
Strong Motion
(Jonathan Franzen)
War in a Time of Peace
(David Halberstam)
A Prayer for Owen Meany
(John Irving)
With Love and Squalor (Eds. Thomas Beller and Kip Kotzen)
Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour... (J.D. Salinger)
Uncle Tungsten (Oliver Sacks)
A Sport and A Pastime
(James Salter)
Seize the Day
(Saul Bellow)
The Sleep-Over Artist
(Thomas Beller)
The Actual (Saul Bellow)
Desperate Characters (Paula Fox)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Nine Stories (J.D. Salinger)
Franny and Zooey (J.D. Salinger)
Postmodern Pooh (Frederick Crews)
The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen)
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (Mary McCarthy)
Wit (Margaret Edson)
Far Away (Caryl Churchill)
Proof
(David Auburn)
Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov)
The New Sins (David Byrne)
Kissing in Manhattan (David Schickler)
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Matthew J. Bruccoli)
Naked
(David Sedaris)
Arthur Rimbaud (Enid Starkie)
The Twentieth Century (Howard Zinn)
Not-Knowing (Donald Barthelme)
Lost in the Funhouse (John Barth)
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon)
Native Son (Richard Wright)
Down the Highway: The Life and Times of Bob Dylan (Howard Sounes)
High Fidelity (Nick Hornby)
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
A Pitcher's Story (Roger Angell)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)
Underworld (Don DeLillo)
This Shape We're In (Jonathan Lethem)
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Richard Ben Cramer)
Shopgirl (Steve Martin)
The Pat Hobby Stories (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
About a Boy (Nick Hornby)
White Noise
(Don DeLillo)

Me Talk Pretty One Day
 (David Sedaris)
Rimbaud (Graham Robb)
Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem)
The First Forty-Nine Stories (Ernest Hemingway)
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
Slaughterhouse 5 (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Gutenberg Elegies (Sven Birkerts)
Paris to the Moon (Adam Gopnik)
The Silicon Boys (David A. Kaplan)
Driving Mr. Albert (Michael Paterniti)
What it Felt Like (Henry Allen)
Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)
The Basil and Josephine Stories (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The Art of Fiction (David Lodge)
White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Andrew Turnbull)
Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee)
For the Time Being (Annie Dillard)
The Boys of Summer (Roger Kahn)
The Fundamentals of Play (Caitlin Macy)
The Beautiful and Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Words Fail Me (Patricia T. O'Connor)
This Boy's Life (Tobias Wolfe)
Bobos in Paradise (David Brooks)
On the Road
(Jack Kerouac)
Ada, or Ardor (Vladirmir Nabokov)
La symphonie Pastorale (André Gide)
Past Time: Baseball as History (Jules Tygiel)
Take the Cannoli (Sarah Vowell)
Trimalchio: An early version of The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
Fairball: A Fan's Case for Baseball (Bob Costas)
Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers)
Le diable au corps (Raymond Radiguet)
Martin Dressler (Steven Millhauser)
The Archivist (Martha Cooley)
A Lost Lady (Willa Cather)
My Ántonia (Willa Cather)
The Writing Life (Annie Dillard)
The Hours (Michael Cunningham)
Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

 

 

 

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