“The little box remembers her childhood
And by a great great longing
She becomes a little box again
Now in the little box
You have the whole world in miniature
You can easily put in a pocket
Easily steal it easily lose it
Take care of the little box”
Books by My Brilliant Friends and Colleagues
The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater
Thin Places by Jordan Kisner
The Sagas and Shit by Grayson Del Faro
Languageless -and- Lungs by Pedro Gunnlaugur Garcia
Shutter and The Lost House by Melissa Larsen
Polishing Iceland by Ewa Marcinek
Many books of poems by Francesca Cricelli
Willa and Hesper -and- All the Things We Don’t Talk About by Amy Feltman
Destination Wedding -and- The Windfall by Diksha Basu
Our Little Racket by Angelica Baker
Green by Sam Graham-Felsen
If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
Kalmann by Joachim B. Schmidt
Justine by Forsyth Harmon
One Degree Revolution by Coby Kozlowski
The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche
Novels
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Snow Child but Ewolyn Ivey
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Independent People by Halldór Laxness
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
A River Runs Through It by Norman McClean
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
In the Woods by Tana French
The Likeness by Tana French
Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Most of It by Mary Ruefle
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Maid by Nita Prose
Nonfiction
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Thin Places by Jordan Kisner (my friend!)
Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
Devotion by Dani Shapiro
Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
Hourglass by Dani Shapiro
Slow Motion by Dani Shapiro
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche
One Degree Revolution by Coby Kozlowski
The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer
The Wet Engine by Brian Doyle
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
Expecting Better by Emily Oster
Cribsheet by Emily Oster
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
When God Talks Back by T. M. Luhrmann
Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Short Stories and Essays
“Twilight of the Superheroes” by Deborah Eisenberg
”The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu
”Goodbye to All That” by Joan Didion
”Bullet to the Brain” by Tobias Wolff
”Joyas Voladores” by Brian Doyle
”Jesus Raves” by Jordan Kisner
”The Tail End” by Tim Urban
Poetry
The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin
Averno by Louise Gluck
Homage to the Lone Wolf by Vasko Popa
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
”The Circus Animals’ Desertion” by W. B. Yeats
”This Solitude of Cataracts” and “The Snowman” by Wallace Stevens
”The Writer” by Richard Wilbur
”One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop
”b o d y” by James Merrill
”Girl from the North Country” by Bob Dylan
”The Uses of Sorrow” by Mary Oliver
”To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy
”The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes
Romans 8:31-39
”Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara