An ongoing list of the most influential or important book(s) I read each year.
2024
- Scroggins, The Poem of a Life: a Biography of Louis Zukofsky
- Hill, The World Turned Upside Down
- Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays
- Mac Cumhaill & Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life
- Lipscomb, The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Phillipa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics
- Porter, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits
2023
- Slotkin: The Fatal Environment
- Graeber & Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything
2022
- McGilchrist: The Master and his Emissary
- Ong: Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue
- Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass
- Thoreau: The Journal 1837–1861
- Mithen: After the Ice
2021
- Ungaretti (Brock, trns): Allegria
- Hare & Woods: Survival of the Friendliest
- Karen: Becoming Attached
- Tyree, The Counterforce
- Anthony: The Horse, The Wheel, and Language
- van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score
2020
- Odell: How to Do Nothing
- Scott: Seeing Like State
- Scott: Against the Grain
- King: Gods of the Upper Air
2019
- Kahneman: Thinking Fast & Slow
- Hofstadter: Paranoid Style in American Politics
- Hofstadter: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
- Rorty: Achieving Our Country
- Jung: Mysterium Coniunctionis
- Cantor: Inventing the Middle Ages
2018
- Csikszentmihalyi: Flow
- Seldes: The Stammering Century
- Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
2017
- Baker: The Peregrine
- Anderson: Imaginary Cities
- Thomas: Ritual in Early Modern Europe (finished in 2019)
- Russo: The Island at the Center of the World
2016
- Russo: Amsterdam
- Bruner: On Thinking
- Woodard: American Nations
2015
- Brown: Through the Eye of a Needle (finished in 2019)
- Koslofsky: Evening’s Empire (finished in 2020)
- Augé: Non-Places
- Hyde: The Gift
2014
- Hyde: Trickster Makes This World
- Bringhurst: A Story as Sharp as a Knife
- Richardson: Thoreau: A Life of the Mind
- Kolodny: In Search of First Contact (finished in 2018)
2013
- Adler: Speedboat
- Ahern: How to Disappear
- Slotkin: Regeneration Through Violence
2012
- Petroski: The Pencil
- Grünbein: The Vocation of Poetry
- Portis: (various)
2011
2010
- Holm: The Windows of Brimnes
- Holm: The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth
- Davenport: (various)
- Jacobs: Death and Life of American Cities
2009
- Stewart: Names on the Land
2008
- Hall: Warlock
- Adler: Drawing Down the Moon
2007
- (Waley): Monkey
- Aron: The Highly Sensitive Person
- Pynchon: Against the Day
2006
2005
- Tuchman: A Distant Mirror
- Proust: In Search of Lost Time (finished in 2006)
2004
- William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
2003
- Blackmore: The Meme Machine
- PKD: (various)
2002
- Harryette Mullen: Sleeping with the Dictionary
2001
- Louis Menand: The Metaphysical Club
- Isaiah Berlin: The Proper Study of Mankind
2000
- Amato: Dust
- Bachelard: The Poetics of Space
- DeLillo: Underworld
1999
- Tufte: (various)
- Forché (ed): Against Forgetting
- McGrath: Letter to an Imaginary Friend
- Dawkins: The Selfish Gene
1998
- Hamill (ed): The Gift of Tongues
- Jung: Aion
1997
1996
- Williams: Imaginations
- Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World
1995
- Joyce: Ulysses
- Carruth: Suicides & Jazzers
1994
- Ong: Orality & Literacy
- Carruth: Collected Shorter Poems
- Tolkien: LOTR
1993
- Jung: Essential (Storr, ed)
- Jung: Basic Writings (de Laszlo, ed)
- Kingston: Tripmaster Monkey
1992
- Epictetus (Oldfather trns): Discourses
- Chesterton: Manalive
- Berry: What Are People For?
1991
- Nabokov: Pale Fire
- Gilfillan, Magpie Rising
- Nelson: The Island Within
- Brautigan: In Watermelon Sugar
- Eliade: The Sacred & the Profane
1990
- Thoreau: Walden
- Borges: Labyrinths
- Salinger: Franny & Zooey
- Salinger: Roofbeams & Seymour
1989
- Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- Davies: The Manticore
1988
- Dostoevsky: Crime & Punishment
- Heller: Catch-22
- Wolfe: Electric Kool-aid Acid Test
- Cummings: 74 Poems & 95 Poems
- Hofstadter: Metamagical Themas
1987
- Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow
- Hugo: Les Misérables
- Robbins: Jitterbug Perfume
1986
- Phillips: A Humument
- Beagle: The Last Unicorn
- Goldman: The Princess Bride
- Robbins: Still Life with Woodpecker
- Robbins: Another Roadside Attraction
- O’Neill: Collective Unconscious of Odd Bodkins
1985
- Gorey, Amphigorey
- Vonnegut: Cat’s Cradle
- Bach: Illusions
- Laozi (trns, Lau): Tao Te Ching
1984
- Hoff: The Tao of Pooh
- Thomas: The Lives of a Cell
1983
- White: The Once and Future King
- Blum: The Book of Runes
1982
- Le Guin: A Wizard of Earthsea
1981
- Alexander: Taran Wanderer (The Chronicles of Prydain)
1980
- Hergé: Tintin in Tibet
- Hergé: Flight 714
1979
- Hergé: The Black Island
- Hergé: King Ottokar’s Sceptre
1970—1978
- Seuss: Sneeches & Other Stories
- Bonsall: Who’s a Pest?
- Richard Scarry (various)