Updated: January 1, 2020
Continuing, for some reason, to chronicle every book and short story I’ve read since The Lord of the Rings in the spring of 2017.

Volume 1 (2017) | Volume 2 (2018) | “Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club”

Critical remarks are avoided while ratings are reserved for “Library Book Club” selections and other significant achievements/shame spirals. Rereads coopt the register mark and establish that “rereads” and “coopt” are not to be hyphenated.

“Library Book Club” selections are noted in red to represent the spectre of death.

“CSGNFBØQEBCBBL” selections are noted in purple to represent the suffocation of professional networking.

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Denis Johnson
“The Starlight on Idaho” (2018)

Elizabeth Strout
Anything Is Possible (2017)
⭐⭐⭐⭐

John Cleese
So, Anyway… (2014)

Philip K. Dick
“The Days of Perky Pat” (1963)
“Precious Artifact” (1964)
“A Game of Unchance” (1964)

Agatha Christie
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

Philip K. Dick
“Faith of Our Fathers” (1967)
“The Electric Ant” (1969)
“A Little Something for Us Tempunauts” (1974)
“Rautavaara’s Case” (1980)

Philip K. Dick
“The Exit Door Leads In” (1979)
“Frozen Journey” (1980)

Katy Tur
Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History (2017)
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jeffrey Eugenides
Middlesex (2002)
⭐⭐⭐

Owen Beattie/John Geiger
Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition (1987/2017 revision)

Fiona Davis
The Address (2017)
⭐⭐

Frederic Brown
“Hall of Mirrors” (1953)
“Keep Out” (1954)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892)

Wes Moore
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates (2010)
⭐⭐

Eugene Burdick/Harvey Wheeler
Fail-Safe (1962)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ambrose Bierce
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890)

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Mother Night (1962)

Andre Dubus (III)
Townie (2011)
⭐⭐⭐

Henry James
The Turn of the Screw (1898/1908 revision)

Norm Macdonald
Based on a True Story (2016)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ian McEwan
Nutshell (2016)

Erik Larson
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015)
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Welcome to the Monkey House (stories, 1968)

Shirley Jackson
Come Along With Me (stories, posthumous, 1968)

Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things (1997)
🖕

Liu Cixin
The Three-Body Problem (2008/2014 translation)

Stephen King
From Different Seasons (1982)
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Ⓡ

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Bagombo Snuff Box (stories, 1999)

Stephen King
From Different Seasons (1982)
Apt Pupil Ⓡ

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Armageddon in Retrospect (stories, posthumous, 2008)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Kirstin Downey
The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (2009)
⭐⭐⭐

Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis (1915/2002 translation)

Andy Weir
The Martian (2011)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Shirley Jackson
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Andy Weir
“Diary of an AssCan” (2015)

Stephen King
From Different Seasons (1982)
The Body Ⓡ
The Breathing Method Ⓡ

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Look at the Birdie (stories, posthumous, 2009)

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
“The Father” (1860/1881 translation)

Jon Krakauer
Into Thin Air (1997/1999 revision) Ⓡ
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
“The Big Space Fuck” (1972)
“Atrocity Story” (TK)
“Eden by the River” (TK)
“Between Timid and Timbuktu” (TK)
“Rome” (TK)
“Miss Snow, You’re Fired” (TK)
“Paris, France” (TK)
“The City” (TK)
“Sucker’s Portfolio” (TK)
“The Drone King” (TK)
“Requiem for Zeitgeist” (TK)
“And on Your Left” (TK)

Andrew Schulman
Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind and Soul (2016)

Shirley Jackson
Just an Ordinary Day (stories, posthumous, 1996)

Diane Ackerman
The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007)
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
While Mortals Sleep (stories, posthumous, 2011)

HP Lovecraft
“Nyarlathotep” (1920)
“Polaris” (1920)
“The Statement of Randolph Carter” (1920)
“From Beyond” (1934)
“The Temple” (1925)
“The Other Gods” (1933)
“The Hound” (1924)
“The Unnamable” (1925)
“He” (1926)
“In the Vault” (1925)
“The Descendant” (c. 1927)
“The Book” (1933)
“The Very Old Folk” (1927)
“The Lurking Fear” (1923)
“The Horror at Red Hook” (1927)
“The Thing on the Doorstep” (1937)
Herbert West—Reanimator (1922)

Philip K. Dick
The Man in the High Castle (1962)

HP Lovecraft
The Shunned House (1924)
“The Silver Key” (1929)

Henry Rollins
Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag (1994/2004 revision)

Agatha Christie
The Witness for the Prosecution (stories, 1948)

Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Carl Bernstein/Bob Woodward
All the President’s Men (1974/2014 revision)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ottessa Moshfegh
McGlue (2014)

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[A third year with the Ladies, thought to have expired in August, instead continues at a more relaxed pace as I anticipate six skipped titles after only two and then two more (Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland and Chris Bohjalian’s Before You Know Kindness last season). “One book” abounds…]

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David Sheff
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction (2007/2009 revision)
⭐⭐⭐

The Jesus Lizard
Book (2014)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page (2014)

Georgia Hunter
We Were the Lucky Ones (2017)
⭐⭐⭐

Autumn de Wilde
Elliott Smith (2007)

Shirley Jackson
Let Me Tell You (stories, posthumous, 2015)

Mick Farren/Dennis Loren
Classic Rock Posters: Sixty Years of Posters and Flyers, 1952 to 2012 (2012)

Joe Hill (Joseph King)
The Fireman (2016)

Richard Lacayo/George Russell
Eyewitness: 150 Years of Photojournalism (1995)

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

Jim Krause
Layout Index (2001)

Beryl Evans (Stephen King)
Charlie the Choo-Choo (2016)

Stephen King
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) Ⓡ

Legs McNeil/Gillian McCain
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (1996)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Alex W. White
The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture and Type (2002)

Colin Barrett
Young Skins (stories, 2014)

Muriel Spark
The Driver’s Seat (1970)

William Carlsen
Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya (2016)

Edgar Allan Poe
“Review of Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea and the Holy Land” (1837)
“Review of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán” (1841)

Karen Russell
Orange World (stories, 2019)