This page is a list of books that I can remember reading. A complete list, especially from early childhood, is probably impractical, but it’s a fun exercise in nostalgia to get as many of them down as I can recall. I have doubtless forgotten many of the more unmemorable books that I’ve read, but my hope is that I’m not too late to record some of the most important ones. If my book lists get too long/complex (which is probably a good thing!), I’ll split them up by genre, but for now I think I can compartmentalize them pretty well by age.
In terms of formatting, I have listed books roughly in chronological order (from earliest to most recent) where I can remember, but some of the ordering might be a bit fuzzy, particularly for books that I read long ago. Confusingly, I have also listed the sections in reverse chronological order. When it comes to author names, I have tried to use first and last name, unless the author is more commonly known by something else (e.g. Vergil or C.S. Lewis). I try to group series under their most common names where applicable.
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.
Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
I’m not really sure what to call this section yet. For now I’ll leave it as “post-college,” although at some point when I stop being a “new grad” I will probably have to change this.
This section is listed in chronological order, from earliest to latest.
Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie): I actually started this as a junior in college, but I eventually lost interest part-way through. My library loan expired, I had other things to do, and I eventually moved on to read other things. I finally went back to finish it after graduating. I enjoyed it a decent amount, but maybe not as much as its reputation as the “Booker of Bookers” led me to believe that I would.
Gilead (Marilynne Robinson): I really enjoyed this novel. It’s a quiet but lyrical meditation on life by a dying preacher, which I guess is right up my alley.
The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky): I actually tried reading this once in high school but didn’t get very far in; I decided to give it another chance after graduating college. I’m glad I did—I think it deserves the critical acclaim that it gets, even if it is admittedly a rather long read. The Grand Inquisitor gets all the fame, but honestly, I found the life of Zosima and Ivan’s nightmare equally compelling.
Also, I know people get up in arms about translations, but I don’t really have strong opinions about this. I read Pevear & Volokhonsky and thought it was fine, though I’m sure, say, Garnett is equally good.
Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges): I’d wanted to read this for a while and finally got the chance to when I bought it off a used book seller in Washington Square Park. It was a fairly good short story collection; my personal favorite was “The Lottery in Babylon,” though maybe I would have been more wowed by “The Library of Babel” had I not read Ted Chiang’s “The Tower of Babylon” first. (The two share the same resolution to the central puzzle.) The book also contained some miscellaneous essays and “parables” by Borges, of which I thought “The Argentine Writer and Tradition” and “Kafka and his Precursors” were most worth the read.
To be honest, if you want really good speculative fiction I would probably recommend Chiang first, though Borges was of course quite instrumental in the historical development of the genre. Chiang’s fiction is perhaps not as erudite as Borges’, but I’d venture that it’s more mathematically precise. (Though honestly, I kind of enjoyed Borges’ “erudition.” It gave me a chance to exercise the years of Latin and quizbowl knowledge that I haven’t used since high school…)
One thing that I did pick up from Borges: a certain fondness for the word heresiarch, although maybe this is just a property of the translations that I read.
Exhalation (Ted Chiang): Speaking of Chiang, the other day I found myself with some friends in a Chinatown bookstore showcasing various Asian authors. I happened to see a copy of Exhalation; since I had enjoyed Stories of Your Life and Others so much, I decided to pick up a copy.
Overall, I think Exhalation was pretty good. Some stories were honestly misses for me, but some were definitely big hits. I think my favorite of the collection was the titular “Exhalation,” but there were also a few other strong stories in there.
Knowing God (J.I. Packer): This is a modern Christian classic, and for good reason. I don’t think the theology that Packer presents will be surprising to any reader who is steeped in the Reformed-adjacent world, but he expounds it with remarkable clarity, balancing readability with profundity.
Babel (R.F. Kuang) I enjoyed the magic system in this book, and it was fun recognizing places from my trip to Oxford a couple of weeks prior to reading this. But I do have to say that I found Kuang a little heavy-handed with the messaging, unfortunately sometimes at the expense of literary quality. Babel reads almost as an essay in the form of a fantasy novel, with a cast of eighteenth-century Oxford language scholars from fascinating backgrounds ending up as little more than mouthpieces for a progressive twenty-first-century grad student’s takes on things like capitalism and colonialism. It felt somewhat jarring to hear the characters discuss things like “the narco-military state,” although to be fair to Kuang, perhaps that jarring sense was precisely her point.
Also, maybe I’m missing something, but Professor Lovell seems to give an incorrect Latin translation in the beginning of the novel: “Consider the sentence He will learn. Tā huì xué. Three words in both English and Chinese. In Latin, it takes only one. Disce.” (It ought to be discet.)
Twelve Caesars (Mary Beard): I first spied this book in a bookstore a few years ago, but it was not until recently that I decided to read it, on the basis of my general fondness for Rome. Beard guides the reader quite expertly through the varied ways that Roman imperial imagery has been used to represent power in Western artwork. I have to confess that I’m not particularly interested in art history, though, which made this book feel a little dry at times.
But Beard also offers lots of insightful gems that made the book worthwhile, in my opinion. Some are obvious in retrospect; for instance, she points out the transition from medieval artwork (in which characters from antiquity are often dressed in contemporary garb) to renaissance and modern traditions (in which contemporary figures are robed classically) as an example of the changing ways in which we’ve related to the Caesars over the years. Some of her insights draw on her immense knowledge of Roman literature; for instance, she notes that a set of tapestries commissioned by Henry VIII are not generic scenes from Caesar’s life (as was previously supposed), but rather illustrations of Lucan’s Pharsalia.
Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton): Another one of those “quizbowl books” that I used to be able to answer questions about but never bothered to read, I decided to buy a used copy when I happened to see one at a bookstore. After reading it, I’m immensely glad that I did. The little blurb on the back of the book calls it “a work of searing beauty,” and I honestly can’t think of a more accurate descriptor. It’s the deeply moving tale of a rural pastor who goes to Johannesburg to find his lost son Absalom, set against the racial tensions of South Africa in the 1940s.
The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende): I decided that it would be fun to read this before going to Chile on vacation. I didn’t quite make it—I actually finished in on the flight back. It was a decent read; maybe this is a bit mean to say, but I kind of felt like this was the novel that Babel wanted to be.
The Candy House (Jennifer Egan): This was a recommendation by Felix, who is quite a literary man. It’s a collection of interconnected stories—some on the more experimental side—that explore the consequences of a dramatic technological invention. Overall, I had mixed feelings about it: I thought that some of the stories were quite strong, but to be honest, the best ones were also the least experimental ones. The commentary on technology and society was timely, but I don’t think it was especially interesting or insightful. To be fair, though, this is a loose sequel to Egan’s previous novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I have not read, so I may be missing some context.
As a New York City resident, it was kind of fun reading the hyper-detailed descriptions of the city; Egan clearly knows Manhattan very well.
Christianity and Liberalism (J. Greshem Machen): The topic of how Christians ought to think about and respond to modern “liberal” or “historical-critical” conceptions of religion is something that has been on my mind lately. So, I thought that it’d be interesting to read this slender volume written by Machen (contra mundum!), a staunchly outspoken defender of Christian orthodoxy during the fundamentalist–modernist controversy of the early twentieth century.
I think it was a good read, and that Machen’s fundamental thesis is reasonable—that theological liberalism is incompatible with Biblical Christianity, and it is dishonest to suppose that this deep divide can be papered over by merely using the same words while we really mean very different things. And I think he is right to center his critique of the liberal theological project in its rejection of the gospel, which is the only real hope for salvation: “[Modern liberalism] is entirely inoffensive. But it is also entirely futile. The offence of the Cross is done away, but so is the glory and the power.” This framing was useful for me.
But at times, I do wish that Machen engaged more with the substance of the historical-critical arguments that he denies on the liberals’ own terms (that is, on their factual basis). Now in some sense, it is not the purpose of this small book to dive deeply into the technical merits of any particular argument; the point is more to demonstrate that a rejection of the gospel leads to a failure of theological liberalism as religion. So perhaps the thing I want is actually a longer companion book that dives more into the details.
The Luminaries (Eleanor Catton): I once gave ChatGPT a list of books that I had liked, and asked it to recommend me a book. The result was Catton’s The Luminaries, which I did, in fact, enjoy. A clever parody of a nineteenth-century mystery novel, it makes for rather entertaining reading. Some “famous” books are, frankly, quite boring to get through, but this one was just plain fun.
3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated (Donald E. Knuth): This is a pretty curious book, in which Knuth—a very accomplished computer scientist who is also a devout Lutheran—adopts a “stratified sampling” approach to studying the Bible. That is, he examines verse 3:16 in each book, excepting those that are too short.
I think Knuth deserves credit as a careful scholar; he is typically well-informed of the text-critical issues relevant to the passages he considers. But I do feel that his theological analysis is often not that compelling, especially for someone who is already reasonably familiar with the Biblical text. Of course, this is quite forgiveable; he is, after all, a noted computer scientist, not a theologian. Overall, I really appreciated reading the (undoubtedly God-centered!) musings of someone I look up to a lot intellectually, and I think that this is where most of the value of this book lies.
One thing that this book is famous for is its calligraphy; a different calligrapher illustrates each verse, and Knuth himself is known for his work in computer typography. However, I will say that the calligraphy seemed just okay to me; maybe I’m too uncultured to appreciate it, but some of the illustrations felt a little too, uh, avant-garde for me.
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages (Trenton Lee Stewart): While talking to a friend, I found out that Stewart had actually published a sequel to the Mysterious Benedict Society series, which I had read growing up. I thought it would be a fun exercise in nostalgia to read the sequel.
Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates): One of my coworkers called Yates her favorite author, so I decided to give his most well-known novel a try. I thought it was a well-written novel but also quite a depressing one—bordering on uncomfortably so.
As a twenty-something living in Manhattan, I felt somewhat removed from the “opulent desolation” (to quote the blurb on the back cover) of the mid-century American suburb that is the novel’s focus, and I probably don’t have the life experience to fully appreciate the tragedy of the Wheelers’ lives. In the decades since its publication, there have probably been better critiques of American conformity. But still, I found the story haunting in a sad kind of way.
Sunt lacrimae rērum… [There are tears of things…]
Vergil, Aeneid 1.462, quoted in Cloud Atlas
My reading has been more limited in college, but on the upside, everything I’ve read has been for my own pleasure and edification, not because someone else told me to. For most of these books (or at least the ones for which I own a physical copy), there should be a yellow post-it note in the inside cover containing more detailed thoughts about the book as well as the date I finished it.
Funny story: upon visiting my college apartment and seeing my bookshelf, a friend studying writing proclaimed that I have a very “CS major” taste in books. I can’t decide if that was a compliment or an insult…
This section is listed in chronological order, from earliest to latest.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter): Mr. Vallo first recommended this book to me in eighth grade geometry, since he knew that I was “into” math. Years later, I finally read it. I can’t say that I enjoyed all of it (many parts were a chore to get through), but there were some genuinely thought-provoking parts. I’ve also tried to extract a summary of Hofstadter’s presentation of Gödel’s theorem.
Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro): Having loved The Remains of the Day so much, I decided to read more Ishiguro. I don’t think Never Let Me Go was quite as good, but it was certainly worth a read.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami): This book was confusingly engaging; I couldn’t put it down despite being unsure of what was going on.
The Silmarillion (J.R.R. Tolkien): I’ve casually enjoyed Tolkien for quite a while and finally decided to take the plunge during the summer of 2020. I actually tried reading this once before but couldn’t get past the Ainulindalë. I enjoyed the Akallabêth the most, because although they’re wrong, the jealousy of the Númenóreans was, in a way, relatable.
The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro): I should really stop reading so much Ishiguro. Anyway, this novel is typical of its author: beautifully crafted with a magnificent (if ambiguous) ending.
Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami): I’m not sure how I feel about Murakami’s writing. It’s all one big mixed-up ball of magical realism, which is I guess exactly what I was looking for.
Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell): I’ll certainly grant that Mitchell is very clever and supremely versatile. But as I was reading, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was looking for a connection that just wasn’t there.
The Sheltering Sky (Paul Bowles): I have mixed feelings about this one. Some parts were good, but it was also kind of hard for me to get over my active dislike of all of the main characters.
The Children of Húrin (J.R.R. Tolkien): This is essentially just a fleshed-out version of the story of Túrin from the Silmarillion, but I think it’s definitely worth reading if you’re a Tolkien fan. Also, I can recommend the hardcover edition illustrated by Alan Lee—there are marvelous full-page illustrations, and there’s a neat fold-out map at the back.
The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy): I honestly didn’t really like this at all in the beginning; the writing style felt somehow forced at first. It grew on me, and the second half was enjoyable.
Piranesi (Susanna Clarke): The story was skillfully developed, but the resolution to the central mystery didn’t feel quite as satisfying as I would have liked. However, as a huge Narnia fan, I was absolutely delighted by the allusions to The Magician’s Nephew.
The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell): Mitchell is at times too witty or too preachy, and I can’t say I agreed with how he ended the novel. Like Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks is structured as a series of connected stories told across different times and places; while most of the individual stories were captivating, the overall direction of the novel was unsatisfying. I liked the concept—following Holly over the decades as various mortals and immortals pass through her life—but the dystopian ending just felt really uninspired.
Quantum Computing since Democritus (Scott Aaronson): This was a phenomenal book; it was both witty and insightful. However, as Aaronson himself notes, the intended audience is fairly narrow. For example, I’m not sure how you’d follow Aaronson’s presentation of the IP = PSPACE proof or of computation on a closed time-like curve without having seen either before. Some familiarity with the common complexity classes at the undergraduate level (NP, BPP, P/poly, MA, etc.) is almost a prerequisite, and some experience with quantum computing wouldn’t hurt, either.
Also note that this book is more focused on the fundamentals of quantum computing and complexity theory; he doesn’t go into much detail about quantum algorithms (e.g. he mentions but never describes the discrete quantum Fourier transform). But I thought that this suited me, since I had just come out of a course that covered all of that in great detail.
Basically, I enjoyed the book immensely, but your mileage may vary. I think it will stand the test of time, although there are already a couple of new results (like the MIP* = RE result from last year) that were not known when the book was published in 2013.
(I will say: there are a couple of sections at the end in which Aaronson talks about miscellaneous subjects not related to quantum computing, like free will and religion. He isn’t an authority on those subjects in the same way that he’s an authority on quantum computing, but he’s at least witty and fun to read.)
Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis): There are some places where one can tell that this was written in the 1940s and 50s. But much of it is refreshingly applicable—there is a reason for its enduring popularity. I most enjoyed the third part, on Christian behavior, but the rest of the book is also good. I don’t know that Lewis’s plain reasoning will convince the modern skeptic, but at the very least this is a valuable resource for the new (and old) Christian.
Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes): This felt well-deserving of its reputation. Although the writing is not quite at the level of, say, Ishiguro, it’s conceptually brilliant. I think I found it especially terrifying because growing up, I always put a lot of value on intelligence. Although I could guess the ending from a million miles away, it didn’t lessen the emotional impact at all.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things (Patrick Rothfuss): To be honest, I didn’t really enjoy this too much, even though it seems like the sort of story I would like. Maybe I’ve been away from the world of The Name of the Wind too long; elementary school was a long time ago.
Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang): I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. I will say that “Story of Your Life” was much more compelling than Arrival, the movie that it inspired.
Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro): I feel like I’ve been reading too much Ishiguro, but this was a gift from my sister, so I had to read it. Of course, I enjoyed it; I think it came together especially well in the second half. It touches on a lot of interesting subjects without hitting you over the head with them, which I appreciated.
The physical act of reading the book was also a picturesque experience: I actually read most of it while relaxing in a hammock on Flagstaff Hill one unusually warm October day. Precisely as I was reading the dramatic scene involving the sun (I won’t say too much here for fear of spoiling it), the real sun was setting, turning the pages a brilliant shade of orange, to match the autumn leaves above me.
Morgoth’s Ring (The History of Middle-earth, Volume 10) (J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien): The History of Middle-earth is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the philosophy—or dare I say theology—behind Tolkien’s mythology. Morgoth’s Ring in particular contains unfinished essays and drafts by Tolkien touching on several topics of interest to me, including his evolving views on the origin of the orcs and the Round World vs. Flat World cosmologies. I most enjoyed the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, which explores Tolkien’s conception of the purpose of death; I compiled somewhat extensive reading notes on the Athrabeth.
I do have one complaint: the physical quality of the 2015 HarperCollins paperback edition is atrocious. The spine cracks easily, and the cover has started to fall apart slightly after only modest usage. (I’ve seen users on r/tolkienfans report similar issues with other HarperCollins books.) I would recommend a different edition if possible. It’s also not a particularly accessible work without having read at least the Silmarillion first.
All told, HoME is a wonderful read for anyone who wishes to seriously study Tolkien, but I would recommend skipping around a bit and starting with whatever sounds most interesting to you. For me, that was Morgoth’s Ring, and especially the Athrabeth; I skipped The Later Quenta Silmarillion, because I’m not particularly interested in the manuscript history of the Silmarillion.
Keynes once famously described Newton as not the first scientist of the age of reason, but rather the last of the magicians. I view Tolkien very much the same way; Middle-earth seems to me to be not the first work of modern fantasy, but rather the last of the old mythologies.
The Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan): I deeply enjoyed this, although I will say that the second part (published by Bunyan some six years after the first) feels repetitive at times. The imagery is plain but powerful, and some scenes—like Christian cowering beneath Mount Sinai, or finally being rid of his burden upon beholding the cross—are especially evocative.
I think Spurgeon said it best when he wrote that The Pilgrim’s Progress has such staying power because it is so rooted in the Bible; Bunyan wrote it in jail, where he had access to only two books, one of which was the Bible. In Spurgeon’s slightly hyperbolic words: “He [Bunyan] had read it till his very soul was saturated with Scripture…Prick him anywhere—his blood is Bibline.”
God, Freedom, and Evil (Alvin Plantinga): Plantinga is probably the preeminent Christian philosopher of the twentieth century; this is the popular version of one of his academic works, The Nature of Necessity. I started reading this after finding a copy sitting on a shelf at a church I was visiting.
I don’t think the book really offers any new, groundbreaking arguments; I think that the main accomplishment of God, Freedom, and Evil is to frame many classical arguments in theodicy and natural theology within the rigorous framework of modern analytic philosophy. Plantinga devotes most of his time to the problem of evil and Anselm’s ontological argument; the book is worth a read if you’re interested in those, but his (arguably more interesting) work on epistemology is found in other books.
An Artist of the Floating World (Kazuo Ishiguro): One of Ishiguro’s earliest works, one finds echos of An Artist of the Floating World in many of his later novels, particularly his magnum opus, The Remains of the Day. It’s a classic Ishiguro novel, a subtle contemplation on themes like war, memory, and art. With its emphasis on reflection on mistakes of the past, I think it was a fitting last book to read in college, especially given that The Remains of the Day was the last book I read in high school.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
In high school, almost all of the books that I read were for assignments. Sometimes, we’d get to choose the books, but ultimately they all went toward some required reading. However, I did get to read some excellent books this way, so I can’t really complain. In theory I can exactly order these books by looking at timestamps on past assignments, but in practice I don’t think that it’s worth it. The list below is approximately in chronological order, with perhaps a standard error of +/- 5 places or so. It may be more mixed up toward the end, since I had the same English teacher (the wonderful Ms. Agazarian) for both junior and senior year, so my memory might be a bit blurred as to exactly what happened during which year. I remember very clearly that The Remains of the Day was the last book that I read.
Some repeats from middle school, such as Fahrenheit 451, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Hamlet, are not included.
I also started but never finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Brothers Karamazov.
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.
C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
Like many people, I liked reading a good deal when I was younger. Here, I’ll list some of the books I remember from up until high school. There’s no real reason to try to recount every single random fantasy series I consumed in elementary school and middle school; it’s just a bit of nostalgic fun. Since this was so long ago, I’ve completely thrown out the chronological ordering in this section. When I think of something new that I want to add, I just insert it into a random spot in the list.
[dʒikl], not [dʒɛkl], arguing that this is how Stevenson would have pronounced it. This convention has stuck with me.I’m also pretty sure that I read Moby Dick at some point, but I don’t remember if I finished it, so I will refrain from listing it above. I started but never finished War and Peace. My parents always encouraged me to read classics from the “Western canon,” saying that it was good for me. I guess I’m grateful for that now.
Enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips, supply words that proclaim “Love lustres at Calvary.”
The Valley of Vision
Here, I list some devotional literature that I’ve read. I’ve chosen to list these separately because I read them very differently from other books, usually taking a short passage each day throughout the year, and sometimes repeating them. Note that I don’t include books on theology, books about religion, or books with merely religious themes here, because I read those basically the way I read most non-religious books: linearly, without clear daily demarcations.