Books List - 2026

 

 

Ordered by most recently listened to, first.

Audiobooks 

1. Queued:
1. Conundrum (1974) - Jan Morris
2. Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974) - Angela Davis
3. Masha Gessen books
4. Svetlana Alexievich books
5. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer  (2005) - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
6. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (2017) - Tom Nichols
7. 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai (1985) - Roger Zelazny
8. Samurai William : the Englishman who opened Japan (2003) - Giles Milton
9. The Pillars of the Earth (1989) - Ken Follett
10. Solar Express (2015) - L.E. Modesitt Jr. (suggested perhaps mistakenly as by David Weber)
11. The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023) - Rick Rubin
12. Perfume books by Luca Turin
13. The Portable Feminist Reader (2025) - Roxane Gay
14. A Memory Called Empire (2019) - Arkady Martine
2. In progress: 
1. Pageboy: A Memoir (2023) - Elliot Page, narrated by the author
2. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974) - Robert Caro, narrated by Robertson Dean
3. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020) - Isabel Wilkerson, narrated by Robin Miles
4. Americanah (2013) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Using the Libby app (via Overdrive).

E-Books

1.  

Print

1. Queued:
1. Schismatrix (1985) - Bruce Sterling
2. True Names (1981) - Verner Vinge
3. Rainbows End (2006) - Verner Vinge 
4. The Shockwave Rider (1975) - John Brunner 
5. Software (1982) - Rudy Rucker
6. Wetware (1988) - Rudy Rucker
7. Eclipse Trilogy (also referred to as A Song Called Youth trilogy) - John Shirley
1. Eclipse (1985)
2. Eclipse Penumbra (1988)
3. Eclipse Corona (1990) 
8. Neuromancer (1984) - William Gibson
9. Snow Crash (1992) - Neal Stephenson 
2. In progress: Twenty Five Mystery Science Theater 3000 Films That Changed My Life in No Way Whatsoever (2016) - Frank Conniff
3. Dark Apnea (2024) - Frank Conniff
4. Billy Gillis: 7-Year Old Screenwriter (2022) - Frank Conniff
5. How to Write Cheesy Movies: The Only Screenwriting Guide You’ll Never Need! (2017) - Frank Conniff
6. Detective Beans: Adventures in Cat Town (2025) - Li Chen

Suggestions

• Barack Obama's reading list
• Favorite Books of 2025:
• Paper Girl (2025) - Beth Macy
• Flashlight (2025) - Susan Choi
• We The People (2025) - Jill Lepore
• The Wilderness (2025) - Angela Flournoy
• There Is No Place For Us (2025) - Brian Goldstone
• North Sun (2025) - Ethan Rutherford
• 1929 Andrew (2025) - Ross Sorkin
• The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny (2025) - Kiran Desai
• Dead And Alive (2025) - Zadie Smith
• What We Can Know (2025) - Ian Mcewan
• The Look (2025) - Michelle Obama 
• Summer 2025 reading list:
• Mark Twain (2025) - Ron Chernow
• King Of Ashes (2025) - S. A. Cosby
• A Marriage At Sea (2025) - Sophie Elmhirst
• Abundance (2025) - Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025) - Stephen Graham Jones
• Who Is Government? (2025) - Michael Lewis
• The Book Of Records (2025) - Madeleine Thien
• Rosarita (2024) - Anita Desai
• Audition (2025) - Katie Kitamura
• The Sirens' Call (2025) - Chris Hayes
• Favorite Books of 2024:
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024) - Jonathan Haidt
• Intermezzo (2024) - Sally Rooney
• Patriot (2024) - Alexei Navalny
• Orbital (2024) - Samantha Harvey
• The Anthropologists (2024) - Ayşegül Savaş
• Stolen Pride (2024) - Arlie Russell Hochschild
• In Ascension (2023) - Martin MacInnes
• Growth (2024) - Daniel Susskind
• Someone Like Us (2024) - Dinaw Mengestu
• The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing (2024) - Adam Moss
• Summer 2024 reading list:
• James: A Novel (2024) - Percival Everett
• There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (2024) - Hanif Abdurraqib
• Everyone Who Is Gone Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis (2024) - Jonathan Blitzer
• Reading Genesis (2024) - Marilynne Robinson
• Headshot (2024) - Rita Bullwinkel
• The God of the Woods (2024) - Liz Moore
• Beautiful Days: Stories (2024) - Zach Williams
• Martyr! (2024) - Kaveh Akbar
• Memory Piece (2024) - Lisa Ko
• The Ministry of Time (2024) - Kaliane Bradley
• When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024) - John Ganz
• Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It (2022) - Richard Reeves
• The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook (2024) - Hampton Sides
• Help Wanted (2024) - Adelle Waldman
  
• 2023 Favorites, end-of-year:
• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store - James McBride
• The Maniac - Benjamin Labatut
• Poverty, By America - Matthew Desmond
• How To Say Babylon - Safiya Sinclair
• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann
• Chip War - Chris Miller
• The Vaster Wilds - Lauren Groff
• Humanly Possible - Sarah Bakewell
• King: A Life - Jonathan Eig
• The Covenant Of Water - Abraham Verghese
• The Best Minds - Jonathan Rosen
• All The Sinners Bleed: A Novel - S.A. Cosby
• The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory - Tim Alberta
• Some People Need Killing - Patricia Evangelista
• This Other Eden - Paul Harding
• Summer 2023 reading list:
• Small Mercies: A Detective Mystery - Dennis Lehane
• Hello Beautiful: A Novel - Ann Napolitano
• Birnam Wood: A Novel - Eleanor Cotton
• What Napoleon Could Not Do: A Novel - DK Nnuro
• Blue Hour: A Novel - Tiffany Clarke Harrison
• Dec 2019 (via):
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power () - Shoshana Zuboff
• The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company () - William Dalrymple (note: ebook only)
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee () - Casey Cep
• Girl, Woman, Other () - Bernardine Evaristo
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present () - David Treuer
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy () - Jenny Odell
• Lost Children Archive () - Valeria Luiselli
• Lot: Stories () - Bryan Washington
• Normal People () - Sally Rooney
• The Orphan Master's Son () - Adam Johnson
• The Yellow House () - Sarah M. Broom (note: ebook only)
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland () - Patrick Radden Keefe b;
  
• Solitary () - Albert Woodfox (note: ebook only)
• The Topeka School () - Ben Lerner
• Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion () - Jia Tolentino
• Trust Exercise () - Susan Choi
• We Live in Water: Stories () - Jess Walter
• A Different Way to Win: Dan Rooney's Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule () - Jim Rooney (note: not on Overdrive yet; published Nov 2019)
• The Sixth Man () - Andre Iguodala
• Aug 2019 (via):
• Toni Morrison: Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
• Exhalation by Ted Chiang
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel­
• Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women
• American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
• The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• Inland by Téa Obreht
• How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu
• Maid by Stephanie Land
• Dec 2018:
• Becoming by Michelle Obama (Overdrive)
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (Overdrive)
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Overdrive)
• The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne (Overdrive)
• Educated by Tara Westover (Overdrive)
• Factfulness by Hans Rosling
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex Wagner (Overdrive)
• A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (Overdrive: Recommended 01/01/2019)
• How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (Overdrive)
• In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu (Overdrive)
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (Overdrive)
• The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
• Note: recommended 01/01/2019 (Northern California Public Library)
• The Return by Hisham Matar
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (read)
• Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Overdrive)
• Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes (Overdrive)
• American Prison by Shane Bauer  (Overdrive)
• Arthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond Arsenault (Overdrive)
• Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday  (Overdrive)
• Feel Free by Zadie Smith  (Overdrive)
• Florida by Lauren Groff  (Overdrive)
• Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (Overdrive)
• Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar (Overdrive)
• The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson (Overdrive)
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark  (Overdrive)
• There There by Tommy Orange  (Overdrive)
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Overdrive)

• Josh Marshall 2018 Holiday recommendations:
• Eric H. Cline: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. Nicholas Ostler
• 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History)
• Only History of Ancient Greece available
• Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Barry Cunliffe: By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia
• Nothing as of 01/01/2019
• Felipe Fernandez-Armesto: Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• David Anthony: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
• Recommended 12/31/2018
• Roger Crowley: Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World
• City of Fortune and Conquerers recommendable as audiobooks
• David Abulafia: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
• Nothing as of 07/18/2018
• James Romm: Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire
• ebook only (Overdrive) as of 07/18/2018
• Peter Heather: 
• The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
• Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe
• The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
• Note: ebook only; audiobook not recommendable (Overdrive) as of 07/18/2018
• Hugh Thomas: Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico
• Nothing available as of 07/18/2018
• Lionel Casson: Libraries in the Ancient World
• Unavailable in any format (Overdrive)
• Life in Ancient Rome recommendable as Audiobook (Overdrive)
• Josh Marshall 1066 Norman Conquest Discussion:
• Short History of the Normans (2016) - Leonie V. Hicks
• The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England (2013) - Marc Morris
• The Norman Conquest: England after William the Conqueror (Critical Issues in World and International History) (2007) - Hugh M. Thomas
• Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070 (2011) - Robin Fleming
• William, King and Conqueror (2013) - Mark Hagger
• Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066-1100 (1994) - Brian Golding
• The Normans in Europe (2000) - Elisabeth van Houts
• William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (2016) - David Bates
• 2018-01-08: David Finkel's The Good Soldiers (via)
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Mike Liebhold (via):
• Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah 
• Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God 
• Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
• UCSC LIT 61U - Introduction to SF (online class):
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Book I of the Lilith's Brood Trilogy (1969) - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Dawn (1987) - Octavia E. Butler (note: not on Overdrive)
• Childhood's End (1953) - Arthur C. Clarke (note: not on Overdrive)
• "The Cold Equations" (1954) - Tom Godwin (note: not on Overdrive)
• Sail On! Sail On! (1952) - Philip José Farmer (note: not on Overdrive)
•  John Cole (via):
• The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (2013) - Emily Croy Barker
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (2015) - Sam Quinones
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018) - Anand Giridharadas
• Bookshop Santa Cruz - Winter 2023 reading list:
• North Woods: A Novel - Daniel Mason 
• Signal Fires: A Novel - Dani Shapiro
• Swimming Back to Trout River: A Novel - Linda Rui Feng
• Elder Race - Adrian Tchaikovsky
• More Than You'll Ever Know - Katie Gutierrez
• The Sun Is a Compass: My 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds - Caroline Van Hemert 
• The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession - Michael Finkel 
• Poet Warrior: A Memoir - Joy Harjo
• Ask A Manager 2023 recommendations (she bolded her favorites of the favorites):
• How Lucky - Will Leitch
• Ms. Demeanor - Elinor Lipman
• Mouth to Mouth - Antoine Wilson
• L.A. Weather - María Amparo Escandón
• Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
• Silver Sparrow - Tayari Jones
• A Quiet Life - Ethan Joella
• None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive - Carolyn Prusa
• Happy All the Time - Laurie Colwin
• All Together Now - Matthew Norman
• Vintage Contemporaries - Dan Kois
• The Sweet Spot - Amy Poeppel
• Sam - Allegra Goodman
• Small Admissions - Amy Poeppel
• The Helpline - Katherine Collette
• Pineapple Street - Jenny Jackson
• Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld
• Limelight - Amy Poeppel
• Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy
• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers - Jesse Q. Sutanto
• Yellowface - R.F. Kuang
• Bad Summer People - Emma Rosenblum
• Games and Rituals - Katherine Heiny
• Every Heart a Doorway - Seanan McGuire
• By the Book - Jasmine Guillory
• Barbara Isn’t Dying - Alina Bronsky
• My Last Innocent Year - Daisy Alpert Florin
• The Guest - Emma Cline
• The Truth and Other Hidden Things - Lea Geller
• The Innocents - Francesca Segal
• The Appeal - Janice Hallett
• Sunshine Nails - Mai Nguyen
• Heartburn - Nora Ephron
• Maame - Jessica George
• The Connellys of County Down - Tracey Lange
• Tom Lake - Ann Patchett
• You Can’t Stay Here Forever - Katherine Lin
• Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl - Renee Rosen
• The Whispers - Ashley Audrain
• An Available Man - Hilma Wolitzer
• Daughters-in-Law - Joanna Trollope
• Flight - Lynn Steger Strong
• High Maintenance - Jennifer Belle
• Mrs. Caliban - Rachel Ingalls
• Hello Beautiful - Ann Napolitano
• A Family Daughter - Maile Meloy
• Family Happiness - Laurie Colwin
• The Man I Never Met - Elle Cook
• Bill Gates 2023 reading list:
• The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human - Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet - Hannah Ritchie
• Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure - Vaclav Smil
  

Previously

Previously (2025), Previously (2024), Previously (2023), Previously (2022), Note: No books list 2021, Previously (2020), Previously (2019), Previously (2018), Previously (2017)