The HWR Non-Required Recommended Reading/Listening
Here's a great reading list of suggested titles brought to you by the Spring 2020 Home Writer's Retreat participants.
FICTION/NOVELS:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
Ahab’s Wife: Or, the Star Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Circe by Madeline Miller
The Girls with No Names by Serena Burdick
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell
The Stand by Stephen King
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
The Terror by Dan Simmons
SHORT FICTION:
"Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story."
Dubliners by James Joyce: a great collection, even if you think you don’t like Joyce :)
The Best American Short Stories collections
St. Lucy's School for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Runaway by Alice Munro
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Young Skins by Colin Barrett
The Debutante by Leonora Carrington
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
In the Country by Mia Alvar
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston
NONFICTION:
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore
The works of Mary Roach
On Writing by Stephen King
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
The Big House by George Howe Colt
Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams
The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
H is for Hawk by Helen Mcdonald
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler
POETRY:
Devotions by Mary Oliver: This is a collection of excerpts from all her books published just before she died in January 2019. Includes "A Summer's Day" and "Wild Geese"
This Day by Wendell Berry
The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
What The Living Do by Marie Howe
This Clumsy Living by Bob Hicok
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
When My Brother Was An Aztec by Natalie Diaz
Thrall by Natasha Trethewey
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Days & Days by MIchael Dickman
A Piece of Good News by Katie Peterson
The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams
Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck
Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirshfield
Picture Bride by Cathy Song
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
WEB SERIES:
The Poetry of Home
In this video series, four current and former U.S. poets laureate talk about their stay at home experiences and share one of their poems about home. So far, the series has videos featuring Joy Harjo and Robert Pinsky.
PODCASTS:
The New Yorker Fiction podcast. https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction
This is a monthly podcast where the fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, invites an author to read and discuss a story from the New Yorker archives.
The New Yorker podcast, the Writer's Voice. https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice
This is a podcast where every week the author of the last fiction in the New Yorker reads their stories.
Everything Is Alive
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everything-is-alive/id1388419519?mt=2
Caught
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caught/id1353825999?mt=2
Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beautiful-stories-from-anonymous-people/id1090147504?mt=2
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
Ahab’s Wife: Or, the Star Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Circe by Madeline Miller
The Girls with No Names by Serena Burdick
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell
The Stand by Stephen King
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
The Terror by Dan Simmons
SHORT FICTION:
"Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story."
Dubliners by James Joyce: a great collection, even if you think you don’t like Joyce :)
The Best American Short Stories collections
St. Lucy's School for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Runaway by Alice Munro
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Young Skins by Colin Barrett
The Debutante by Leonora Carrington
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
In the Country by Mia Alvar
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston
NONFICTION:
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore
The works of Mary Roach
On Writing by Stephen King
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
The Big House by George Howe Colt
Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams
The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
H is for Hawk by Helen Mcdonald
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler
POETRY:
Devotions by Mary Oliver: This is a collection of excerpts from all her books published just before she died in January 2019. Includes "A Summer's Day" and "Wild Geese"
This Day by Wendell Berry
The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
What The Living Do by Marie Howe
This Clumsy Living by Bob Hicok
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
When My Brother Was An Aztec by Natalie Diaz
Thrall by Natasha Trethewey
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Days & Days by MIchael Dickman
A Piece of Good News by Katie Peterson
The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams
Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck
Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirshfield
Picture Bride by Cathy Song
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
WEB SERIES:
The Poetry of Home
In this video series, four current and former U.S. poets laureate talk about their stay at home experiences and share one of their poems about home. So far, the series has videos featuring Joy Harjo and Robert Pinsky.
PODCASTS:
The New Yorker Fiction podcast. https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction
This is a monthly podcast where the fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, invites an author to read and discuss a story from the New Yorker archives.
The New Yorker podcast, the Writer's Voice. https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice
This is a podcast where every week the author of the last fiction in the New Yorker reads their stories.
Everything Is Alive
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everything-is-alive/id1388419519?mt=2
Caught
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caught/id1353825999?mt=2
Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beautiful-stories-from-anonymous-people/id1090147504?mt=2
