Recommended Reading
I’m always on the lookout for books I want to read and my want-to-read list grows longer every day. For those of you who can relate, here’s a list of some books I think everyone should read, in no particular order, divided into three categories: Books I love, Other books you should read, and Books I hated but am glad I read. Wherever possible the link that I provide is to the version or edition that I read. For books that I’ve read in Spanish I’ve included an English title, but I cannot necessarily vouch for the translated versions I find on Amazon. Enjoy!
Books I love
- Mi País Inventado: Un Paseo Nostálgico por Chile, Isabel Allende (My Invented Country: A Memoir, Isabel Allende)
- Anything by Mary Roach
- Anything by Roald Dahl
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Erik Larson
- The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Barack Obama
- Zara’s Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa, Peter Beard
- A Dog’s Head, Jean Dutourd (originally in French)
- Anything by Laurie Notaro
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss
- The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
- The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester
- A Writer’s Coach: An Editor’s Guide to Words That Work, Jack Hart
- Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer
- Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir, Frank McCourt
- The Lovely Bones: A Novel, Alice Sebold
- Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes, Gabriel García Márquez (A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Gabriel García Márquez)
- Cien años de soledad, Gabriel García Márquez (100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez)
Other books you should read
- True Tales of American Life, edited and introduced by Paul Auster
- Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Al Franken
- El Camino, Miguel Delibes (I haven’t found a version in English)
- The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Vladimir Voinovich
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
- The End of Racism, Dinesh D’Souza
- A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power
- El tercer sexo: Retratos de mujeres transexuales, Guillermo Hernáiz (haven’t found an English version)
- Los girasoles ciegos, Alberto Méndez (Blind Sunflowers, Alberto Méndez)
- The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
- The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, Completely Updated and Revised, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
Books I hated but am glad I read
- The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
- El planeta americano, Vicente Verdú (haven’t found an English version)
- A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed