Bending Toward the Sun

Feminism, Education, History and Literature. And Sometimes Food.

Reading List

Here is the full list of books I’ve read…(Scroll down for books read during years 2010-2012)

(* indicates audio)

2012

  1. A Woman’s Education by Jill Ker Conway
  2. Just Kids by Patti Smith*
  3. The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti
  4. The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
  5. The Chicken Chronicles: Sitting with the Angels Who Have Returned with My Memories: Glorious, Rufus, Gertrude Stein, Splendor, Hortensia, Agnes of God, The Gladyses, & Babe: A Memoir by Alice Walker*
  6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker*
  7. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire
  8. Echoes of the Lost Boys of Sudan by James Disco
  9. When She Woke by Hillary Jordan*
  10. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
  11. Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman*
  12. Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin
  13. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  14. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
  15. Shutterbabe by Deborah Copaken Kogan
  16. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey*
  17. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
  18. The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone and illustrated by Josh Neufeld

2011

  1. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
  2. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow
  3. Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks
  4. Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
  5. Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
  6. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende*
  7. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez        
  8. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  9. Room by Emma Donoghue*
  10. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
  11.  From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Volume I: From Prehistory to the First Millennium by Marilyn French
  12. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
  13. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
  14. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  15. Hey Shorty! A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and On the Streets by Joanne Smith, Meghan Huppuch, and Mandy Van Deven
  16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling*
  17. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  18. Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nunez
  19. The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenegger
  20. My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme*
  21. Big Sex Little Death by Susie Bright
  22. Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
  23. Feminism FOR REAL edited by Jessica Yee
  24. Angels in America: Millenium Approaches and Perestroikaby Tony Kushner
  25. The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman*
  26. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
  27. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler*
  28. Bossypants by Tina Fey
  29. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
  30. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (translated by Jay Rubin)
  31. The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing by Darina Al-Joundi and Mohamed Kacimi (translated by Marjolijn De Jager)
  32. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby*
  33. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
  34. Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
  35. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway*
  36. Cambodian Grrrl: Self-publishing in Phnom Penh by Anne Elizabeth Moore
  37. The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents by Margaret C. Jacob
  38. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past by Sam Wineburg
  39. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro*
  40. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
  41. The Language Police by Diane Ravitch
  42. The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
  43. The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
  44. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach*
  45. Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
  46. One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni*
  47. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
  48. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley*
  49. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling*
  50. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  51. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern*
  52. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
  53. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong*

Unfinished books:

  • From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. II by Marilyn French
  • In America by Susan Sontag
  • A Good Man is Hard to Find short stories by Flannery O’Connor

2010

  1. Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
  2. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto* by Michael Pollan
  3. A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert
  4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks* by Rebecca Skloot
  5. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
  6. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  7. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  8. The Little Prince Graphic Novel by Joann Sfar
  9. As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto edited by Joan Reardon
  10. Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti
  11. Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV by Jennifer L. Pozner
  12. Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok*