I’m not going to name favorites from this list (even though I do have them), but I should also note that I don’t read bad books. At all. My life is too short to waste my time reading books that aren’t good. If I start reading a book that doesn’t measure up, I don’t finish it. Period. Here I stand; I will not recant.
1. Narrative Discourse Revisited by Gerard Genette
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
3. Kinky Friedman’s Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
4. World War One: A Short History by Norman Stone
5. Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
6. Coming Back to the Body: Poems by Joyce Sutphen
7. The Plains Indians by Paul H. Carlson
8. The Niagara River: Poems by Kay Ryan
9. Europe’s Last Summer by David Fromkin
10. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
11. Holy Week: Poems by Michael H. Lythgoe
12. Beyond Integration? by Todd C. Ream, editor
13. Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate by Greg Lukianoff
14. A Thousand Vessels: Poems by Tania Runyan
15. Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
16. Benediction by Kent Haruf
17. Marathoning for Mortals by John Bingham
18. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
19. The Realist Short Story of the Powerful Glimpse: Chekhov to Carver by Kerry McSweeney
20. A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction by Ron Hansen
21. Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life by Bret Lott
22. The Difference Between Men and Women: Stories by Bret Lott
23. People I Wanted to Be: Stories by Gina Ochsner
24. Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian by Bret Lott
25. My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer by ChristianWiman
26. Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? by Dianne Donnelly, editor
27. Fathers, Sons, Brothers: The Men in My Family by Bret Lott
28. This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years: Poems by Robert Bly
29. Jewel by Bret Lott
30. When We Were on Fire by Addie Zierman
31. American Primitive: Poems by Mary Oliver
32. Jesus’ Son: Stories by Denis Johnson
33. Teaching Literature by Elaine Showalter
34. How Fiction Works by James Wood
35. Tinkers by Paul Harding
36. Lapse Americana: Poems by Benjamin Myers
37. College Unbound: The Future of Higher Ed and What It Means for Students by Jeffrey Salingo
38. To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild
39. Fitting Ends: Stories by Dan Chaon
40. Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry by Mark Jarman
41. Human Chain: Poems by Seamus Heaney
42. Dandelions: Poems by Dave Etter
43. Erasing Hell by Francis Chan
44. Elegy for Trains: Poems by Benjamin Myers
45. The Liontamer’s Daughter: Poems by Dave Etter
46. On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose by Theodore Roethke
Plainswriter 