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Past Book Mill Reading Lists

2022-23

  • August Libertie (Kaitlyn Greenidge)

  • September Thank You, Mr. Nixon (Gish Jen)

  • October Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship (Catherine Raven)

  • November Once Night Falls (Roland Merullo)

  • January Indian Horse (Richard Wagamese)

  • February The Sweetness of Water (Nathan Harris)

  • March Crying in H Mart: A Memoir (Michelle Zauner)

  • April The Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles)

  • May Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi)

  • June Great Circle (Maggie Shipstead)

2022

2021

  • January:  The Country of the Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett)

  • February: The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Christy Lefteri)

  • March: The Cloister (James Carroll)

  • April: In the Heart of the Sea (Nathaniel Philbrick)

  • May: Out of Darkness, Shining Light: A Novel (Petina Gappah)

  • June: A Long Petal of the Sea (Isabel Allende)

2018-2019

  • August: Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

  • September: In Sunlight or In Shadow (Lawrence Block)

  • October: Evicted (Matthew Desmond)

  • November: The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen)

  • December: The Ninth Hour (Alice McDermott)

  • January: Killers of the Flower Moon (David Grann)

  • February: The Immortalists (Chloe Benjamin)

  • March: Exit West (Mohsin Hamid)

  • April: The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas)

  • May: A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)

  • June: Last Stories (William Trevor)

2017-2018

  • August: Dreaming in Cuban (Christina Garcia)

  • September: Ordinary Grace (William Kent Krueger)

  • October: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (Kathleen Rooney)

  • November: Lila (Marilynne Robinson)

  • January: Heat and Light (Jennifer Haigh)

  • February: This House of Sky (Ivan Doig)

  • March: It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis)

  • April: The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)

  • May: The Soul of an Octopus (Sy Montgomery)

2016-2017

  • August: Life After Life (Kate Atkinson)

  • September:  Dalva (Jim Harrison)

  • October:  Isaac's Storm (Erik Larson)

  • November: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian  (Sherman Alexie)

  • January: Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)

  • February:  Strapless (Deborah Davis)

  • March: The Submission (Amy Waldman)

  • April: The Round House (Louise Erdrich)

  • May: The Boys in the Boat (Daniel James Brown)

  • June:  My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante)

2015-2016

August:  The Ginger Tree (Oswald Wynd)

September: A Secret Kept (Tatiana de Rosnay)

October: This Boy's Life (Tobias Wolff)

December: The Yacoubian Building (Alaa Al Aswany)

January: All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

February:  The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)

March: Euphoria (Lily King)

April:  Kindred (Octavia Butler)

May: Being Mortal (Dr. Atul Gawande)

June: Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng)

2014-2015

August: Broken for You (Stephanie Kallos)

September: Never Let Me Go (Kasuo Ishiguro)

October: Dear Life (Alice Munroe)

December: Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Katherine Boo)

January: Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood)

February: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula LeGuin)

March: Winter of Our Discontent (John Steinbeck)

April: In the Shadow of the Banyan (Vaddey Ratner)

May: Lunch with Buddha (Roland Merullo)

June: The Lowland (Jhumpa Labiri)

 

2013-2014

August: The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (Louise Murphy)
September: Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness (Alexandra Fuller)

November: The Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers)

December: The Talk-Funny Girl (Roland Merullo)

January: Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann)

February: The Kitchen House (Kathleen Grissom)

March: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Cheryl Strayed)

April: Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

May: The Light Between Oceans (M.L. Stedman)

June: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson)

 

2012-2013

August: Day After Night (Anita Diamant)

September: Caleb's Crossing (Geraldine Brooks)

October: The Flight of Gemma Hardy (Margot Livesey)

November: The Grace that Keeps this World (Tom Bailey)

January: The Dovekeepers (Alice Hoffman)

February: Great House (Nicole Krauss)

March: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)

April: Faith (Jennifer Haigh)

May: The Tiger's Wife (Tea Obreht)

June: The Newlyweds (Neil Freudenberger)

 

2011-2012

August: Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese)

September: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Jonathan Foer)

October: Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell)

November: People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks)

January: The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)

February: Chains (Laura Halse Anderson)

March: Remarkable Creatures (Tracy Chevalier)

April: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)

May: House Arrest (Ellen Meeropol)

June: In the Garden of Beasts (Erik Larson)

 

2010-2011
August: Women of the Silk (Gail Tsukiyama)
September: March (Geraldine Brooks)
October: The Song of the Lark (Willa Cather)
November: Mudbound (Hillary Jordan)
January: The Catcher in the Rye/Nine Stories (J. D. Salinger)
February: books with a travel theme
March: The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry)
April: The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway)
May: Strength in What Remains (Tracy Kidder)
June: Brooklyn (Colm Toibin)

 

2009-2010
September: This Cold Heaven (Gretel Ehrlich)
October:  Song Yet Sung (James McBride)
December:  Anagrams (Lorrie Moore)
January:  Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery)
February:  Refuge (Terry Tempest Williams)
March:  Burnt Shadows (Kamila Shamsie)
April:  any title by Elinor Lipman
May:  Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout)
June:  Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Jamie Ford)

 

2008-2009
August:  Pearl (Mary Gordon)
September: Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)
October:  The House Gun (Nadine Gordimer)
December:  The Bookseller of Kabul (Asne Seierstad)
January:  Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)
February:  Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
March:  Leaving Mother Lake (Yang Erche Namu)
April:  The Turning (Tim Winton)
May:  Out Stealing Horses (Per Peterson)
June:  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)

 

 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2007-2008

August: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Volume 1 (M.T. Anderson)

September: Waiting for Snow in Havana (Carolis Eire)

October: The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)

November: Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)

January: Three (Flannery O'Connor)

February: Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)

March: The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)

April: The Fortress of Solitude (Jonathan Lethem)

May: Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

June: Purple Hibiscus (Chimananda Ngozi Adichie)

2005-2006

August: Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)

September: The Kite-Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

October: In the Beauty of the Lilies (John Updike)

November: Diary of a Madman (Nikolai Gogol)

February: Mountains Beyond Mountains (Tracy Kidder)

March: The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

April: Annie John (Jamaica Kincaid)

May: The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)

June: Nine Parts of Desire (Geraldine Brooks)

August: The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

 

2004-2005

August: Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)

September: Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi)

October: Three Junes (Julia Glass)

November: The Farming of Bones (Edwige Danticat)

January: In the Time of Butterflies (Julia Alvarez)

February: Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

March: Moon Tiger (Penelope Lively)

April: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

May: My Antonia (Willa Cather)

June: The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri)

 

2003-2004

September: The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

October: Lives of a Cell (Lewis Thomas)

November: Nickel and Dimed (Barbara Ehrenreich)

January: Unless (Carol Shields)

February: West with the Night (Beryl Markham)

March: The Man of Property (John Galworthy)

April: Food theme/Potluck

May: Pere Goriot (Honore de Balzac)

June: The Samurai's Garden (Gail Tsukiyama)

 

2002-2003

September: We Were the Mulvaneys (Joyce Carol Oates)

October: Straight Man (Richard Russo)

December: A House for Mr. Biswas (V.S. Naipaul)

January: The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)

February: Carolina Moon (Jill McCorkle)

March: Sons and Lovers (D.H. Lawrence)

April: YA titles

May: Wonder Boys (Michael Chabon)

June: Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)

August: Member of the Wedding (Carson McCullers)

 

2001-2002

September: Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

October: Wicked (Gregory Maguire)

November: The Shipping News (Annie Proulx)

January: Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)

February: Bee Season (Myla Goldberg)

March: Angle of Repose (Wallace Stegner)

April: Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

May: The Hours (Michael Cunningham)

June: The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

July: Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)

August: Coming into the Country (John McPhee)

 

2000-2001

August: The Missing World (Margot Livesey)

September: Plainsong (Kent Haruf)

October: The Law of Similars (Chris Bohjalian)

November: Assorted short novels

January: American Pastoral (Philip Roth)

March: Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

April: Death Comes to the Archbishop (Wilia Cather)

May: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman)

June: An Equal Music (Vikram Seth)

July: House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)

August: Falling Leaves (Adeline Yen Mah)

 

1999-2000

October: The Bird Artist (Howard Norman)

November: House of Sand and Fog (Andre Dubus III)

December: Girl in Hyacinth Blue (Susan Vreeland)

January: The Battle of Villa Fiorita (Rumer Godden)

February: Cider House Rules (John Irving)

March: The Book of Ruth (Jane Hamilton)

April: The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

May: Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem)

June: The Outermost House (Henry Beston)

July: The Hummingbird (Patricia Henley)

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