Past Book Mill Reading Lists
2022-23
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August Libertie (Kaitlyn Greenidge)
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September Thank You, Mr. Nixon (Gish Jen)
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October Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship (Catherine Raven)
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November Once Night Falls (Roland Merullo)
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January Indian Horse (Richard Wagamese)
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February The Sweetness of Water (Nathan Harris)
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March Crying in H Mart: A Memoir (Michelle Zauner)
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April The Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles)
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May Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi)
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June Great Circle (Maggie Shipstead)
2022
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August - Olive, Again (Elizabeth Strout)
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September: This Tender Land (William Kent Krueger)
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November: The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead)
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January: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (Isabel Wilkerson)
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February: The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett)
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April: Virgil Wander (Leif Enger)
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May: Owls of the Eastern Ice (Jonathan Slaght)
2021
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January: The Country of the Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett)
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February: The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Christy Lefteri)
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March: The Cloister (James Carroll)
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April: In the Heart of the Sea (Nathaniel Philbrick)
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May: Out of Darkness, Shining Light: A Novel (Petina Gappah)
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June: A Long Petal of the Sea (Isabel Allende)
2018-2019
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August: Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
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September: In Sunlight or In Shadow (Lawrence Block)
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October: Evicted (Matthew Desmond)
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November: The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen)
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December: The Ninth Hour (Alice McDermott)
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January: Killers of the Flower Moon (David Grann)
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February: The Immortalists (Chloe Benjamin)
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March: Exit West (Mohsin Hamid)
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April: The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas)
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May: A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)
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June: Last Stories (William Trevor)
2017-2018
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August: Dreaming in Cuban (Christina Garcia)
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September: Ordinary Grace (William Kent Krueger)
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October: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (Kathleen Rooney)
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November: Lila (Marilynne Robinson)
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January: Heat and Light (Jennifer Haigh)
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February: This House of Sky (Ivan Doig)
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March: It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis)
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April: The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)
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May: The Soul of an Octopus (Sy Montgomery)
2016-2017
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August: Life After Life (Kate Atkinson)
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September: Dalva (Jim Harrison)
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October: Isaac's Storm (Erik Larson)
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November: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (Sherman Alexie)
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January: Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)
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February: Strapless (Deborah Davis)
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March: The Submission (Amy Waldman)
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April: The Round House (Louise Erdrich)
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May: The Boys in the Boat (Daniel James Brown)
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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)