What I'm Reading

• The Diary of Anne Frank
• Virginia Woolf, The Years
• Christina Stead, The Little Hotel
• Kenneth Roberts, Lydia Bailey
• Robert Hayden, poems
• V. W. Brooks, The Flowering of New England
• Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
• Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans
• Amy Lowell, poems
• Alice Munro, stories
• Gerard Manley Hopkins, poems
• Ruth Brandon, Governess
• Margaret Drabble, The Red Queen
• Raymond Chandler, Playback
• Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
• Dickinson, Shakespeare, Shelley, poems
• Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake
• Bill Roorbach, Life among Giants
• Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat
• Linda Wolfe, The Professor and the Prostitute
• Clifford Thompson, Love for Sale and Other Essays
• P. G. Wodehouse, Leave It to Psmith
• A. S. Byatt, Possession
• Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay
• William Shakespeare, sonnets
• Rick Mullin, Soutine
• R. L. Stevenson, Catriona
• Kate O'Brien, The Land of Spices
• Marie de France, Lais, trans. Hanning & Ferrante
• Lorrie Moore, Like Life
• J. Severa, Dressed for the Photographer
• John Fowles, The Ebony Tower
• V. Nabokov, Pnin
• E. S. Connell, Mr. Bridge
• E. S. Connell, Mrs. Bridge
• E. S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star
• C. Beha, What Happened to Sophie Wilder
• V. Nabokov, Pale Fire
• Robert Frost, poems
• The Gospel of John, KJV
• Ted Hughes, poems
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, poems
• Emily Dickinson, poems
• Sybille Bedford, A Legacy
• James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
• Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn
• J. M. Potter, Meanwell
• Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
• L. M. Alcott, Rose in Bloom
• L. M. Alcott, Eight Cousins
• Jeff Kass, Knuckleheads
• Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout
• Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• I Too Am Here: Selections from the Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. A. and M. McQueen Simpson
• Robertson Davies, The Salterton Trilogy
• Muriel Spark, The Comforters
• Howard Levy, poems
• Colm Toibin, The Empty Family
• Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
• Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night
• Phillip Lopate, "The Future of the Essay"
• Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
• Dorothy Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon
• Johanna Spyri, Heidi
• Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
• R. M. Rilke, poems
• Jane Kenyon, poems
• Dylan Thomas, poems
• Brigit Pegeen Kelly, poems
• Gary Snyder, poems
• John Haines, poems
• P. Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830
• Beryl Bainbridge, According to Queeney
• Selected Letters of R. M. Rilke, 1902-26, trans. R.F.C. Hull
• Barbara Pym, Crampton Hodnet
• James Baldwin, Another Country
• Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney
• H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods
• J. H. Buckley, The Victorian Temper
• John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich
• A. S. Byatt, The Children's Book
• I. Murdoch, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
• Robert Frost, poems
• Ted Hughes, poems
• William Blake, poems
• Anne Carson, Nox
• L. M. Alcott, Little Men
• Anne Carson, The Glass Essay
• V. Nabokov, Stories
• Iris Murdoch, Under the Net
• Henry Green, Loving
• C. Yonge, The Heir of Redclyffe
• Margaret Drabble, The Seven Sisters
• Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
• John Fowles, The Magus
• Barbara Pym, various
• John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
• Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford
• D. F. Wallace, Infinite Jest
• B. Pym, Jane and Prudence
• R. Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit
• A. S. Byatt, Elementals
• John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle
• Sir Walter Scott, Old Mortality
• A. S. Byatt, The Shadow of the Sun
• Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
• B. Pym, A Few Green Leaves
• T. Rayfiel, Split-Levels
• Louisa May Alcott, Work
• Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
• Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight
• Margaret Drabble, The Ice Age
• P. Matthiessen, Shadow Country
• Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
• D. Brestensky et al., Patch/Work Voices
• I. Compton-Burnett, A House and Its Heritage
• Muriel Spark, Reality and Dreams
• F. H. Burnett, The Shuttle
• F. Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
• V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• Zbigniew Herbert, poems
• A. S. Byatt, A Whistling Woman
• Virginia Woolf, Night and Day
• Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone
• Czeslaw Milosz, Facing the River
• Lord Byron, poems
• Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
• Robertson Davies, The Lyre of Orpheus
• George Vecsey, Stan Musial: An American Life
• Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life
• Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm
• R. L. Stevenson, Kidnapped
• F. M. Ford, The Fifth Queen
• Anna Akhmatova, poems
• Rainer Maria Rilke, poems
• Robert Frost, poems
• Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show
• Jane Austen, Emma
• David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie
• S. M. Humphrey, Show Me Good Land
• S. Buck and E. Buck, The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania
• Andrew Lang, The Green Fairy Book
• K. Warren, Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry
• Charles Dickens, American Notes
• Richard Foerster, Penetralia
• S. C. Martin, Killing Time: Leisure and Culture in Southwestern Pennsylvania, 1800-1850
• F. Anderson, The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War
• Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book
• Wesley McNair, The Ghosts of You and Me
• J. W. Harpster. ed., Crossroads: Descriptions of Western Pennsylvania, 1720-1829
• L. Standiford, Meet You in Hell
• D. Rottenberg, In the Kingdom of Coal
• A. Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Strand Stories
• Margaret Drabble, The Middle Ground
• Hayden Carruth, Letters to Jane
• Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros
• Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land
• Virginia Woolf, The Years
• Richard Ford, Independence Day
• Philip Sidney, poems
• Bret Lott, "Humble Flannery"
• Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
• Samuel Pepys, diary
• John Updike, Memories of the Ford Administration
• Joe Bolton, poems
• F. S. Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
• Sylvia Plath, Ariel
• G. T. di Lampedusa, The Leopard
• R. L. Stevenson, essays
• J. Berryman, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
• P. B. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
• T. L. Peacock, The Four Ages of Poetry
• Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
• Jane Austen, Persuasion
• Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
• Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
• NY Review of Books
• Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages
• Colm Toibin, Mothers and Sons
• Charlotte Bronte, Villette
• Bill Evans, liner notes to Kind of Blue
• P. Currier, The Jails of Lincoln County
• Sheila Kohler, Becoming Jane Eyre
• W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand
• Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow
• W. Shakespeare, King Lear
• Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night
• Dorothy Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon
• Hayden Carruth, poems
• Margaret Drabble, The Red Queen
• NY Review of Books, maybe
• I tried to read Elmore Leonard's Pronto but failed. Why does he get so much press? This book was boring.
• Out-of-date New Yorker
• Larry McMurtry, Texasville
• V. Nabokov, Pale Fire
• V. Nabokov, Lectures on Literature
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
• Robert Frost, "Blueberries"
• V. Nabokov, Lolita
• P. G. Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime
• Robert Frost, "The Black Cottage"
• V. S. Pritchett, A Careless Widow
• Robert Frost, "Home Burial"
• Virginia Woolf, letters
• Kate O'Brien, The Ante-Room
• Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
• Rumer Godden, The Greengage Summer
• Baron Wormser, Frost Place Whitman-Dickinson talk
• J. M. Beaumont, Burning of the Three Fires
• Luray Gross, The Perfection of Zeros
• L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between
• Martin Amis, The War against Cliche
• George Eliot, Middlemarch
• A. S. Byatt, The Children's Book
• Thomas Hardy, poems
• W. J. Bate, John Keats: A Biography
• D. W. Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography
• Robert Frost, poems
• R. Faggen, ed., The Notebooks of Robert Frost
• Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock
• Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
• Daphne du Maurier, The House on the Strand
• Carolyn Keene, The Secret in the Old Attic
• John Fowles, Daniel Martin
• William Wordsworth, The Prelude
• John Fowles, A Maggot
• F. S. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Larry Gonick, The Cartoon History of the Universe
• Gordon Haight, George Eliot: A Biography
• Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From
• Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage
• Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle
• L. I. Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie
• L. I. Wilder, The Long Winter
• Kate O'Brien, That Lady
• Jane Austen, The History of England
• Philip Roth, American Pastoral
• Thomas Rayfiel, Time among the Dead
• Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
• Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist
• New York Review of Books
• Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
• Meg Kearney, Home by Now
• William Blake, America: A Prophecy
• Hayden Carruth, Toward the Distant Islands
• Rosalie Mander, Mrs. Browning: A Biography
• Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
• Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
• E. B. Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese
• Philip Roth, Letting Go
• I. Compton-Burnett, The Last and the First
• Robert Browning, poems
• S. T. Coleridge, poems
• Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
• Seed catalogs
• W. Shakespeare, A Winter's Tale
• D. S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman's America
• Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Mary J. Holmes, Millbank
• NY Review of Books
• H. C. Andersen's fairy tales
• Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge
• A. S. Byatt, The Children's Book
• Gelpi & Gelpi, eds., Adrienne Rich's Poetry
• Ted Hughes, poetry
• NY Review of Books
• Hayden Carruth, poems
• Henry James, The Ambassadors
• Robert Lowell, poems
• Anne Sexton, poems
• Sylvia Plath, poems
• E. M. Forster, Howards End
• Joe Bolton, poems
• 100 Poems from the Chinese, trans. K. Rexroth
• D. S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman's America
• Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
• Sir Philip Sidney, poems
• G. Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
• P. Wilmot, Adolescent Boys in East London
• A. S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye
• William Blake, poems
• Michael Casey, Raiding a Whorehouse
• Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock
• Walt Whitman, poems
• NY Review of Books
• Dave Morrison, poems
• Virginia Woolf, The Years
• James Joyce, Dubliners
• Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
• Henry Green, Loving
• Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day
• Charlotte Gordon, The Woman Who Named God
• Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard
• Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler
• W. J. Bate, John Keats: A Biography
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• Larry McMurtry, When the Light Goes
• John Keats, poems
• John Fowles, "I Write, Therefore I Am"
• Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage
• Philip Roth, My Life As a Man
• L.H. Morgan, The American Beaver
• Robert Froese, The Origins of Misgiving
• Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
• Psalms (KJV and RSV)
• John Berryman, "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet"
• Henry Green, Party Going
• Henry Green, Loving
• Shakespeare, sonnets
• Charlotte Gordon, Anne Bradstreet: America's First Poet
• The Notebooks of Robert Frost, ed. Robert Faggen
• Baron Wormser, poems
• Robert Lowell, poems
• Elizabeth Bishop, poems
• Robert Frost, poems
• The Letters of E. B. White
• Franz Kafka, Amerika
• NY Review of Books
• Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma, trans. Richard Howard
• John Donne, poems
• Iris Murdoch, The Book and the Brotherhood
• Joan Arden [Milly Jourdain], Unfulfilment
• I. Compton-Burnett, The Past and the Present
• Hilary Spurling, Ivy: The Life of I. Compton-Burnett
• Donald Justice, Night Light
• J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
• Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
• E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
• F. M. Ford, The Good Soldier
• S. T. Coleridge, poems
• NY Review of Books
• Thomas Carlyle, An Essay on Burns
• Mary Karr, Cherry
• Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
• William Trevor, Death in Summer
• NY Review of Books
• Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
• S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
• P. B. Shelley, "The Triumph of Life"
• Robert Frost, "Acquainted with the Night"
• Walt Whitman, poems
• E. Gaskell, Wives and Daughters
• Hayden Carruth, Letters to Jane
• Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
• Ben Jonson, poems
• John Updike, Rabbit, Run
• NY Review of Books
• Virginia Woolf, essays
• Geoffrey Chaucer, poems
• Ezra Pound, poems
• "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," retold by A. Lang
• P. B. Shelley, poems
• W. B. Yeats, poems
• G. M. Hopkins, poems, letters, notebooks
• William Blake, poems
• Daphne du Maurier, Don't Look Now
• James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man
• Hart Crane, The Bridge
• Robert Browning, poems
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
• George Eliot, Adam Bede
• L. M. Alcott, Rose in Bloom
• L. M. Alcott, Eight Cousins
• Amy Clampitt, Collected Poems
• Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems
• Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
• F. R. & Q. D. Leavis, Dickens the Novelist
• Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales
• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
• The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
• Orhan Pamuk, Snow
• John Stubbs, John Donne: The Reformed Soul
• Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte
• Anne Sexton, Complete Poems
• R. M. Rilke, Selected Poetry, trans. S. Mitchell
• Charlotte Bronte, Shirley
• John Fowles, The Ebony Tower
• NY Review of Books
• S. T. Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Collected Poems
• Iris Murdoch, The Philosopher's Pupil
• The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English, ed. M. Atwood
• Joe Bolton, The Last Nostalgia: Poems 1982-1990
• Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
• NY Review of Books
• Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Book
• Horace, Odes, trans. D. Ferry
• Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. R. Fagles
• Joe Arthur, You in the 21st Century (published in 1989)
• Barlett's Familar Quotations, 1939 edition, ed. Christopher Morley (very good book to keep in the bathroom, along with The Golden Bough)
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Merlin and the Gleam"
• William Matthews's translation of the satires of Horace
• Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy
• John Keats, "Hyperion"
• Robert Graves, The Greek Gods
• John Chapman's 1614-15 translation of the Odyssey
• Ovid, Metamorphoses
• Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth
• Shakespeare, sonnets (again)
• John Donne,"Divine Poems"
• Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
• Genesis
• NY Review of Books
• Frank O'Hara, poems
• England's Helicon
• R. L. Stevenson, Kidnapped
• John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 7 (yes, again . . . )
• Grimms' fairy tales
• S. T. Coleridge, "Christabel"
• Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, canto 1
• Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems, 1956-1998
• Pierre de Ronsard, "Fay refraischir mon vin de sorte"
• Louise Labe, "Ne reprenez, Dames, si j'ay ayme"
• Jeremy Miller, "Tyranny of the Test," in Harper's
• Foxcroft Academy instructions for safe bus riding
• Samuel Pepys, diary
• George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical
• Sir Thomas Malory, Merlin
• My son's list of all the major-league catchers he can think of (he plans to make me write a sonnet in catchers)
• Somerset County arrest log
• Seamus Heaney, The Government of the Tongue
• Charles d'Orleans, "Le temps a laissie son manteau"
• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, vol. 2
• Harmony Free Fair schedule of events
• Sophocles, Ajax
• Stevie Smith, The Holiday
• W. Shakespeare, sonnets
• Seamus Heaney, Poems, 1965-1975
• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, vol. 1