Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy
(Family Happiness, The Cossacks, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Devil, The Kreutzer Sonata, Master and Man, Father Sergius, Hadji Murad, Alyosha the Pot)

Bursting the Limits of Time
by Martin J. S. Rudwick
(History of development of geology as discipline and its slow-dawning "discovery" of the age of the earth. Very highly recommended for anyone interested in evolution/creation or geology or the Enlightenment.)

Sabbath's Theater
by Phillip Roth

Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century
by Mark Sedgwick

The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism
by Ronald L. Numbers

The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann

Some Problems of Philosophy
by William James

2666
by Roberto Bolaño

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami

The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of Earth's Antiquity
by Jack Repcheck
(not recommended)

The Meaning of Truth
by William James

Los Detectives Salvajes
by Roberto Bolaño

The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman

Selected Stories
by Anton Checkhov (trans. Ann Dunnigan)

The Areas of My Expertise
by John Hodgman

Legal Daisy Spacing
by Christopher Winn

Eat the Document
by Dana Spiotta

Eat the Document
by Dana Spiotta
(recommended)

A Short History of Progress
by Ronald Wright

Society and Knowledge
by Gordon Childe
(skimmed some sections)

Landing
by Emma Donoghue

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
by Thomas E. Ricks

Selected Stories
by Alice Munro

A Pluralistic Universe
by William James

Reading Comics
by Douglas Wolk

gave up on:
The System of Comics
by Thierry Groensteen

Harry Potter!

Slouching towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

True Blue
by David Milch and Bill Clark

Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Slouching Toward Bethlehem
by Joan Didion

selections from
A Cultural History of the Modern Age Vols. 1-3
by Egon Friedell

Friend of My Youth
by Alice Munro

Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills
by David Milch &co.

If on a winter's night a traveler
by Italo Calvino

House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life
both by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories
ed. Ben Marcus

Clouds of Witness
Strong Poison
by Dorothy L. Sayers

Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton

Unreliable Memoirs
by Clive James

The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property
by Lewis Hyde

El General en su Laberinto
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Tender is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Whose Body
by Dorothy Sayers

Call Me By Your Name
by Andre Aciman

A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Or Else
Robert Penn Warren

Pragmatism
by William James
(100 yr anniversary! but not the best James)

All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren


Martin Dressler
by Steven Millhauser

The Road
by Cormac McCarthy

The Now Habit
by Neil Fiore
(not recommended)

Getting Things Done
by David Allen
(yes)

The War of Art
by Steven Pressfield
(also yes)

Writings 1878-1899
William James
includes: Psychology: Briefer Course, The Will to Believe, Talks to Teachers, and Selected Essays

The Scramble for Africa: 1876-1912
by Thomas Pakenham

Demons
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, trans. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Changed Pop Culture
by David Kushner