Reading

2023
Phil Cousineau: The Art of Pilgrimage
Silvia Lazzaris with Jade Jeongso An: Honjok
Haruki Murakami: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (translated by Philip Gabriel)
Sayaka Murata: Life Ceremony (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)
Jennifer Paxton: The Celtic World
Yōko Tawada: Scattered All Over the Earth (translated by Margaret Mitsutani)
Tarjei Vesaas: The Birds (translated by Michael Barnes and Torbjorn Stoverud)
Campbell Walker: Your Head is a Houseboat

2022
Florent Chavouet: Tokyo on Foot
Mark Clague: O Say Can You Hear?
James Clear: Atomic Habits
Michael Emmerich, Jim Hinks, Masashi Matsuie (ed.): The Book of Tokyo
John Fotheringham: Master Japanese
Ted Gioia: Music: A Subversive History
Ryan Holiday: Discipline is Destiny
Christy Anne Jones: A Year in Tokyo
Hiromi Kawakami: People From My Neighborhood (translated by Ted Goossen)
R.F. Kuang: Babel
Cixin Liu: The Dark Forest (translated by Joel Martinsen)
Cixin Liu: Death’s End (translated by Ken Liu)
Cixin Liu: The Three-Body Problem (translated by Ken Liu)
John McWhorter: Language Families of the World
Shion Miura: The Easy Life in Kamusari (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter)
Shion Miura: Kamusari Tales Told at Night (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter)
Kate Molleson: Sound Within Sound
Erin Morgenstern: The Starless Sea
Kyoko Nakajima: The Little House (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)
Kidō Okamoto: The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi (translated by Ian MacDonald)
Peter E. Pool (ed.): The Altered Landscape
Harvey Sachs: Ten Masterpieces of Music
Harvey Sachs: The Ninth
Anthony Tommasini: The Indispensable Composers

2021
Derry Brabbs: The Roads to Santiago
Brené Brown: Daring Greatly
John Dougill, Paul Carty, Joe Cronin, Itsuyo Higashinaka, Michael Lambe, David McCullough (eds.): Kyoto: A Literary Guide
Robert Ferguson: Scandinavians
Peter Gay: Modernism
Matt Haig: The Comfort Book
John Hersey: Hiroshima
Keiichiro Hirano: At the End of the Matinee (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter)
Nathan Holder: Where Are All The Black Female Composers?
Ryan Holiday: The Obstacle is the Way
Kazuo Ishiguro: Klara and the Sun
Fenton Johnson: At the Center of All Beauty
Mieko Kawakami: Heaven (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd)
Yoshida Kenkō and Kamo no Chōmei: Essays in Idleness and Hōjōki (translated by Meredith McKinney)
Austin Kleon: Show Your Work!
Michael Lambe and Ted Taylor (eds.): Deep Kyoto Walks
Iain Maloney: The Only Gaijin in the Village
Shion Miura: The Great Passage (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter)
Minae Mizumura: An I-Novel (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter)
Craig Mod: Kissa by Kissa
Haruki Murakami: First Person Singular (translated by Philip Gabriel)
Sayaka Murata: Earthlings (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)
Kyoko Nakajima: Things Remembered and Things Forgotten (translated by Ginny Takemori and Ian McCullough MacDonald)
Annalee Newitz: Four Lost Cities
Nicholas Ostler: Empires of the Word
Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
Steven Pressfield: Do The Work!
Steven Pressfield: The War of Art
Georges Simenon: The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (translated by Linda Coverdale)
Georges Simenon: Pietr the Latvian (translated by David Bellos)
Kikuko Tsumura: There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job (translated by Polly Barton)
Antti Tuomainen: The Mine (translated by David Hackston)
Simon Winchester: Korea
Simon Winchester: The Professor and the Madman

2020
Karen Armstrong: The Lost Art of Scripture
Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Fictions (translated by Andrew Hurley)
Alain de Botton and John Armstrong: Art as Therapy
Joseph Campbell: Correspondence 1927-1987
Robertson Davies: The Rebel Angels
Matt Haig: How to Stop Time
Matt Haig: The Midnight Library
Matt Haig: Reasons to Stay Alive
Keiichiro Hirano: A Man (translated by Eli K.P. William)
Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman: The Daily Stoic
Elton John: Me
Stephen Johnson: How Shostakovich Changed My Mind
Austin Kleon: Keep Going
Austin Kleon: Steal Like An Artist
Matthew Legare: Smoke Over Tokyo
W. Somerset Maugham: The Moon and Sixpence
David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Yoko Ogawa: The Memory Police (translated by Stephen Snyder)
Steven Pressfield: The War of Art
Carl Sagan: Contact
Anna Sherman: The Bells of Old Tokyo
Natsume Soseki: And Then (translated by Norma Moore Field)
Antti Tuomainen: Little Siberia (translated by David Hackston)
Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

2019
Karin Breuer: Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism
Timothy Brook: Vermeer’s Hat
Joseph Campbell: Transformations of Myth Through Time
James Clear: Atomic Habits
Bill Clinton and James Patterson: The President is Missing
Felicia Day: Embrace Your Weird
Hal Elrod: The Miracle Morning
Fumiko Enchi: Masks (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter)
Christine Mari Inzer: Diary of a Tokyo Teen
Oliver Jeffers: Lost and Found
Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki: Oishinbo, A la Carte, Vol. 1
Hiromi Kawakami: The Nakano Thrift Shop (translated by Allison Markin Powell)
Stephen King: On Writing
Austin Kleon: Keep Going
Austin Kleon: Show Your Work
William Kloss: A History of European Art
Anne Lamott: Bird by Bird
Henning Mankell: Italian Shoes (translated by Laurie Thompson)
Yu Miri: Tokyo Ueno Station (translated by Morgan Giles)
Haruki Murakami: Killing Commendatore (translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen)
Hiroko Oyamada: The Factory (translated by David Boyd)
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (Jay Rubin, ed.)
Steven Pressfield: The Artist’s Journey
Shawna Yang Ryan: Green Island
Robert C. Sibley: The Way of the 88 Temples
Ófeigur Sigurðsson: Öræfi: The Wasteland (translated by Lytton Smith)
Jan Swafford: Beethoven
Shuji Takashina: The Japanese Sense of Beauty (translated by Matt Treyvaud)
Yoko Tawada: The Emissary (translated by Margaret Mitsutani)
Belinda Thomson: Impressionism: Origins, Practice, Reception
Mark A. Vieira: Forbidden Hollywood
Emilie Wapnick: How To Be Everything
Banana Yoshimoto: Kitchen (translated by Megan Backus)
Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski: The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings

2018
John David Anderson: Granted
Mason Currey: Daily Rituals
The Dalai Lama: The World of Tibetan Buddhism
Albert Flynn DeSilver: Writing as a Path to Awakening
Héctor Garcia and Francesc Miralles: Ikigai
Joshua Hammer: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
Lafcadio Hearn: Kwaidan
Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse: Singapore Dream and Other Adventures
Takashi Hiraide: The Guest Cat
Ryan Holiday: The Obstacle is the Way
Yasushi Inoue: Tun-huang
Hamid Ismailov (trans. Donald Rayfield): The Devils’ Dance
Tove Jansson: The True Deceiver
Hiromi Kawakami: Manazuru
Hiromi Kawakami: Strange Weather in Tokyo
Natsuo Kirino: Real World
Austin Kleon: Steal Like An Artist
Austin Kleon: Show Your Work!
Danielle Krysa: Your Inner Critic is a Big Jerk
Mark Manson: The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck
Patrick McGinley: Cold Spring
David Mitchell: number9dream
Helen Mitsios (ed.): Digital Geishas and Talking Frogs: The Best 21st Century Short Stories from Japan
Sayaka Murata: Convenience Store Woman
Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer
Michael Pye: The Edge of the World
Questlove: Creative Quest
John E. Sarno, M.D.: The Mindbody Prescription
Martin E.P. Seligman: Learned Optimism
Robin Sloan: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Twyla Tharp: The Creative Habit
Dempow Torishima: Sisyphean
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano: Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s
Andrew R. Wilson: Understanding Imperial China

2017
Karen Armstrong: Twelve Steps To A Compassionate Life
Fredrik Backman: A Man Called Ove
Martha Beck: Finding Your Way in a Wild New World
Howard Bronson and Mike Riley: How To Heal A Broken Heart in 30 Days
Julia Cameron: The Right to Write
Susan Daitch: The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir
Susan J. Elliott: Getting Past Your Breakup
Hal Elrod: Miracle Morning
Michael Frayn: Headlong
Hideo Furukawa: Slow Boat
Elizabeth Gilbert: Big Magic
James Gleick: Time Travel
Bradley Trevor Greive: Tomorrow
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Buried Giant
Ross King: Mad Enchantment
Karl Ove Knausgaard: My Struggle (Book 1)
Elizabeth Kolbert: The Sixth Extinction
Olivia Laing: The Lonely City (reviewed here)
Haruki Murakami: Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa (reviewed here)
Haruki Murakami: Men Without Women
Haruki Murakami: Pinball, 1973
Haruki Murakami: South of the Border, West of the Sun
Bethanne Patrick (ed.): The Books That Changed My Life
Steven Pressfield: The War of Art
Don Miguel Ruiz: The Four Agreements
George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo
Michael A. Singer: The Untethered Soul
Various: Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan 2
Grant L. Voth: The History of World Literature
Emilie Wapnick: How To Be Everything
John Williams: Butcher’s Crossing
Hanya Yanagihara: The People in the Trees

2016
Charles Allen: Ashoka (reviewed here)
Max and Linda Ciampoli: Churchill’s Secret Agent
Mason Currey: Daily Rituals
John Dougill: Japan’s World Heritage Sites
Linda Egenes and Kumuda Reddy: The Ramayana
Michael Erard: Babel No More
Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend (reviewed here)
Marianne Fritz: The Weight of Things
Natalie Goldberg: The True Secret of Writing
Robert van Gulik: The Phantom of the Temple
Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett: The Thin Man
Grant Hardy: Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition
David Helvarg: The Golden Shore (reviewed here)
Keigo Higashino: Malice
Nick Hornby: Ten Years In The Tub
Kazuo Ishiguro: An Artist of the Floating World
Thupten Jinpa, PhD: A Fearless Heart
Han Kang: The Vegetarian (reviewed here)
Kawabata Yasunari (trans. Edward G. Seidensticker): Snow Country
Charles C. Mann: 1491
Tom McCarthy: Satin Island
Patrick McGinley: Bogmail
David Mitchell: Slade House
Haruki Murakami: Hear the Wind Sing
Jo Nesbø: The Snowman
Ruth Ozeki: A Tale for the Time Being
Matthew Pearl: The Last Bookaneer
Ellis Peters: A Morbid Taste for Bones
Rolf Potts: Vagabonding
Mark J. Ravina: Understanding Japan
Helen Russell: The Year of Living Danishly
Oliver Sacks: Gratitude
Barbara Sher: Refuse to Choose!
Joan Stanley-Baker: Japanese Art
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic
Richard Tames: A Traveller’s History of Japan
Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now
Various: Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan, Vol. 1
William Scott Wilson: Walking the Kiso Road

2015
Ruth Brandon: Surreal Lives
Brené Brown: Daring Greatly
Joseph Campbell: Romance of the Grail
Perry Garfinkel: Buddha or Bust
Austin Kleon: Steal Like An Artist (reread) (reviewed here)
Wendy Lesser: Why I Read
Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven
Greg McKeown: Essentialism
Andrew X. Pham: Catfish and Mandala
Richard Powers: Orfeo
Richard Rhodes: Hedy’s Folly
Lorin Roche: Meditation Made Easy
John S. Strong: The Buddha: A Short Biography
Yasutake Tsutsui: Paprika
Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith: Origins
Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Shadow of the Wind

2014
Kenneth R. Bartlett: The Great Tours: Experiencing Medieval Europe
Martha Beck: Finding Your Own North Star
Gabrielle Bell: The Voyeurs
Craig G. Benjamin: Foundations of Eastern Civilization
Timothy Brook: Mr. Selden’s Map of China
Julia Cameron: The Miracle of Morning Pages
Michael D. Coe: Angkor and the Khmer Civilization
William R. Cook: The Cathedral
Umberto Eco: The Book of Legendary Lands (reviewed here)
Dave Eggers: The Circle
Chris Grosso: Indie Spiritualist
Steve Hagen: Meditation: Now or Never
Grant Hardy: Sacred Texts of the World
Ross King: Brunelleschi’s Dome
Austin Kleon: Show Your Work!
Michael Knight and Joseph Z. Chang (ed.): Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy (reviewed here)
Roger Lipsey: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art (reviewed here)
David Lodge: A Man of Parts
Henning Mankell: An Event in Autumn
Lama Marut: Be Nobody
David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks
Haruki Murakami: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami: The Strange Library
Christopher Moore: Sacré Bleu
Mark W. Muesse: Practicing Mindfulness
Carol J. Oja: Colin McPhee: Composer In Two Worlds
Russell Shorto: Amsterdam
Rebecca Solnit: A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Donna Tartt: The Secret History
Various: Monkey Business, Vol. 1

2013
John Burdett: Bangkok 8
Julia Cameron: The Artist’s Way
Joseph Campbell: Myths of Light
Pema Chödrön: How To Meditate
Andy Couturier: A Different Kind of Luxury (reviewed here)
Mason Currey: Daily Rituals
William Dalrymple: In Xanadu
Chris Dewey: Mike Oldfield: A Life Dedicated to Music
Edward A. Gargan: The River’s Tale
Jocelyn K. Glei (ed.): Manage Your Day-To-Day
Thich Nhat Hanh: The Long Road Turns to Joy
Arnaldur Indridason: Jar City
Michio Kaku: Physics of the Future
Donald Keene: 5 Modern Japanese Novelists
Austin Kleon: Steal Like An Artist (reread) (reviewed here)
William Kloss: A History of European Art
Meredith Maran (ed.): Why We Write
Candice Millard: The River of Doubt
Eddie Muller: Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (reviewed here)
Nancy Pearl: Book Lust To Go
Christopher Ross: Mishima’s Sword
Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez: Along the Way
John Shors: Temple of a Thousand Faces
Thomas Van Essen: The Center of the World
Yi Chung-jun: Seopyeonje – The Southerners’ Songs
Shuichi Yoshida: Villain

2012
Karen Armstrong: The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
Karen Armstrong: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
Alan Booth: The Roads to Sata: A 2000 Mile Walk Through Japan
Timothy Brook: Vermeer’s Hat
Ian Buruma: The China Lover
Joseph Campbell: Sake & Satori: Asian Journals – Japan
Thomas Christensen: 1616: The World in Motion (reviewed here)
Phil Cousineau: Stoking the Creative Fires
John Dougill: In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians (reviewed here)
Shusako Endo: Silence
Martin Gayford: The Yellow House (reviewed here)
Eric Hansen: Stranger in the Forest (reviewed here)
Lafcadio Hearn: Kwaidan
Keigo Higashino: The Devotion of Suspect X
C.G. Jung: The Undiscovered Self
Stephen King: On Writing
Austin Kleon: Steal Like An Artist (reviewed here)
Henning Mankell: Faceless Killers
Haruki Murakami: Underground (reviewed here)
Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith: Van Gogh: The Life (reviewed here)
Lisa Napoli: Radio Shangri-La
Richard Rhodes: How to Write
Judith Schalansky: Atlas of Remote Islands
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: The Laughing Policeman
Paul F. State: A Brief History of Ireland (reviewed here)
Robert Thurman: Infinite Life
Émile Zola: L’Oeuvre (The Masterpiece)

2011
The South Asian Challenge 2011
Hosted by S. Krishna’s Books
William Dalrymple – Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (reviewed here)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – The Palace of Illusions (reviewed here)
Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things (reviewed here)
Stephen Talty – Escape from the Land of Snows

East and Southeast Asia Challenge 2011
Hosted by Violet Crush
Miguel Covarrubias – Island of Bali (reviewed here)
Peter Hessler – Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory (reviewed here)
Yasunari Kawabata – Thousand Cranes
Alex Kerr – Lost Japan
Yoko Ogawa – Hotel Iris (reviewed here)
Jun’ichiro Tanizaki – Some Prefer Nettles (reviewed here)
Colin Thubron – To A Mountain In Tibet
Nancy Tingley – Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea

Haruki Murakami Challenge 2011
Hosted by murakamichallenge.blogspot.com
Underground

2011 E-Book Reading Challenge
Hosted by The Ladybug Reads
David Burke – Writers in Paris
William Dalrymple – Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (reviewed here)
Henning Mankell – The Dogs of Riga
Henning Mankell – The Man Who Smiled
Yoko Ogawa – Hotel Iris (reviewed here)
The Best Travel Writing 2010
Colin Thubron – To A Mountain In Tibet

Other
David Burke – Writers in Paris
Paul Dickson – The Hidden Language of Baseball
Michael Ferber – Romanticism
K. David Harrison – The Last Speakers
Henning Mankell – One Step Behind
Henning Mankell – The Dogs of Riga
Henning Mankell – The Man Who Smiled
David McCullough – The Greater Journey
Charles Rosen – The Classical Style
Rick Steves – Travel As A Political Act
The Best Travel Writing 2010