All The Good Names Were Taken: value of higher education

The 2026 Reading List

The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means, John Scalzi
Toxic Prey, John Sandford
Fugitive Telemetry, Martha Wells
The Shattering Peace, John Scalzi
Heroic Hearts, Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes, editors
The Finn in Me: The Chronicles of a Karelian Emigrant, Sinikka Gronberg Garcia
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
The Hours, Michael Cunningham
Slayers of Old, Jim C. Hines
The Waiting, Michael Connelly
Witch King, Martha Wells
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
Master Wycliffe's Summons, Mel Starr
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
When the Moon Hits Your Eye, John Scalzi
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, Eric Foner
Judgement Prey, John Sandford

My Pulitzer life list with the year the book won the prize, not the year I read it

Years of Grace (1931), Margaret Ayer Barnes
To Kill A Mockingbird (1961), Harper Lee
The Yearling (1939), Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Way West (1950), A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
The Travels of Jamie McPheeters (1959), Robert Lewis Taylor
The Town (1951), Conrad Richter
The Stories of John Cheever (1979), John Cheever
The Store (1933), T. S. Stribling
The Stone Diaries (1995), Carol Shields
The Shipping News (1994), E. Annie Proulx
The Road (2007), Cormac McCarthy
The Reivers (1963), William Faulkner
The Optimist's Daughter (1973), Eudora Welty
The Old Man and the Sea (1953), Ernest Hemingway
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1990), Oscar Hijuelo
The Magnificent Ambersons (1919), Booth Tarkington
The Late George Apley (1938), John P. Marquand
The Killer Angels (1975), Michael Shaara
The Keepers of the House (1965), Shirley Ann Grau
The Hours (1999), Michael Cunningham
The Grapes of Wrath (1940), John Steinbeck
The Good Earth (1932), Pearl S. Buck
The Goldfinch (2014), Donna Tartt
The Fixer (1967), Bernard Malamud
The Executioner's Song (1979), Norman Mailer
The Edge of Sadness (1962), Edwin O'Connor
The Color Purple (1983), Alice Walker
The Collected Stories of Katherine Ann Porter (1966), Katherine Ann Porter
The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford (1970), Jean Stafford
The Caine Mutiny (1952), Herman Wouk
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1928), Thornton Wilder
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2001), Michael Chabon
The Age of Innocence (1921), Edith Wharton
The Able McLaughlins (1924), Margaret Wilson
Tales of the South Pacific (1948), James Michener
So Big (1925), Edna Ferber
Scarlet Sister Mary (1929), Julia Peterkin
Rabbit is Rich (1982), John Updike
Rabbit at Rest (1991), John Updike
One of Ours (1923), Willa Cather
Now in November (1935), Josephine Johnson
Martin Dressler (1997),Stephen Millhauser
Lonesome Dove (1986), Larry McMurtry
Laughing Boy (1930), Oliver La Farge
Lamb in His Bosom (1934), Caroline Miller
Journey in the Dark (1944), Martin Flavin
Ironweed (1983), William Kennedy
Interpreter of Maladies (2000), Jhumpa Lahiri
Independence Day (1996), Richard Ford
In This Our Life (1942), Ellen Glasgow
Humboldt's Gift (1976), Saul Bellow
House Made of Dawn (1969), N. Scott Momaday
Honey in the Horn (1936), Harold L. Davis
His Family (1918), Ernest Poole
Gone With the Wind (1937), Margaret Mitchell
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
Foreign Affairs (1985), Alison Lurie
Elbow Room (1978), James Alan McPherson
Early Autumn (1927), Louis Bromfield
Dragon's Teeth (1943), Upton Sinclair
Confessions of Nat Turner (1968), William Styron
Breathing Lessons (1989), Anne Tyler
Beloved (1988), Toni Morrison
Arrowsmith (1926), Sinclair Lewis
Angle of Repose (1972), Wallace Stegner
Andersonville (1956), MacKinley Kantor
All the King's Men (1947), Robert Penn Warren
Alice Adams (1922), Booth Tarkington
Advise and Consent (1960), Allen Drury
A Thousand Acres (1992), Jane Smiley
A Summons to Memphis (1987), Peter Taylor
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1993), Robert Olen Butler
A Fable (1955), William Faulkner
A Death in the Family (1958), James Agee
A Confederacy of Dunces (1981), John Kennedy Toole
A Bell for Adano (1945), John Hersey

Monday, December 7, 2009