heidikins.com

Books I Have Read

I am of the opinion that one should always search for knowledge. Now, there are many people with this same opinion who are far more eloquent than I.  When I was in junior high I read George Orwell’s 1984 and absolutely fell in love with his language and his abstract thinking; there is a sentence from that book that has stuck with me ever since.  It should be noted, there are precious few bits of books I commit to memory the moment I read them–this was the first.

…Once a mind has been expanded to include a new idea, it can no longer return to it’s original size…

This is why I read.

---

2012 5-Star Reads

• A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
• Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
• My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
• The Gift of Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Lost City of Z, David Grann
• Zeitoun, Dave Eggers

2011 5-Star Reads

• Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M., Sam Wasson
  
• Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
• I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui
• Superfreakanomics, Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

2010 5-Star Reads

• All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
• Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
• First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
• In A Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson
• Letter to My Daughter, Maya Angelou
• Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
• Nudge, Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
• Paranormalcy, Kiersten White
• The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
• The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine
• The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner
• The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
• The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
• The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
• What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell

2009 5-Star Reads

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• Henry V, Shakespeare
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan
• The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
• These is My Words, Nancy Turner

2008 5-Star Reads

• Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie
• Freakanomics, Steve Levitt & Stephen Dubner
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom

2007 5-Star Reads

• Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynn Truss
• Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl
• The End of Poverty, Jeffrey D. Sachs
• The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay
• The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
• Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortensen & David Relin

2012 4-Star Reads

• No Great Mischief, Alistair MacLeod
  
• Picasso’s War, Russel Martin
  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
• The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis

2011 4-Star Reads

• Supernaturally, Kiersten White
• The Chosen, Chaim Potok
• The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin
• The Help, Kathryn Stockett
  
• The Male Brain, Louann Brizendine
• Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
• Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, Susan Jane Gilman

2010 4-Star Reads

• A Maze of Grace, Trish Ryan
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
• Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
• Lost on Planet China, J. Maarten Troost
• Naked Economics, Charles Wheelan
• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Top Stoppard
• Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman
• Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card
• The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, John Steinbeck
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
• The Girl Who Played with Fire, Steig Larsson
• The Great Brain, John D. Fitzgerald
• The Great Brain #2 (More Adventures of the Great Brain), John D. Fitzgerald
• The Great Brain #3 (Me and My Little Brain), John D. Fitzgerald
• The Great Brain #4 (The Great Brain at the Academy), John D. Fitzgerald
• The House on Mango Street, Sanda Cisneros
• The Twenty-One Balloons, William Pene du Bois

2009 4-Star Reads

• 1434: The Year China Ignited the Renaissance, Gavin Menzies
• Anthem, Ayn Rand
• Empress Orchid, Anchee Min
• Gourmet Rhapsody, Muriel Barbery
• In the Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
• My Life in France, Julia Child
• Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
• The Pursuit of Happyness, Christopher Gardner

2008 4-Star Reads

• 1421: The Year China Discovered America, Gavin Menzies
• Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
• London is the Best City in America, Laura Dave
• Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
• Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
• Teacher Man, Frank McCourt
• The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad
• There Are No Children Here, Alex Kotlowitz
• ‘Tis, Frank McCourt

2007 4-Star Reads

• Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette, Sena Jeter Naslund
• Ahab’s Wife, or the Star Gazer, Sena Jeter Naslund
• Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
• Elegance, Kathleen Tessaro
• Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
• Horses Like the Wind and Other Tales from Africa, Baker Morrow
• Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, Susan Jane Gilman
• Life of Pi, Yann Martel
• Night, Elie Wiesel
• Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, Robert D. Kaplan
• The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime, Mark Haddon
• The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger
• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost

2012 3-Star Reads

• Bossypants, Tina Fey
• Nanjing Requiem, Ha Jin
• Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, Bill Bryson
  
• Style, Kate Spade
• Sun of Suns, Karl Schroeder
• The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Secret Life of Pronouns, James Pennebaker

2011 3-Star Reads

• Das Kapital, Karl Marx
• DIY U, Anya Kamenetz
• Madame Bovary, Gustav Flaubert
• History of Love, Nicole Krauss

2010 3-Star Reads

• A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
• A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
• Bel Canto, Ann Patchet
• Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
• Confessions of Georgia Nicolson (#2 in Series), Louise Rennison
• Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst
• Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
• Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
• Sold, Patricia McCormick
• The African Queen, C.S. Forster
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
• The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Last Empress, Anchee Min
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Richard P. Feynman
• Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

2009 3-Star Reads

• Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
• Confessions of a Shopaholic, Sophie Kinsella
• Confessions of Georgia Nicolson (#1 in Series), Louise Rennison
• Getting Stoned with Savages, J. Maarten Troost
• Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik
• Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Huston
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
• The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
• Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare

2008 3-Star Reads

• Atonement, Ian McEwan
• Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
• Mandela: The Authorized Biography, Anthony Sampson

2007 3-Star Reads

• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
• Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk
• P.S. I Love You, Cecelia Ahern
• Talk to the Hand, Lynne Truss
• The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas
• The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger

2012 2-Star Reads

• Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, Ree Drummond

2011 2-Star Reads

• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
  
• Woman, Child for Sale, Gilbert King

2010 2-Star Reads

• Dancing Girls of Lahore, Louise Brown
• Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
• For One More Day, Mitch Albom
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
• The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler

2009 2-Star Reads

• The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd
• The Secret of Lost Things, Sheridan Hay

2008 2-Star Reads

• 1776, David McCullough
• Weekend in Paris, Robyn Sisman

2007 2-Star Reads

• 19 Minutes, Jodi Picoult
• Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

2009 1-Star Reads

• A Passage to India, E. M. Forester
• Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
• Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bill Bryson

---

5 Comments so far
Leave a comment