book lists All books read since the Society’s founding alphabetical list list by date read disaster stories Books selected by each society member Brother Alpert Brother Fee Brother Karrow Brother Morris Brother Strokosch Annual “Best of” rankings 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 book list by date read Geronimo: His Own Story—The Autobiography of a Great Patriot Warrior (1970) by Geronimo and S. M. Barrett read 3/1997 Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (1932) by Black Elk and John G. Neihardt read 5/1997 Beat Not the Bones (1952) by Charlotte Jay read 6/1997 Burmese Days (1934) by George Orwell read 7/1997 A Civil Action (1995) by Jonathan Harr read 8/1997 The Age of Grief (1987) by Jane Smiley read 9/1997 Seven Years in Tibet (1953) by Heinrich Harrer read 10/1997 Eve Reviv’d, or the Fair One Stark-Naked (1684) anonymous read 11/1997 The Fugitive Eye (1953) by Charlotte Jay read 12/1997 The Treasure Of the Sierra Madre (1935) by B. Traven read 1/1998 The Wings of the Dove (1902) by Henry James read 2/1998 Lost Horizon (1933) by James Hilton read 3/1998 Stones from the River (1994) by Ursula Hegi read 4/1998 Birdsong (1993) by Sebastian Faulks read 5/1998 Shipping News (1993) by Annie Proulx read 6/1998 Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (1959) by Alfred Lansing read 7/1998 The Illustrated Man (1951) by Ray Bradbury read 8/1998 The Playboy of the Western World (1907) by John Millington Synge read 8/1998 Into the Wild (1998) by Jon Krakauer read 10/1998 Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany (1997) by Stephen E. Ambrose read 11/1998 The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien read 12/1998 Poetry magazine (Dec. 1998 issue) various authors read 1/1999 Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner read 2/1999 Delta of Venus (1969) by Anaïs Nin read 3/1999 The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America’s Dilemma (1998) by Alex Kotlowitz read 4/1999 White Noise (1984) by Don DeLillo read 5/1999 Ship of Gold (1987) by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar read 6/1999 Man Without a Gun (1999) by Giandomenico Picco read 7/1999 Cities of the Plain (1998) by Cormac McCarthy read 8/1999 The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts of In-flight Accidents (1998) by Malcolm MacPherson read 9/1999 The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy read 10/1999 The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) by Sebastian Barry read 11/1999 Slaves in the Family (1998) by Edward Ball read 12/1999 Barrel Fever (1994) by David Sedaris read 1/2000 Red China Blues (1996) by Jan Wong read 2/2000 Darkness at Noon (1941) by Arthur Koestler read 3/2000 Master and Commander (1970) by Patrick O’Brian read 4/2000 The Children of Henry VIII (1996) by Alison Weir read 5/2000 The Loved One (1948) by Evelyn Waugh read 6/2000 Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) by Louis De Bernieres read 7/2000 In the Lake of the Woods (1994) by Tim O’Brien read 8/2000 Captain Bligh and Mister Christian: The Men and the Mutiny (1973) by Richard Alexander Hough read 9/2000 Tabloid Dreams (1996) by Robert Olen Butler read 10/2000 Mawson’s Will: The Greatest Polar Survival Story Ever Written (2000) by Lennard Bickel read 11/2000 Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) by David Sedaris read 12/2000 The Living & the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996) by Paul Hendrickson read 1/2001 Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee read 2/2001 Death in Summer (1998) by William Trevor read 3/2001 The Ox-Bow Incident (1940) by Walter Van Tilburg Clark read 3/2001 The Terrible Hours (1999) by Peter Maas read 6/2001 A Conspiracy of Paper (2000) by David Liss read 6/2001 Monster (1997) by John Gregory Dunne read 7/2001 The Murder of Napoleon (1982) by David Hapgood read 8/2001 Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (2000) by Stephen E. Ambrose read 9/2001 The African Queen (1935) by C.S. Forester read 10/2001 Motherless Brooklyn (1999) by Jonathan Lethem read 11/2001 King Solomon’s Mines (1885) by R. Haggard read 12/2001 The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler read 1/2002 Milosz’s ABC’s (2001) by Czeslaw Milosz read 2/2002 The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime (2000) by Miles Harvey read 3/2002 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon read 4/2002 Twilight of Empire (1989) by Allan W. Eckert read 5/2002 A Bend in the River (1979) by V.S. Naipal read 6/2002 Bury Me Standing (1995) by Isabel Fonseca read 7/2002 Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic (1995) by George W. Hilton read 8/2002 Everything is Illuminated (2002) by Jonathan Safran Foer read 10/2002 The Maltese Falcon (1929) by Dashiell Hammett read 11/2002 Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire (1999) by John MacLean read 11/2002 My Antonia (1918) by Willa Cather read 12/2002 The Circus Fire: A True Story (2000) by Stewart O’Nan read 1/2003 The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) by Jose Saramago read 2/2003 The White Devil (1612) by John Webster read 3/2003 Black Dogs (1992) by Ian McEwan read 4/2003 Knowledge and Information Technology (2000) from Partisan Review read 5/2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (2003) by Erik Larson read 6/2003 Stormy Weather (1995) by Carl Hiaasen read 7/2003 Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (1999) by Daniel Stashower & Sherlock Holmes read 8/2003 The Odyssey of Kostas Volakis (1999) by Harry Mark Petrakis read 9/2003 Life of Pi (2001) by Yann Martel read 10/2003 The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America’s Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and the Feds (2003) by Mike Stanton read 11/2003 The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown read 12/2003 The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 (2003) various authors read 1/2004 Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life (2003) by Toby Cecchini read 1/2004 Damascus Gate (1998) by Robert Stone read 3/2004 Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure (2001) by Don & Petie Kladstrup read 4/2004 The Human Stain (2000) by Philip Roth read 5/2004 The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History (2002) by David A. Vise read 6/2004 The Great Atlantic Air Race (1977) by Percy Rowe read 7/2004 Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (1885) by Ulysses S. Grant read 8/2004 Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (2004) by Alfred F. Young read 8/2004 Invisible Man (1947) by Ralph Ellison read 10/2004 An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (2003) by Henry Wiencek read 11/2004 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992) by Robert Olen Butler read 12/2004 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000) Anthony Bourdain read 1/2005 Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II (2004) by Robert Kurson read 1/2005 Water Music (1980) by T.C. Boyle read 2/2005 Brighton Rock (1938) by Graham Greene read 4/2005 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997) by Haruki Murakami read 5/2005 The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad read 5/2005 The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger read 7/2005 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) by Hunter S. Thompson read 8/2005 1776 (2005) by David McCullough read 8/2005 The Kite Runner (2003) Khaled Hosseini read 9/2005 So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980) by William Maxwell read 10/2005 Ordinary Wolves (2004) by Seth Kantner read 11/2005 The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995) by Salman Rushdie read 12/2005 Marie (1912) by H. Rider Haggard read 1/2006 Collapse (2005) by Jared Diamond read 2/2006 Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (1986) translated by Dennis Tedlock read 3/2006 The Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1998) by John Barry read 4/2006 In Cold Blood (1965) by Truman Capote read 5/2006 Pellucidar (1915) by Edgar Rice Burroughs read 6/2006 The Crying of Lot 49 (1988) by Thomas Pynchon read 7/2006 The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles read 8/2006 Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (2003) by David von Drehle read 9/2006 American Pastoral (1997) by Phillip Roth read 10/2006 The Yacoubian Building (2004) by Alaa Al Aswany read 11/2006 Thunderstruck (2006) by Erik Larson read 12/2006 House Made of Dawn (1969) by N. Scott Momaday read 1/2007 The Children’s Blizzard (2004) by David Laskin read 2/2007 Empire Falls (2001) by Richard Russo read 3/2007 The Old Gringo (1985) by Carlos Fuentes read 4/2007 Out (2003) by Natsuo Kirino read 5/2007 Runner in the Sun (1954) by D’Arcy McNickle read 6/2007 Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History (2002) by Denise Gess and William Lutz read 6/2007 Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut read 7/2007 The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy read 8/2007 The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002) by Gary Shteyngart read 10/2007br> The Killer Inside Me (1952) by Jim Thompson read 11/2007 Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Explosion 1917 (2005) by Laura M. MacDonald read 12/2007 The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007) by Michael Chabon read 1/2008 Out Stealing Horses (2007) by Per Petterson read 2/2008 The Chicago Way (2007) by Michael Harvey read 3/2008 Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley read 4/2008 Assassination Vacation (2005) by Sarah Vowell read 5/2008 Playing the Moldovans at Tennis (2001) by Tony Hawks read 6/2008 Flashman in the Great Game (1975) by George MacDonald Fraser read 7/2008 The Book Thief (2006) by Markus Zusak read 8/2008 The Fabulous Clipjoint (1953) by Frederic Brown read 9/2008 Painter in a Savage Land (2008) by Miles Harvey read 10/2008 When Nietzsche Wept (1992) by Irvin D. Yalom read 11/2008 The Secret Scripture (2008) by Sebastian Barry read 12/2008 Shadow Country (2008) by Peter Matthiessen read 1/2009 Legs (1975) by William Kennedy read 2/2009 Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (2003) by Stephen Puleo read 3/2009 Charlie Wilson s War (2003) by George Crile read 4/2009 The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How to Do Them) (2007) by Peter Sagal read 4/2009 People of the Book (2008) by Geraldine Brooks read 6/2009 Fort Dearborn (2007) by Jerry Crimmins & Gerald A. Danzer read 7/2009 In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of Whaleship Essex (2000) by Nathaniel Philbrick read 8/2009 The Plot Against America (2004) by Philip Roth read 9/2009 The White Tiger (2008) by Aravind Adiga read 10/2009 Who You Gotta Kill (2009) by Russell Fee read 11/2009 The Known World (2003) by Edward P. Jones read 12/2009 47 Down: The 1922 Argonaut Gold Mine Disaster (2004) by O. Henry Mace read 1/2010 The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2006) by Muriel Barbery read 2/2010 Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985) by Richard Holmes read 3/2010 Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009) by Max Blumenthal read 4/2010 August: Osage County (2008) by Tracy Letts read 5/2010 Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul (2007) by Karen Abbott read 6/2010 The Dean’s December (1982) by Saul Bellow read 7/2010 No Other Life (1993) by Brian Moore read 8/2010 Dark Voyage (2004) by Alan Furst read 9/2010 Suite Française (2007) by Irène Némirovsky read 10/2010 The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2006) by Timothy Egan read 11/2010 Every Man Dies Alone (1947) by Hans Fallada read 12/2010 Cruising Paradise: Tales (1996) by Sam Shepard read 1/2011 True Grit (1968) by Charles Portis read 2/2011 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) by Rebecca Skloot read 3/2011 F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century (2007) by Mark Levine read 4/2011 The Finkler Question (2010) by Howard Jacobson read 5/2011 Who You Gotta Kill (2011) by Russell Fee read 6/2011 Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010) by Laura Hillenbrand read 7/2011 Now You See Him (2009) by Eli Gottlieb read 8/2011 The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter (2011) by Mark Seal read 9/2011 County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital (2010) by David Ansell read 10/2011 The Silver Swan (2008) by Benjamin Black read 11/2011 Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II (2011) by Mitchell Zuckoff read 12/2011 send comments, fan mail, and miscellany to bibliophilicsociety@gmail.com webmistress caitlin strokosch © 2006-2011