Wynette Richards
Some Favorite Books

Fiction

• Jane Austen
  • Pride and Prejudice (all-time favorite)
  • Mansfield Park
  • Emma
  • Persuasian
  • Sense and Sensibility

• Willa Cather
  • Death Comes for the Archbishop (a must-read for a New Mexican or newmexicophile)

• Robertson Davies
  • Fifth Business
  • The Manticore
  • World of Wonders
  • The 3 together are called The Deptford Trilogy. Read in order given.

• Helen Fielding
  • Bridget Jones's Diary
  • The Edge of Reason
  • Read in the above order. Hilarious, especially if you've read Pride and Prejudice and/or seen the BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice, the one with Colin Firth.

• Ken Follett
  • Eye of the Needle (I read this a long time ago and remember liking this, the only spy novel I ever read.)

• John Galsworthy
  • The Forsyte Saga (quite a soap opera; actually 3 novels)

• Elizabeth George
  • Her Inspector Lynley mysteries. (So far I've read the first 6.)

• Herman Hesse
  • All of his books. (I read nearly all his books when I was in my 20s and 30s and loved them then.)

• Tony Hillerman
  • All his Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee (Navajo) mysteries

• Nick Hornby
  • About a Boy (one of my favorite books, good movie, too)
  • High Fidelity

• P. D. James
  • All her mysteries

• Harry Kemelman
  • The Rabbi Small Mysteries. Be sure to read them in order, starting with Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late.

• Elinor Lipman
  • The Inn at Lake Devine (my favorite Elinor Lipman book)
  • The Ladies' Man
  • all her other books (I think I've read all her books and liked every one.)

• William Somerset Maugham
  • The Razor's Edge
  • Of Human Bondage
  • The Moon and Sixpense

• Barbara Pym
  • Any of her books (They all run together in my mind, but I've read most, maybe all, of them and loved all the ones I read.)

• Anita Shreve
  • The Pilot's Wife (Read this if you want to get lost in a page-turner.)

• Dodie Smith
  • I Capture the Castle

• Wallace Stegner
  • Angle of Repose

• Scott Turow
  • Presumed Innocent (a good mystery)

• Anne Tyler
  • Ladder of Years
  • A Patchwork Planet
  • Back When We Were Grownups
  • I like her above later books the best, but all her books are good. She is a wonderful writer.

Non-Fiction

• Natalie Angier
  • Woman, An Intimate Geography

• Charlotte Joko Beck
  • Nothing Special: Living Zen
  • Everyday Zen: Love & Work

• Bill Bryson
  • Neither Here Nor There (travels in Europe, hilarious)
  • The Lost Continent (travels in American, hilarious)
  • In a Sunburned Country (travels in Australia)
  • I'm a Stranger Here Myself (about returning to America)
  • The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got that Way
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything
  • Can you tell I like Bill Bryson?

• Pema Chodron
  • When Things Fall Apart

• Barbara Ehrenreich
  • Nickel and Dimed

• Richard Feynman
  • Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman

• Colin Fletcher
  • The Man Who Walked Through Time

• Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Eat Pray Love

• Natalie Goldberg
  • Writing Down the Bones

• Nick Hornby
  • Songbook

• Jon Krakauer
  • Into Thin Air
  • Into The Wild

• Anne Lamont
  • Bird By Bird

• Mark and Delia Owens
  • Cry of the Kalahari

• Michael Pollan
  • The Omnivore's Dilemma

• Robert Sapolsky
  • Monkeyluv and Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals
  • The Trouble With Testosterone: And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament

• Joe Simpson
  • Touching the Void (as you see, I like survival stories)

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable