† Currently reading
‡ Favorite
Disclaimer: This chart is incomplete. I'll add to it as different books I've read in the past bubble to my consciousness and as I read more.
| Title | Author | Year | Rating | Start date | End date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Name of the Wind † | Patrick Rothfuss | 2007 | 2026/10/18 | |||
| The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King † | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1955 | 8.8 | |||
| Brothers Karamazov † | Fyodor Dostoevsky | 1880 | Many false starts. Let's say 2026/8 | |||
| The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1954 | 8 | I love the Ents and think "don't be hasty" in the voice of the audiobook somewhat frequently to myself. | ||
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1954 | 8.5 | I think the way they describe smeagol's descent into gollum through sin and obsession is very well written and mirror human psychology and trappings of addition. | ||
| Harrison Bergeron | Kurt Vonnegut | 1961 | 5 | This irritated me and made me uncomfortable. I also don't even find the topic well explored. Short stories are generally pretty limited though. | ||
| This Is Water | David Foster Wallace | 2005 | 2026 | I didn't really feel the same way. I think the conclusion wasn't intense enough for me. But also the ending of Anna Karenina wasn't intense... it was actually kind of similar in essence, so I don't know why this wasn't as compelling or poignant for me. | ||
| Anna Karenina ‡ | Leo Tolstoy | 1878 | 9.8 | Started after a friend I "started it with" finished it. 2024. Shoutout Xavi. | 2025 | Life affirming. I relate to Levin, Kitty, and Anna in different ways. I like the idea of idealizing a partner who helps you augment your output of love and truth in the world. The final chapter with Levin is both super intangible to me and deeply resonant. Virtue through a pursuit rather than a state. |
| Ecclesiastes | Qoheleth (traditionally Solomon) | c. 450–200 BCE | 9.5 | |||
| The Book of Disquiet | Fernando Pessoa | 1982 | 7 | This is the most depressing thing I've ever read. It's beautiful and poetic, but extremely effective at moving me into state of inert misery. | ||
| Meditations | Marcus Aurelius | c. 170–180 CE | 7 | |||
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | 1932 | 9 | Read it in the last few weeks of undergrad. | ||
| The Trial and Death of Socrates | Plato | c. 399–360 BCE | 9 | 2021 | 2021 | Cried. Living for some truth outside of yourself. |
| The Death of Ivan Ilyich | Leo Tolstoy | 1886 | 7.5 | 2021 | 2021 | Painful. |
| Confessions | Leo Tolstoy | 1882 | 8 | Somewhere in sophomore year of college | Read in one sitting | Related to the phases of early conceptions of the world and frameworks to find meaning, though in a different order and nuance than what I'd expereinced. I hope I don't relate to the later sections down the line. Tolstoy's writing always feels so simple but representative. |
| Discipline and Punish | Michel Foucault | 1975 | 2019 | 2019 | ||
| Democracy in America | Alexis de Tocqueville | 1835–1840 | 8 | 2019 | 2019 | Banger. I should re-read it. This was the most heavily annotated thing I read in college. |
| On the Genealogy of Morals | Friedrich Nietzsche | 1887 | 2019 | 2019 | I liked the poetry of it. | |
| Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals | Immanuel Kant | 1785 | 7 | 2019 | 2019 | I find the categorical imperative pleasing and good as a guiding principle. It feels like it gets dismissed a lot today though without really confronting it. |
| Leviathan | Thomas Hobbes | 1651 | 2019 | 2019 | ||
| Declaration of Independence | Thomas Jefferson (principal drafter) | 1776 | 2019 | 2019 | This really set me off when I read it. It was like everything clicked into place about how American pathos is today. I wrote an absolutely scatterbrained and unhinged essay as a result. But there was a lot of heart there. I should find it again and see if it makes sense to present me. I bet it does. | |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1925 | 7 | 2016 | 2016 | Sad. I mostly think about it in terms of ambition and lonliness. Most annotated thing I read in high school, especially the last 40ish pages. |
| Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | 1952 | 7 | 2016 | ||
| Macbeth | William Shakespeare | c. 1606 | 7 | 2015 | I feel like I don't remember this very well :( I just in general remember not liking Shakespeare very much in high school. I think Hamlet was the only one I got much out of. | |
| Hamlet | William Shakespeare | c. 1600 | 7 | 2015 | I should re-read this. | |
| Othello | William Shakespeare | c. 1603 | 7 | 2015 | I feel like I don't remember this very well :( | |
| Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead | Tom Stoppard | 1966 | 7.5 | 2016 | I wrote a banger of an essay about this. | |
| The Death of a Salesman | Arthur Miller | 1949 | 6.5 | 2016 | I think about the whole obsession with wanting to be "well liked" fairly often. I just find the main character painfully pathetic. | |
| The Things They Carried | Tim O'Brien | 1990 | 6.5 | 2016 | I don't remember it too much, but I think I appreciated it more than expected. | |
| The Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | 1899 | 8.5 | 2016 | ||
| The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver | 1998 | 4 | 2016 | ||
| The Lord of the Flies | William Golding | 1954 | 8 | 2015 | My first exposure to the concept of the wild man. Came up again in Hobbes. | |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | 1844–1846 | 8 | 5th grade | He was cool. Someone once told me they imagined I looked like Mercedes, and that was pretty cool. I don't really agree. | |
| Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain | 1876 | 4.5 | 6th grade | Boring. | |
| Chrome Yellow | Aldous Huxley | 1921 | 7 | winter break 2017 | I confessed to loving someone for the first time after reading a section where one character is struggling to externalize his emotions for someone. | |
| Dracula | Bram Stoker | 1897 | 7 | middle school | I read the scene where Dracula sucks her blood many times... | |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | 1818 | 8 | high school? junior year? | ||
| The Secret Garden | Frances Hodgson Burnett | 1911 | 7.5 | |||
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | 1847 | 6 | |||
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 1813 | 7 | Read in one night. | Overrated. I think I was biased against liking any book my mom recommended to me in hindsight... | |
| Emma | Jane Austen | 1815 | 7 | I think I liked that Emma was manipulative. I generally liked manipulative characters as a kid... | ||
| Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe | 1719 | 6 | I found it a slog at the time but mildly interesting. | ||
| Little Women | Louisa May Alcott | 1868–1869 | 6.5 | I was deeply troubled when Jo cut her hair. I remember really wanting to self insert into one of the girls when originally reading it but not identifying with any of them. | ||
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | 1960 | 6 | |||
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | 1884 | 4 | 6th grade | ||
| [I need to remember the exact version of the Biography of Nicola Tesla I read] | 4th grade | Formative. | ||||
| Black Beauty | Anna Sewell | 1877 | 5th grade | This book annoyed me as a kid. | ||
| Calvin & Hobbes | Bill Watterson | 1985–1995 | 10 | 3rd-5th grade | I'm using this for all comics. I'm convinced I've read every single panel. Masterpiece. | |
| The Hobbit | 7 | 5th grade | Fun lore. | |||
| White Fang | Jack London | 1906 | 6.8 | 4th grade | The opening pages are so cool and visceral. | |
| Call of the Wild | 5.7 | 4th grade | Very disappointing after White Fang |