Category: Bean's favorites
These are my all-time favorite books–really good and/or important reads.
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (2018)
Olive Kitteridge (2009) and Olive Again (2019) by Elizabeth Strout
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley (2013)
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan (2017)
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2019)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
Beartown by Fredrik Backman (2017)
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (2016)
The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates (2019)
Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough (2018)
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018)
There There by Tommy Orange (2018)
The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018)
Circe by Madeline Miller (2018)
Resistance by Barry Lopez (2004)
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney (2017)
The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko (2013)
Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo (2017)
The Line Becomes a River by Francis Cantu (2018)
The Carry Home by Gary Ferguson (2014)
Evicted by Matthew Desmond (2016)
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott (2017)
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016)
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potuk (1972)
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (2014)
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (2013)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
The Opposite of Loneliness: stories and essays by marina Keegan (2014)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014)
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
Hidden Americaa by Jeanne Marie Laskas (2012)
**The Best American Essays 2012 ed. by David Brooks
Ali and Nino by Kurbain Said (1996)
**Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011)
* A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer Dubois (2012)
The Best Magazine Writing 2010 ed. by Jon Meacham
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (2011)
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2009)
*Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (1990, 2009)
**The Dirty Life by Kristen Kimball (2010)
**Incendiary by Chris Cleave (2005)
*Anti Cancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD (2010)
**The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)
*Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (2010)
**Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011) by Amy Chua
