| The Once and Future King |
T. H. White |
Fantasy |
★★★★★ |
| My favorite fiction book of all time. Ursula K. Le Guin's quote describes how I feel about it better than I ever could. "I have laughed at [White's] great Arthurian novel and cried over it and loved it all my life." |
| Regarding the Pain of Others |
Susan Sontag |
Photography |
★★★★ |
| Read for my MA thesis. Turned out to not be relevant but fascinating anyway. |
| Life Among the Piutes |
Sarah Winnemucca |
History |
★★★ |
| Found a beautiful first edition in a used bookstore in San Luis Obispo. |
| Complete Poems |
Mary Oliver |
Poetry |
★★★★★ |
| My favorite poet as of November 2025. |
| 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus |
Charles C. Mann |
History |
★★★★ |
| One of the books that inspired me to get into archaeology. |
| A Coney Island of the Mind |
Lawrence Ferlenghetti |
Poetry |
★★★★ |
| Billy Collins has a poem where he mentions carrying this volume around with him everywhere he went in high school. When I was in high school, I was so enamoured with Billy Collins that I started carrying this book around with me everywhere I went too. I grew to appreciate it in time. |
| A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy |
Nathan Thrall |
History |
★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's history MA program. |
| A Little History of the World |
E.H. Gombrich |
History |
★★★★ |
|
| A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier |
Ishmael Beah |
History |
★★★★ |
| Read in Ely, NV in my month-long work stint out there. In the Motel 6 and in the little park in the middle of town. I discovered that I really like chai tea while reading this. |
| A Monster Calls |
Patrick Ness |
Young Adult |
★★★ |
|
| A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo |
Nancy Rose Hunt |
History |
★★★ |
| Read my historiography paper on the Belgian Congo during CSUB's history MA program. |
| A Short History of Nearly Everything |
Bill Bryson |
Science |
★★★ |
| |
| Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 |
John Thornton |
History |
★★★ |
| Read for my paper on Palmares during the CSUB history MA program. |
| Africa: A Biography of the Continent |
John Thornton |
History |
★★★★ |
| Read at the Barnes and Noble cafe and at the Airbnb I shared with Ross while working at Walker Mine in Graeagle. Read in preparation for CSUB's MA program, knowing I wanted to focus on African history. |
| All the Pretty Horses |
Cormac McCarthy |
Western |
★★★ |
|
| Ariel |
Sylvia Plath |
Poetry |
★★★ |
|
| Armed Struggle in Africa: With the Guerillas in "Portuguese" Guinea |
Gerard Chaliand |
History |
★★★★ |
| Read for my MA thesis. |
| Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands |
Kelly Lytle Hernandez |
History |
★★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's history MA program. |
| Black Boy |
Richard Wright |
Classics |
★★★ |
| |
| Black Swan Green |
David Mitchell |
General Fiction |
★★★ |
| |
| Cloud Atlas |
David Mitchell |
General Fiction |
★★★★ |
| First started in a hotel room in Alaska while going through orientation for the train job. Finished it five years later in the break room at the Amazon warehouse. |
| African Perspectives on Colonialism |
A. Adu Boahen |
History |
★★★ |
|
| Coraline |
Neil Gaiman |
Young Adult |
★★★ |
|
| Everything Is Illuminated |
Jonathan Safran Foer |
General Fiction |
★★★ |
|
| Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism |
Tiago Saraiva |
History |
★★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's history MA program. |
| Field Work |
Seamus Heaney |
Poetry |
★★★★ |
| |
| Geography III |
Elizabeth Bishop |
Poetry |
★★★★ |
| Read mostly outside CSUB's HOB building while waiting for a meeting. |
| Harry Potter Series |
J.K. Rowling |
Young Adult |
★★★ |
| I like the early stories significantly more than the later ones. I've gone through the series twice: reading it once and listening to Stephen Fry's audiobooks while running on Bakersfield's bike trail during covid. |
| Heavenly Fatherland: German Missionary Culture and Globalization in the Age of Empire |
Jeremy Best |
History |
★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's history MA program. |
| Homage to Catalonia |
Geroge Orwell |
History |
★★★★ |
| Read on my breaks while working at Target. |
| Invisible Cities |
Italo Calvino |
General Fiction |
★★★ |
| Read in part before Krista Moreland's awful archaeology class at Bakersfield College that almost made me change majors. Once, before class started, she asked me what I was reading. I told her the name and she acted like she knew what the book was based only on the title when she obviously didn't. I just nodded and said "Yup." A clear memory of how I can't stand people who constantly act like they know things they don't. |
| Kafka on the Shore |
Haruki Murakami |
General Fiction |
★★★ |
| |
| King Leopold's Ghost |
Adam Hochschild |
History |
★★★★ |
| |
| Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak |
Jean Hatzfeld |
History |
★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's history MA program. |
| Mythos |
Stephen Fry |
Mythology |
★★★ |
| |
| Neverwhere |
Neil Gaiman |
Fantasy |
★★★ |
| |
| New and Selected Poems; 1966-1987 |
Seamus Heaney |
Poetry |
★★★★ |
| Where I first encountered "Station Island," one of my all-time favorite long poems. |
| Men at Arms |
Terry Pratchett |
Fantasy |
★★★★ |
| Read primarily while sitting in a truck monitoring an extremely boring and uneventful soil testing job near Lancaster, California. |
| Small Gods |
Terry Pratchett |
Fantasy |
★★★ |
| Read primarily while sitting in a truck monitoring an extremely boring and uneventful soil testing job near Lancaster, California. |
| Guards! Guards! |
Terry Pratchett |
Fantasy |
★★★★ |
| Read primarily at Barnes & Noble in the evenings after working at home on my thesis all day. |
| No Country for Old Men |
Cormac McCarthy |
General Fiction |
★★★★ |
|
| North |
Seamus Heaney |
Poetry |
★★★ |
|
| Oral Tradition as History |
Jan Vansina |
History |
★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's history MA program. |
| Our Oriental Heritage |
Will Durant |
History |
★★★★ |
| Read mostly behind the check-out counter while working at Bookhounds. Still the best prose I've ever read from a historian. |
| Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa |
Jan Vansina |
History |
★★★ |
| Read my paper on the Belgian Congo during CSUB's history MA program. |
| Perdido Street Station |
China Mieville |
Fantasy |
★★★ |
| |
| Picnic, Lightning |
Billy Collins |
Poetry |
★★★ |
| |