| Title | Author | Genre | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | ★★★★ |
| Blood Meridian | Cormac McCarthy | Western | ★★★★★ |
| Child of God | Cormac McCarthy | Western | ★★★★ |
| The Sunset Limited | Cormac McCarthy | Western | ★★★ |
| 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 | ★★★ |
| Anthropological Witness: Lessons From the Khmer Rouge Tribunal | Alexander Laban Hinton | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism | Tiago Saraiva | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism | Benedict Anderson | History | ★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. One of my favorite history books not for its content, but for the lesson that being overwhelmingly wrong as a historian isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can spur discussion and debate and move historiography forward. | |||
| Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 | Tiago Saraiva | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Wurttemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918 | Alon Confino | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria | Pieter M. Judson | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| The Politics of Disease Control: Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890–1920 | Mari Kathryn Webel | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansion and Nationalism 1848-1884 | Matthew P. Fitzpatrick | History | ★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War | Svetlana Alexievich | History | ★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. My least favorite of the bunch. | |||
| Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa | Marie Muschalek | History | ★★★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. My favorite of the bunch. Really creative and inspiring micro/material history of colonial Africa. | |||
| Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945 | Philip Morgan | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| Fascism without Borders | Arnd Bauerkämper | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. | |||
| Warriors at Work: How Guinea Was Really Set Free | Mustafah Dhada | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. Written by my primary thesis advisor. Really influential for me. | |||
| The Portuguese Massacre of Wiriyamu in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-2013 | Mustafah Dhada | History | ★★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. Written by my primary thesis advisor. Really influential for me. | |||
| The Wiriyamu Massacre: An Oral History, 1960-1974 | Mustafah Dhada | History | ★★★ |
| Read for CSUB's History MA program. Written by my primary thesis advisor. Really influential for me. | |||
| Project Hail Mary | Andy Weir | Science Fiction | ★★★ |
| Listened to on audiobook driving to and from my first ever work rotation in Tonopah, NV. Also listened to out in the field while working with Stacey and Randy. | |||
| Out of the Silent Planet | C.S. Lewis | Science Fiction | ★★★ |
| Ender's Game | Orson Scott Card | Science Fiction | ★★ |
| Dawn | Octavia E. Butler | Science Fiction | ★★★ |
| Listened to on audiobook while working the small sort at UPS. | |||
| The Outsiders | S.E. Hinton | Young Adult | ★★★★ |
| Tired of Weeping: Mother Love, Child Death, and Poverty in Guinea-Bissau | Jonina Einarsdottir | History | ★★★★ |
| Read for my 2025 MA thesis. | |||
| How to Lose the Hounds: Maroon Geographies and a World beyond Policing | Celeste Winston | History | ★★★★ |
| Read for my paper on Palmares during the CSUB history MA program. | |||
| After Palmares: Diaspora, Inheritance, and the Afterlives of Zumbi | Marc A. Hertzman | History | ★★★ |
| Read for my paper on Palmares during the CSUB history MA program. | |||
| Equal Rites | Terry Pratchett | Fantasy | ★★★★ |
| Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage | Alfred Lansing | History | ★★★★ |
| Listened to on audiobook while monitoring solar field construction. | |||
| Wyrd Sisters | Terry Pratchett | Fantasy | ★★★ |
| Mort | Terry Pratchett | Fantasy | ★★★ |
| Emerson's Essays | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Philosophy | ★★★★ |
| Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Batallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland | Christopher R. Browning | History | ★★★★ |
N 36° 06' 28.7" W 117° 57' 36.6''