Barbara Kingsolver's Reading List

The author, most recently, of the novel “Unsheltered” loves “fiction that educates me on the sly, especially about something I didn’t realize I wanted to know. I’m open to any kind of arcana.”

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By the Book: Barbara Kingsolver (2018)

NYT By the Book column (2018-10-25).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Buy on Amazon

"The spectacular Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie."

The Shepherd's Life

James Rebanks · Buy on Amazon

"The Shepherd's Life, by James Rebanks, who makes a convincing case for a farm in the Lake District as center of the universe."

This Changes Everything

Naomi Klein · Buy on Amazon

"I'll nominate This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein, and The Overstory, by Richard Powers, in two different categories of greatness."

The Overstory

Richard Powers · 2018 · Buy on Amazon

"I'll nominate This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein, and The Overstory, by Richard Powers, in two different categories of greatness."

My Antonia

Willa Cather · Buy on Amazon

"When I finally broke down and read My Antonia, I rued my foolishness and all our lost years. Willa and I have made up."

Independent People

Halldor Laxness · 1934 · Buy on Amazon

"Ann Patchett launched our friendship with Independent People, by Halldor Laxness, and has continued to give me my favorite book of nearly every year since."

Children of Violence

Doris Lessing · Buy on Amazon

"The game-changer for me was Doris Lessing's Children of Violence series, a five-novel bildungsroman stretching from colonial Rhodesia to postwar London. All the windows in my brain blew out. I skipped school to read these books straight through."

Middlemarch

George Eliot · 1871 · Buy on Amazon

"I'd start with George Eliot because Middlemarch is my favorite book, and she's said to have been sort of magical as a conversationalist."

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschild · 1998 · Buy on Amazon

"Adam Hochschild's monumentally disquieting King Leopold's Ghost, which needs to be relocated — that's not a bedtime story."

Favorite books (2023)

Favorite books recommended by Barbara Kingsolver, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/barbara-kingsolver-favorite-books/.

Source: radicalreads.com

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott (also rec’d by Elizabeth Warren , Glennon Doyle , Gloria Steinem , Hillary Clinton , John Lennon, Maya Angelou & Shonda Rhimes ) · Buy on Amazon

"I can remember exactly where I was, when I read it. And why it had such an effect on me. I was nine years old. I was in the back of a station wagon. And I disappeared into that book. I was in another world… I was Jo March, don’t we all want to be Jo March."

Orlando

Virginia Woolf (also rec’d by Gabriel García Márquez & Tilda Swinton ) · Buy on Amazon

"What she did with this character who begins as a man and becomes a woman, and passes in both directions actually for the remainder of their 300 year life, was so amazing. And it was was surreal. But it was also realistic. When you read that book, it doesn’t read like science fiction or alternative fiction, it reads as realism."

Middlemarch

George Eliot (also rec’d by Bret Easton Ellis , Carrie Fisher , Constance Wu , Emily Ratajkowski , Nigella Lawson & Zadie Smith ) · Buy on Amazon

"If I had to take one thing to a desert island? Well, look, I would take water. Also you’ve got to take a book, and it would be [Middlemarch] because it’s a book of infinite depth."

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