Irene Y. Chen
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Reading List

I like to share what I’m reading to keep me motivated. For academic papers, see my papers repo, which is probably outdated. Below are books I’ve read.

Books I’ve especially loved are marked with an asterik.

2024

  1. The Fall, Albert Camus
  2. Mask Off, JJ Bola
  3. Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer*
  4. Sailing Around the Room, Billy Collins*
  5. Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn*
  6. Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
  7. Trust, Hernan Diaz*
  8. Mukbang, Fanie Demeule
  9. First Lie Wins, Ashley Elston*
  10. White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link*
  11. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton
  12. The Only One Left, Riley Sager
  13. Anxious People, Fredrik Backman*
  14. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
  15. The Other Black Girl, Zakiya Dalila Harris*
  16. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion*
  17. The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman*
  18. The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman*
  19. Funny Story, Emily Henry*
  20. Good Material, Dolly Alderton*
  21. Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou*
  22. The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa*
  23. The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley

2023

  1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabriel Zevin*
  2. Cult Classic, Sloane Crosley
  3. Babel, R. F. Kuang*
  4. Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
  5. Yellowface, R. F. Kuang*
  6. Hello, Beautiful, Anna Napolino*
  7. Happy Place, Emily Henry
  8. The Guest, Emma Cline
  9. Buried Giant, Kashua Ishiguro
  10. When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
  11. The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley*
  12. Being Mortal, Atul Gawande*
  13. I Have Some Questions For You, Rebecca Makkai
  14. The Summer Place, Jennifer Weiner
  15. Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo
  16. Chain Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  17. Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V. E. Schwab*
  18. Remarkably Bright Creations, Shelby Van Pelt*

2022

  1. Evicted, Matthew Desmond*
  2. Strange Beasts of China, Yang Ge
  3. The Jetsetters, Amanda Eyre Ward
  4. The Water Cure, Sophie Mackintosh
  5. Intimacies, Katie Kitamura*
  6. The Paris Apartment, Lucy Foley
  7. The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
  8. Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Kawai Strong Washburn*
  9. Never Saw Me Coming, Vera Kurian*
  10. Decisive Moments in History, Stefan Zweig*
  11. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir*
  12. Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguch*
  13. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson*
  14. Why We Took the Car, Wolfgang Herrndorf*
  15. Persuasion, Jane Austen
  16. Bestiary, K-Ming Chang
  17. Free Food for Millionaires, Min Jin Lee*
  18. Book Lovers, Emily Henry*
  19. Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner*
  20. The Vegetarian, Han Kang*
  21. The Measure, Nikki Erlick*
  22. How to Kill Your Family, Bella MacKie
  23. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

2021

  1. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie*
  2. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie*
  3. Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie
  4. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie
  5. Five Little Pigs, Agatha Christie*
  6. Crooked House, Agatha Christie*
  7. Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer*
  8. Peril at End House, Agatha Christie*
  9. Cards on the Table, Agatha Christie*
  10. Gold Diggers, Sanjena Sathian*
  11. Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami*
  12. Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty*
  13. The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel*
  14. How the Word is Passed, Clint Smith*
  15. The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
  16. Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro*
  17. The Hypnotist’s Love Story, Liane Moriarty*
  18. Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang*
  19. If I Had Your Face, Frances Cha
  20. In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
  21. Leave the World Behind, Rumaan Alam
  22. Land of Big Numbers, Te-Ping Chen*
  23. Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss*
  24. Beautiful World, Where are You, Sally Rooney
  25. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
  26. Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata*
  27. The Summer Job, Lizzy Dent
  28. Piranesi, Suzanna Clarke*
  29. Goodbye, Vitamin, Rachel Khong*
  30. Matrix, Lauren Groff*

2020

  1. Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino*
  2. I Like to Watch, Emily Nussbaum
  3. Children of Virtue and Vengence, Tomi Adeyemi
  4. The Farm, Joanne Ramos*
  5. Useful Phrases for Immigrants, May-lee Chai
  6. Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener*
  7. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid*
  8. I’ve Got Your Number, Sophie Kinsella
  9. Remember Me?, Sophie Kinsella*
  10. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng*
  11. The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker*
  12. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
  13. All the Names They Used for God, Anjali Sachdeva
  14. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
  15. Severance, Ling Ma*
  16. Dear Life, Alice Munro
  17. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
  18. My Not So Perfect Life, Sophie Kinsella*
  19. The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde*
  20. Dear Girls, Ali Wong*
  21. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee*
  22. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead*
  23. The Biggest Bluff, Maria Konnikova
  24. Big Friendship, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman*
  25. Recursion, Blake Crouch
  26. Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
  27. The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett*
  28. Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson
  29. Big Summer, Jennifer Weiner
  30. The Guest List, Lucy Foley
  31. The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
  32. The Wedding Date, Jasmine Guillory
  33. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes*
  34. ">Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
  35. His Only Wife, Peace Adzo Medie
  36. The Queen’s Gambit, Walter Tevis*
  37. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley*
  38. Intimations, Zadie Smith*
  39. Macbeth, William Shakespeare*
  40. ABC Murders, Agatha Christie*
  41. Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

2019

  1. Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
  2. Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu*
  3. Text Me When You Get Home, Kayleen Schaefer
  4. Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas
  5. Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl*
  6. The Heart, Maylis de Kerangal*
  7. Less, Andrew Greer
  8. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie*
  9. The Idiot, Elif Batuman*
  10. Heartburn, Nora Ephron*
  11. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott*
  12. The Red Book, Deborah Copaken Kogan*
  13. What I Talk About When I Talk about Running, Haruki Murakami*
  14. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Bruce MPerry and aia Szalavitz*
  15. Normal People, Sally Rooney*
  16. Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur
  17. Undomestic Goddess, Sophie Kinsella
  18. Can You Keep A Secret?, Sophie Kinsella*
  19. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
  20. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb*
  21. [The Privileged Poor]https://bookshop.org/a/10961/9780674976894), Anthony Abraham Jack (
  22. How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan
  23. Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie*
  24. Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
  25. The Most Fun We Ever Had, Claire Lombardo*
  26. Chemistry, Weike Wang*
  27. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood*
  28. What Alice Forgot, Liane Moriarty
  29. Exhalation, Ted Chiang*
  30. Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez*

2018

  1. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng*
  2. Neon in Daylight, Hermione Hoby
  3. I’ll be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara
  4. Sourdough, Robin Sloan
  5. Surprise Me, Sophie Kinsella
  6. Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld
  7. The Power, Naomi Alderman*
  8. Just the Funny Parts, Nell Scovell*
  9. The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin
  10. Bad Blood, John Carreyrou*
  11. Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado*
  12. Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan
  13. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish*
  14. Factfulness, Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Ronnlund, and Ola Rosling
  15. Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved, Kate Bowler
  16. I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
  17. Circe, Madeline Miller*
  18. The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker
  19. Siblings Without Rivalry, Adele Faber and Ealine Mazlish*
  20. Who Gets What – and Why, Alvin E. Roth
  21. Private Citizens, Tony Tulathimutte
  22. Dept. of Sepculation, Jenny Offill*
  23. Am I There Yet?, Mari Andrew
  24. A Life of Adventure and Delight, Akhil Sharma
  25. Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi
  26. Asymmetry, Lisa Hallisday*