Matt Yow

Reading List

Books I’ve read since 2013, since I started tracking.

2026
  1. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
  2. Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin
  3. Big Hair and Plastic Grass by Dan Epstein
  4. The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson
  5. Exit Zero by Marie-Helene Bertino
  6. The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
  7. The Employees by Olga Ravn
  8. Vigil by George Saunders
  9. Hip-Hop is History by Questlove
  10. Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
  11. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
  12. The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
  13. The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon
  14. Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky
  15. When Trees Testify by Beronda Montgomery
  16. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
  17. With the Heart of a Ghost by Lim Sunwoo
  18. Hum by Helen Phillips
  19. Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  20. Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
  21. The Beauty of Everyday Things by Soetsu Yanagi
  22. At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich
  23. Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
  24. William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love by Philip Hoare
2025
  1. I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel Levitin
  2. The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
  3. Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
  4. The Information by James Gleick
  5. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
  6. Model Home by Rivers Solomon
  7. James by Percival Everett
  8. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
  9. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  10. Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
  11. The Doloriad by Missouri Williams
  12. Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  13. Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  14. Light Eaters by Zöe Schlanger
  15. North Woods by Daniel Mason
  16. Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
  17. The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
  18. Counternarratives by John Keene
  19. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte
  20. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
  21. Orbital by Samantha Harvey
  22. HHhH by Laurent Binet
  23. Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
  24. The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World edited by Chris Sarre
  25. The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
  26. The Devourers by Indra Das
  27. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
  28. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
  29. Semiotics of Visual Language by Fernande Saint-Martin
  30. Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer
  31. Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa
  32. Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson
2024
  1. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
  2. Holes by Louis Sachar
  3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
  4. Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres by Kelefa Sanneh
  5. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
  6. The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut
  7. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  8. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
  9. Itzá by Rios de la Luz
  10. Brothas Be, Yo like George, Ain’t that Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You? by George Clinton
  11. Darkly by Leila Taylor
  12. Witches by Brenda Lozano
  13. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
  14. On Michael Jackson by Margo Jefferson
  15. Toad by Kathleen Dunn
  16. The Seep by Chana Porter
  17. Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
  18. Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz
  19. The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
  20. Trust by Hernán Díaz
  21. The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
  22. This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno
  23. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
  24. They Flew by Carlos Eire
  25. The Annual Banquet of Graverdiggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard
  26. The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard
  27. Pest by Michael Cisco
  28. Lapidarium by Hettie Judah
  29. At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson
  30. Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer
  31. The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
  32. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
  33. Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
2023
  1. Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson
  2. The Lego Story by Jens Andersen
  3. The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis
  4. The Abstainer by Ian McGuire
  5. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
  6. Metallica by David Masciotra
  7. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
  8. The Black Experience in Design by Anne H. Berry, Kareem Collie, Penina Acayo Laker, Lesley-Ann Noel, Jennifer Rittner, Kelly Walters
  9. A Song for Everyone by John Lingan
  10. Point B by Drew Magary
  11. Walking Practice by Dolki Min
  12. Popisho by Leone Ross
  13. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
  14. Fat Time by Jeffery Renard Allen
  15. Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
  16. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
  17. Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade
  18. The Unreality of Memory by Elisa Gabbert
  19. Into the Void by Geezer Butler
  20. Box Man by Kōbō Abe
  21. Liberation Day by George Saunders
  22. Otherlands by Thomas Halliday
  23. Never Whistle at Night edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
  24. Avoid the Day by Jay Kirk
  25. Design: Purpose, Form, and Meaning by John F. Pile
  26. One’s Company by Ashley Hutson
  27. Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis
  28. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
2022
  1. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels
  2. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
  3. Music is History by Questlove
  4. Art + Faith by Makoto Fujimura
  5. The Noblest Roman by Jerry Kelly and Misha Beletsky
  6. No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull
  7. Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
  8. Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes
  9. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  10. On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle
  11. The Guide by Peter Heller
  12. Writings on Media by Stuart Hall
  13. The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
  14. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
  15. The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
  16. Devil House by John Darnielle
  17. Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan
  18. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language by Umberto Eco
  19. Down Below by Leonora Carrington
  20. Moon Witch Spider King by Marlon James
  21. A Sign is Just a Sign by Thomas Sebeok
  22. Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
  23. Signs, Language, and Behavior by Charles Morris
  24. The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe
  25. Ethics by Michael Cisco
  26. The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by Jonny McWhorter
  27. Upgrade by Blake Crouch
  28. Universe of the Mind by Yuri Lotman
  29. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
  30. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
  31. Structuralism and Semiotics by Terence Hawkes
  32. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
  33. Ahab’s Return by Jeffrey Ford
  34. The Greatest Invention by Silvia Ferrera
  35. The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis
  36. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
  37. Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis
  38. Voyage of the* *Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis
  39. The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
  40. Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida
2021
  1. The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem
  2. A Place for Everything by Judith Flanders
  3. Don’t Call it That by Eli Altman
  4. The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu
  5. Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith
  6. Enjoying the Bible by Matthew Mullins
  7. The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
  8. The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
  9. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
  10. The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe
  11. The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe
  12. Deacon King Kong by James McBride
  13. Negative Space by B. R. Yeager
  14. The Changeling by Joy Williams
  15. The Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
  16. The Traveler, The Tower, and The Worm by Alberto Manguel
  17. Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
  18. Tokyo Ueno Station by Yū Miri
  19. Morphology of the Folktale by V. Propp
  20. Bug by Giancomo Sartori
  21. Hollow by B. Catling
  22. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
  23. Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin
  24. Beauty by Roger Scruton
  25. The Intentional Father by Jon Tyson
  26. Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
  27. The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada
  28. Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein
  29. Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead
  30. All Fires the Fire by Julio Cortázar
  31. 33⅓: Led Zeppelin’s IV by Erik Davis
  32. Levels of the Game by John McPhee
  33. Night at the Fiestas by Kirstin Valdez Quade
  34. Awakening Wonder: A Classical Guide to Truth, Goodness & Beauty by Stephen R. Turley
  35. Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
  36. The People in the Castle by Joan Aiken
2020
  1. The Incompletes by Sergio Chejfec
  2. Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism by Slavoj Žižek
  3. The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco
  4. On Writing by Jorge Luis Borges
  5. To Rouse Leviathan by Matt Cardin and Mark McLaughlin
  6. Semiotic Animal: A postmodern definition of human being transcending Patriarchy and Feminism by John Deely
  7. Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture by Claude Lévi-Strauss
  8. The Taiga Syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza
  9. The Wounds of the Dead by Vikram Paralkar
  10. Komodo by Jeff VanderMeer
  11. A Natural History of Hell by Jeffery Ford
  12. The Pocket Rumi edited by Kabir Helminski
  13. The Framework of Language by Roman Jakobson
  14. The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
  15. Loving to Know: Covenant Epistemology by Esther Lightcap Meek
  16. Utopia by Thomas More
  17. To Know As We Are Known by Parker Palmer
  18. In the Seat of a Stranger's Car by Beau Flemister
  19. Theory of Type Design by Gerard Unger
  20. What the Heck is EOS? by Gino Wickman
  21. Be The Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation by Latasha Morrison
  22. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
  23. Earwig by Brian Catling
  24. A Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer
  25. This World is Full of Monsters by Jeff VanderMeer
  26. The People in the Castle by Joan Aiken
  27. Symbol, Myth, and Culture by Ernst Cassirer
  28. Out of Body by Jeffrey Ford
  29. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
  30. The Houseguest by Amparo Dávila
  31. Underland by Robert Macfarlane
  32. Speaker of Ma’ila by Trenton Anthony
  33. Stoner by John Williams
  34. Thus Were Their Faces by Silvia Ocampo
  35. The Silence by Don DeLillo
  36. Signs by Thomas Sebeok
  37. Under the Sea by Mark Leidner
  38. Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti
  39. The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
  40. Magic: A History by Chris Gosden
  41. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2019
  1. Fox 8 by George Saunders
  2. Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
  3. Moderan by David R. Bunch
  4. Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey
  5. Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) by Jeff Tweedy [audiobook]
  6. Anthem by Ayn Rand
  7. Phantastes By George MacDonald by
  8. Florida by Lauren Groff
  9. Laws of Media: The New Science by Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan
  10. Mr. Pye by Mervyn Peake
  11. The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake by G.E. Bentley
  12. The Wanderer by Timothy J. Jarvis
  13. The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson
  14. Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  15. The Door to Saturn by Clark Ashton Smith
  16. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
  17. Member by Michael Cisco
  18. An Alien Heat, Volume One of “The Dancers at the End of Time” by Michael Moorcock by
  19. The Hollow Lands, Volume Two of “The Dancers at the End of Time” by Michael Moorcock by
  20. The End of All Song, Volume Three of “The Dancers at the End of Time” by Michael Moorcock by
  21. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
  22. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  23. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
  24. Tremendous Trifles by G. K. Chesterton
  25. ABC of Relativity by Bertrand Russell
  26. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  27. The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies by John Langan
  28. Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy
  29. The Light is the Darkness by Laird Barron
  30. Recursion by Blake Crouch
  31. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
  32. The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford
  33. Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore
  34. 33⅓:* *Master of Reality by John Darnielle
  35. 33⅓:* *Reign in Blood by D. X. Ferris
  36. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
  37. Crackpot Palace by Jeffrey Ford
  38. The Attributes of God by A. W. Tozer
  39. African Folk Tales edited by Charlotte & Wolf Leslau
  40. Hawaiian Mythologies by Martha Beckwith
  41. Circe by Madeline Miller
  42. Upstream by Mary Oliver
  43. Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Énard
  44. Warren by Brian Evenson
  45. The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
  46. Wood Beyond the World by William Morris
  47. Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer
  48. A Collapse of Horses by Brian Evenson
  49. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
2018
  1. The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald
  2. Postmodernism in Pieces by Matthew Mullins
  3. Mythologies by Roland Barthes
  4. In The Distance by Hernan Diaz
  5. The Changeling by Victor LaValle
  6. The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St Clair
  7. The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
  8. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
  9. The Accusation by Bandi
  10. Semiotics: The Basics by Daniel Chandler
  11. In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
  12. The History of Bees by Maja Lunde
  13. The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
  14. Language, Truth and Logic by Alfred Jules Ayer
  15. The Narrator by Michael Cisco
  16. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
  17. Elements of Semiology by Roland Barthes
  18. In the River by Jeremy Robert Johnson
  19. The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis
  20. Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones
  21. Contradict by Andy Wrasman
  22. The Afflictions by Vikram Paralkar
  23. White Tears by Hari Kunzru
  24. The Solid Form of Language by Robert Bringhurst
  25. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
  26. Aickman’s Heirs edited by Simon Strantzas
  27. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
  28. Unlanguage by Michael Cisco
  29. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  30. The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design by Vilém Flusser
  31. Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
  32. Embassytown by China Miéville
  33. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
  34. The Cloven by Brian Catling
  35. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  36. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
  37. Blow-up, and other stories by Julio Cortázar
  38. In The Darkroom by Susan Faludi
  39. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
  40. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
  41. Deeper Into Pictures by Flint Schier
  42. Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
  43. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
  44. A Little Manual for Knowing by Esther Lightcap Meek
  45. Boy in Darkness, and Other Stories by Mervyn Peake
  46. Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones
  47. Crandolin by Anna Tambour
  48. Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen
  49. Compass by Mathias Énard
  50. Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
2017
  1. Time Travel by James Gleick
  2. Don’t Read This Book by Donald Roos
  3. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
  4. Sprint by Jake Knapp
  5. Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
  6. Culture Making by Andy Crouch
  7. Benjamin Franklin by Carl van Doren
  8. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
  9. Symbols: A Handbook for Seeing by Mark Fox and Angie Wang
  10. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
  11. Intercom on Starting Up by Intercom
  12. Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
  13. Borne: A Novel by Jeff Vandermeer
  14. The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson
  15. The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison
  16. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  17. This is Not a Pipe by Michel Foucault
  18. What’s Best Next by Matt Perman
  19. The Strange Bird by Jeff Vandermeer
  20. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  21. The Vorrh by Brian Catling
  22. Asteroid Made of Dragons of G. Derek Adams by
  23. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
  24. Bernini in Rome: Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the Baroque in Rome by Paul den Arend
  25. The Erstwhile by Brian Catling
  26. Brand New: The Shape of Brands to Come by Wally Olins
  27. The North Water by Ian McGuire
  28. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
  29. The Fisherman by John Langan
  30. The Sarah Book by Scott McLanahan
  31. Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash
  32. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
2016
  1. Goya by Robert Hughes
  2. Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose
  3. The Presidency of George Washington by Forrest McDonald
  4. Essentialism by Greg McKeown
  5. Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem
  6. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  7. Language and Myth by Ernst Cassirer
  8. Wonder by A. J. Palacio
  9. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
  10. Dog Stars by Peter Heller
  11. The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton
  12. Area X: The Southern Reach: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
  13. Area X: The Southern Reach: Authority by Jeff Vandermeer
  14. Area X: The Southern Reach: Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer
  15. The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
  16. The Princess and The Goblin by George MacDonald
  17. The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
  18. The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
  19. Slade House by David Mitchell
  20. The Hike by Drew Magary
  21. Zero K by Don DeLillo
2015
  1. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
  2. Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles by Francine Prose
  3. You and Me Forever by Francis and Lisa Chan
  4. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
  5. Tenth of December by George Saunders
  6. The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan
  7. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
  8. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, and Philosphers by Leonard Koren
  9. Basics of Semiotics by John Deely
  10. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
  11. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Expuréry
  12. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
  13. Proof by Daniel Montgomery and Timothy Paul Jones
  14. Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee
  15. Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design by Michael Bierut
2014
  1. Color Psychology and Color Therapy by Faber Birren
  2. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  3. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  4. Paul Rand: Conversations with Students by Michael Kroeger
  5. Emotional Branding by Marc Gobé
  6. Just My Type by Simon Garfield
  7. Wild at Heart by John Eldredge
  8. The Strategic Designer by David Holston
  9. Common Sense by Thomas Paine
  10. Confessions by St Augustine
  11. Love Wins by Rob Bell
  12. Erasing Hell by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle
  13. Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
  14. EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey
  15. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
2013
  1. How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy
  2. The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
  3. God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee by Michaele Weissman
  4. Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler
  5. Brand Identity Essentials by
  6. The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero
  7. Design is a Job by Joe Montero
  8. The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player by John C. Maxwell
  9. ideaSelling by Sam Harrison
  10. Ways of Seeing by John Berger
  11. A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
  12. Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
  13. Design As Art by Bruno Munari
  14. On Writing by Stephen King
  15. The Creative Gift by H. R. Rookmaaker
  16. The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology by Angela Wright
  17. Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing by Søren Kierkegaard