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books I’m reading

Mark Watkins
Author
Mark Watkins
Entrepreneur & author

Here are some books I am reading now, or have recently read. These lists are powered by Bookship, my social reading app. I also use my TBR app to manage my, well, TBR.

The Song of Achilles: A Novel
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Madeline Miller

A New York Times Bestseller“At once a scholar’s homage to The Iliad and startlingly original work of art….A book I could not put down.” —Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch HouseA thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War from the bestselling author of CirceA tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.“A captivating retelling of The Iliad and events leading up to it through the point of view of Patroclus: it’s a hard book to put down, and any classicist will be enthralled by her characterisation of the goddess Thetis, which carries the true savagery and chill of antiquity.” — Donna Tartt, The Times
Two Years Before the Mast
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Richard Henry Dana

Two Years Before the Mast is a memoir by the American author Richard Henry Dana Jr., published in 1840, having been written after a two-year sea voyage from Boston to California on a merchant ship starting in 1834.In the book, which takes place between 1834 and 1836, Dana gives a vivid account of “the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is”. He sails from Boston to South America and around Cape Horn to California. Dana’s ship was on a voyage to trade goods from the United States for the Mexican colonial Californian California missions’ and ranchos’ cow hides. They traded at the ports in San Diego Bay, San Pedro Bay, Santa Barbara Channel, Monterey Bay, and San Francisco Bay.A film adaptation under the same name was released in 1946.Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-1882) was an American lawyer and politician who gained renown as the author of the American classic Two Years Before the Mast, a memoir of his time spent at sea as a merchant seaman.
Ivanhoe
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Sir Walter Scott

As knights battle to the death, the fate of England hangs in the balance. England is in turmoil–torn by fierce and bitter hatreds between Norman and Saxon. Rival claimants to the throne have plunged into bloody civil war. Price John–taking advantage of Richard’s absence while fighting in the Crusades–plots to make himself crowned king. Richard returns and vows to take his revenge on John. But he will need a courageous and able warrior on his side–a warrior like Wilfred of Ivanhoe. Disinherited by his father, disowned and dishonored, Wilfred allies himself with Richard. In many adventures he will battle knights in deadly tournaments, scale castle walls, be wounded, captured, and rescued by the infamous Robin Hood, and find true love with the fiery Rowena. In what has become Sir Walter Scott’s most beloved and rousing adventure, Wilfred helps Richard I foil John’s plot. More importantly, Wilfred of Ivenhoe reclaims his good name. At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

200 Monas
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Jan Saenz

For fans of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Miranda July comes a whip-smart, irresistible novel about a college senior who has 48 hours to sell her recently deceased mother’s surprise stash of rare pills, or suffer the consequences.

Arvy Keening is just trying to get through the week. Tantalizingly close to leaving her college years at Westheimer University behind, all she has to do is pass her finals, pack up her life, and ship off to San Francisco for a prestigious Big Pharma internship. The problem? Arvy just found 200 hits of Molly in her dead mother’s closet. And when two drug dealers come to collect what they are owed, they reveal that the pills are not Molly, but Mona—a rare pharmaceutical that induces intense orgasms. The dealers give Arvy an ultimatum: Sell 200 Monas in 48 hours or die.

To aid in her seemingly impossible quest, Arvy recruits Wolf, Westheimer’s resident drug dealer who also happens to be infuriatingly charming and distractingly sexy. In a race against the clock, Arvy and Wolf barrel through their college town, leaving a series of erotic shenanigans in their wake; appealing to horny co-eds, lonely barflies, and a mysterious sorority whose sisters have their own ideas for Mona’s potential uses. But if Mona has a knack for unleashing visceral reactions in the body, what will it unlock in Arvy, who has been repressing grief over her mother’s death for weeks?

Unashamedly brash, bold, and blistering, 200 Monas is a truly one-of-a-kind read, a playful and honest examination of sexuality and grief, and a sharp, searing love letter on how to release all that’s inside you.

The Knight and the Moth
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Rachel Gillig

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! “Prepare to meet your next obsession.” – Rebecca Ross, author of Divine Rivals From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Gillig comes the next big romantasy sensation, a gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a young prophetess forced on an impossible quest with the one knight whose future is beyond her sight. This edition will showcase all-new stenciled edges - available only in this first print run. Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams. Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
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John le Carré

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston. John le Carré’s new novel, A Legacy of Spies, is now available.

The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carré’s career worldwide

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.

Whale Fall
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Elizabeth O'Connor

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK • A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community “Whale Fall is a powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiseled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy.” —Colm Toibin, New York Times bestselling author of Long Island In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island’s shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can’t shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations. The arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture, then, feels like a boon to her—both a glimpse of life outside her community and a means of escape. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized. With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person’s ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O’Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.
Moby Dick
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Herman Melville

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by Herman Melville, in which Ishmael narrates the monomaniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on the albino sperm whale Moby Dick, which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab’s ship and severed his leg at the knee. Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author’s death in 1891, its reputation grew immensely during the twentieth century. D. H. Lawrence called it “one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world,” and “the greatest book of the sea ever written.” Moby-Dick is considered a Great American Novel and an outstanding work of the Romantic period in America and the American Renaissance. “Call me Ishmael” is one of world literature’s most famous opening sentences. The product of a year and a half of writing, the book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, “in token of my admiration for his genius,” and draws on Melville’s experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies and asides. The author changed the title at the very last moment in September 1851. The work first appeared as The Whale in London in October 1851, and then under its definitive title Moby-Dick in New York in November. The whale, however, appears in both the London and New York editions as “Moby Dick,” with no hyphen. The British edition of five hundred copies was not reprinted during the author’s life, the American of almost three thousand was reprinted three times at approximately 250 copies, the last reprinting in 1871. These figures are exaggerated because three hundred copies were destroyed in a fire at Harper’s; only 3,200 copies were actually sold during the author’s life.
The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
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Kenneth Silverman

Presents a comprehensive look at the quintessential Puritan, from his private home life to his involvement in the Salem witch trials, and offers a realistic portrait of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Boston
No Man's Land
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Richard K. Morgan

A compelling standalone dark fantasy set in a gritty post-WWI Britain that has been overrun by the fae, from the award-winning author of Altered Carbon

“One of my favorite books of the year, destined to be a classic.”—Tim Lebbon, New York Times bestselling author of Secret Lives of The Dead

The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars—and maybe it would have been, had an even greater, otherworldly foe not risen to extinguish the conflict. Overnight, as guns blazed in France and Flanders, village after village in the quiet British countryside was swallowed by the Forest. And within the Forest lurk the Huldu—an ancient fae race, monstrous in their inhumanity, who have decided that mankind’s ascendency over the world can endure no longer.

Enter Duncan Silver. Scarred by the war, fueled by a rage deeper than the trenches in which he once fought, Duncan is determined to show the Huldu that the world is not theirs for the taking. Armed with a deadly iron knife and a cut-down trench gun filled with iron shot, Duncan will stop at nothing to return the children the Huldu have stolen to the arms of their families. No matter how many Huldu he may have to slaughter along the way.

But when he is hired by a mother to return her four-year-old daughter, Miriam—taken by the Huldu six months past and replaced with a changeling—all hell breaks loose. Miriam is a pawn in a much bigger game for dominance than Duncan ever expected, and several long-buried secrets from his past are about to be violently resurrected.

In the Steps of the First One Hundred
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Greg W

This book is a guide to the last resting place of the first one hundred members of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is also a travelogue of sorts.

“The First One Hundred” is a phrase that refers to the original members of Alcoholics Anonymous up to the time the AA Big Book was published on April 10, 1939. The term sometimes sounds mystical. It is mystical because it strikes to the core of the Mythos of Alcoholics Anonymous. Certainly, the original members were not Gods such as Zeus and Apollo that helped to form Greek mythology. But The First One Hundred form the history of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Every sober and living member of the fellowship owes them a debt of gratitude and one way to honor their memory is to visit their graves. We hope this work inspires and enables you to do so.

Walking the Plank
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Stephen Kiesling

Walking the Plank is the updated true adventure of a journalist learning to swim in our sea of fake news. It’s about a year with treasure hunter Barry Clifford and his many discoveries of the 1717 pirate ship Whydah—a wreck that wasn’t actually missing. it’s also about a “Media Plan”—written by the president of Random House and two Wall Street moguls—that put Clifford on the cover of Parade as “The Man Who Found a $400 Million Pirate Treasure!” and set up front-page stories in the New York Times heralding a treasure worth hundreds of millions. Ultimately, the Media Plan led to a CBS News Special in which Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, announced “tons of gold” as well as a $6 million stock offering to excavate the motherlode. A book about Clifford and the Whydah was also part of the Media Plan. Author Stephen Kiesling wasn’t willing to lie. A journalist trained by a World War II artillery scout, Kiesling ultimately found the real secret of the Whydah treasure hidden in the pirate’s stove: an iron rotisserie discovered by Clifford in 1984, 1985, 1988, 2007, and finally displayed in a museum in 2016. The stove—found in the middle of the “motherlode”— was already famous because Henry David Thoreau wrote about it sticking out of the waves. The LA Times calls Walking the Plank “hilarious…why they don’t call it ‘fool’s gold’ for nothing.” The Boston Globe says it’s “a scathing critique of how Barry Clifford financed and documented the underwater excavation of the pirate ship Whydah off Cape Cod.” Archaeology magazine says Walking the Plank is “highly recommended,” and Antiquities says it’s “required reading.” Stephen Kiesling has written for the New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and Outside and is the author of The Shell Game: Reflections on Rowing and the Pursuit of Excellence. The New York Times Book Review calls Kiesling “true blue.” He is editor in chief of the FOLIO award-winning magazine Spirituality & Health.
From Ritual to Romance
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Jessie L. Weston

Jessie L. Weston’s book “From Ritual to Romance” delves into the Grail legend, exploring the various versions of the story and the tasks imposed on the heroes. The book aims to determine the true nature of the Grail by analyzing the tasks undertaken by Gawain, Perceval, and Galahad. Weston discusses the evolution of the Grail story, from the Gawain form with a focus on the Waste Land to the Perceval versions emphasizing the King’s illness. The book also examines the significance of the hero’s question in different versions and the consequences of their success or failure. Weston’s analysis sheds light on the underlying themes of the Grail legend and its connection to ancient rituals and beliefs.
The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii
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Beth L. Bailey

As the forward base and staging area for all US military operations in the Pacific during World War II, Hawaii was the “first strange place” for close to a million soldiers, sailors, and marines on their way to the horrors of war. But Hawaii was also the first strange place on another kind of journey, toward the new American society that would begin to emerge in the postwar era. Unlike the rigid and static social order of prewar America, this was to be a highly mobile and volatile society of mixed racial and cultural influences, one above all in which women and minorities would increasingly demand and receive equal status. Drawing on documents, diaries, memoirs, and interviews, Beth Bailey and David Farber show how these unprecedented changes were tested and explored in the highly charged environment of wartime Hawaii.
Company of Liars
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Karen Maitland

The year is 1348 and the first plague victim has reached English shores. Panic erupts around the country and a small band of travellers comes together to outrun the deadly disease, unaware that something far more deadly is - in fact - travelling with them. The ill-assorted company - a scarred trader in holy relics, a conjurer, two musicians, a healer and a deformed storyteller - are all concealing secrets and lies. And at their heart is the strange, cold child - Narigorm - who reads the runes. But as law and order breaks down across the country and the battle for survival becomes ever more fierce, Narigorm mercilessly compels each of her fellow travellers to reveal the truth, and each in turn is driven to a cruel and unnatural death.
The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories
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Gianni Rodari

From the father of modern Italian children’s literature, this is one of the great works about the imagination and how stories are made—featuring radiant illustrations from Matthew Forsythe and a refreshed translation from Jack Zipes.

“Holds great value for the adults who teach kids and the adults who write for them.” —Mac Barnett, U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, for the New York Times

★ “A must-have for educators and librarians looking to inject creativity into their classrooms.” —School Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW!

This handbook for writers of all ages and kinds is essential reading for teachers and creatives. It offers a playful, practical path to finding your own voice through the power of storytelling. Full of ideas, glosses on fairy tales, stories, and wide-ranging activities, this book changed how creative arts were taught in Italian schools.

Gianni Rodari is not only revered as a children’s author, but also remembered for his visionary pedagogy, and it is these two fields he combines in this revolutionary essay collection. Translated into English by acclaimed scholar of folklore and children’s literature Jack Zipes, and with original art from illustrator Matthew Forsythe, this edition of The Grammar of Fantasy is one to live with and return to for its humor, intelligence, and remarkable understanding of children.

The White Queen
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Philippa Gregory

THE COMPELLING NOVEL FROM SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER PHILIPPA GREGORY

The tale of one woman’s ambitious ascent to royalty during the Wars of the Roses and the unsolved mystery around her sons’ imprisonment in the Tower

The first in a stunning series, The Cousins’ War, is set amid the tumult and intrigue of The War of the Roses. Internationally bestselling author Philippa Gregory brings this family drama to colourful life through its women, beginning with the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen.

The White Queen tells the story of a common woman who ascends to royalty by virtue of her beauty, a woman who rises to the demands of her position and fights tenaciously for the success of her family, a woman whose two sons become the central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the Princes in the Tower whose fate remains unknown to this day. From her uniquely qualified perspective, Philippa Gregory explores the most famous unsolved mystery, informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable storytelling skills.

Praise for Philippa Gregory:

‘Meticulously researched and deeply entertaining, this story of betrayal and divided loyalties is Gregory on top form’ Good Housekeeping

‘Gregory has popularised Tudor history perhaps more than any other living fiction writer…all of her books feature strong, complex women, doing their best to improve their lives in worlds dominated by men’ Sunday Times

‘Engrossing’ Sunday Express

‘Popular historical fiction at its finest, immaculately researched and superbly told’ The Times

‘Queen of the historical novel’ Mail on Sunday

The Arcadian
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Steven Pressfield

The best-selling author of Gates of Fire and A Man at Arms presents a gripping, genre-bending story of a mercenary in late medieval Spain and the eternal costs of violence.

Spain, the 1500s. The Iberian Peninsula is splintered by faith and ambition, its kingdoms locked in endless struggle. Armies clash, religions collide, and empires rise on tides of blood. Into this crucible rides Telamon: soldier, mercenary, outcast. He has lived a hundred lives across centuries, forever condemned to take up arms. Now, drawn into the brutal conflict between Portuguese invaders and Andalusian defenders, he must face both the battlefield before him and the eternal war within himself.

But Telamon is not alone. Across time, through lifetimes, the same figures return: comrades and rivals, lovers and betrayers, all reborn in new forms, bound together by a cycle neither mercy nor death can break. As the armies close on a desperate city, their destinies entwine once more, and Telamon is forced to reckon with the questions that haunt every warrior’s soul: Can a man made for battle ever put down his sword? And is there redemption for one who has spilled blood?

With The Arcadian, bestselling author and master of historical fiction Steven Pressfield delivers a sweeping standalone novel that fuses the grit of historical realism with the mysticism of the ancient world. A meditation on fate, justice, and release from violence, The Arcadian is both a war story and a timeless journey of the spirit―a novel that asks not just how men fight, but why.

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