I am a big fan of Toni Morrison. I have a literature background. Alice Walker is one of my favorite poets. I enjoy historical pieces by David McCullough. I enjoy his books. Those are the first ones that come to mind. There has been some science fiction that I've read over the years that has been fun, like Stranger in a Strange Land. I read that when I was young. Those are the ones that come to mind in terms of authors that I go back to.

– Recommended by Caryn Schenewerk, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Policy at Relativity Space (episode 111)

Nilofer Merchant, The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World

– Recommended by: Mary Card Mina (episode 58)

“John Green is amazing. He also has a great podcast and a book called The Anthropocene Reviewed, where he reviews things in the world. He is brilliant. It's a good place to start, but his books are great. ”

– Recommended by Jessica Aronoff, CEO of Cayton Children’s Museum

“Who I'm into now is the man who wrote A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman. He has written some extraordinary books, like Anxious People and Beartown. He's amazing, and I would highly recommend him. He's a fun, well-written fiction writer, but he's amazing. ”

– Recommended by Jessica S Henry, author, legal commentator, blogger and social justice advocate

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

– Recommended by Nancy Wieben Stock, retired Orange County Superior Court Judge, JAMS affiliated judge and mediator

Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World

– Recommended by Erin Giglia, cofounder of Montage Legal Group and Camila Lopez cofounder of People Clerk

“Brené Brown is my go-to, feed-my-soul, I'm-okay, type of thing. James Patterson is an escape like, get in the book, get into the character and forget about everything else.”

– Recommended by Amy Stewart, founder Stewart Law Group

“Fiction would be a boring answer but you’ve got to go with John Grisham. For nonfiction, I like David McCullough. He wrote, 1776 and some books about Teddy Roosevelt. I enjoy his writing. I am a much bigger nonfiction reader than I am in fiction. I never enjoyed fiction but if you would make me pick it out, it would be a Grisham novel.”

– Recommended by Amanda Paletz, The Joseph Project

“I still think To Kill a Mockingbird is the greatest American novel there is. I read it as a teenager and it's a great legal story. A lot of other things in there too, with a great legal story as well.

I’m a big Ernest Hemingway fan”

– Recommended by Chase Rogers, former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court

“I love beautiful or interesting writing. It's different. I remember Wolf Hall and it's from a different perspective. I remember reading and it was extraordinary reading. I forget what the story is because it's all that great story about the Anne Boleyn period but the way it was written was interesting. If you'd stacked up my books, the highest stack is probably historical fiction.”

– Recommended by Ann Kappler, GC of Prudential Financial

Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness

– Recommended by Paloma Ahmadi

Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius

–Recommended by Barbara Dawson, Snell & Wilmer

Sofia Segovia, The Murmur of the Bees

– Recommended by: Jennafer Wagner of FVAP

“I'm a great Jane Austen fan. I go to her often when things seem bad. I love a British novelist named Penelope Lively, who has written a series of wonderful novels over the years. Most of them for grounding women and their relationships. Also interestingly, given some of the things I've said in this show highlighting the role of chance in everybody's life, sometimes producing sad outcomes and sometimes producing happy outcomes.

I like to read mysteries. I also have some favorite mystery writers. Andrea Camilleri, who unfortunately is now dead, wrote wonderfully about this Sicilian detective. I love the ways that many mysteries are stories about different societies can give you a fun window into a different society. When I was younger, I loved Hemingway and some of the great American authors, Faulkner and Saul Bellow. There were not so many female authors at the time.”

– Recommended by Deborah Hensler, Stanford Law Professor

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

– Recommended by: Erin Smith of FVAP