Reading by Publisher - Update 1

Mid-January I assigned myself a mini challenge of reading books by more diverse publishers. It's pretty obvious that I love Penguin Random House titles because last year I read a disproportionate number of their titles (and two of the first three books I read this year were published by PRH). This year, I want to get out more. (Also it should help me when interviewing with other publishing houses.) So I'm going to do an update in the middle of the month about how I'm coming on my mini-challenge. Here's the basics:

5 Hachette books
5 Simon & Schuster books
5 HarperCollins books
5 MacMillan books
5 "other" books

And here's how I've done so far (along with books I'm thinking I might read for the publishers in question). I've got two publishers more than done! And the other two started.

For Hachette I have read:

1. The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander 
2. Class by Lucinda Rosenfeld 
3. You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein 
4. Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film by Alexandra Zapruder 
5. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
6. Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (read but not reviewed yet)

For Simon & Schuster my current plan is:

1. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
2. The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery 
3. Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper 
4. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen 
5. Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America by David O. Stewart (for my book club so not going to change) 

For HarperCollins my current plan is (interestingly, these are all nonfiction):

1. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong (read but not reviewed yet)
2. Marrow: A Story of Love, Loss, and What Matters Most by Elizabeth Lesser 
3. There Is No Good Card for This: What To Say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love by Kelsey Crowe, Emily McDowell 
4. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly 
5. Searching for John Hughes: Or Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life I Learned from Watching '80s Movies by Jason Diamond 

For MacMillan my current plan is:

1. Finding Perfect by Elly Swartz 
2. American Girls by Alison Umminger 
3. Rise: How a House Built a Family by Cara Brookins 
4. Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
5. Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton 
6. Radical Candor by Kim Scott (currently reading)
7. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh (currently reading)

For "Other" my current plan is:

1. Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France by Craig Carlson (Sourcebooks) 
2. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (WW Norton)
3. Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury USA)
4. Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse by Faith Sullivan (Milkweed) (currently reading)
5. Garth Williams, American Illustrator: A Life by Elizabeth K. Wallace, James D. Wallace (Beaufort Books) 
6. Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South by Andrew Maraniss (Vanderbilt University Press) 
7. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books) 
8. The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game by Mary Pilon (Bloomsbury USA) 
9. Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud by David Dayen (The New Press)
10. The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (Sourcebooks)

Initially I had thought I'd read these in order, or at least in chunks of all one publisher at a time but I quickly gave that up. Partly that's for a very good reason: I have gotten some more interview in my job search! I'm also expanding the "Other" category to 10 books. And while in my year-end wrap-up I did count the audiobook publishers that aren't the Big Five separately (Recorded Books, Brilliance Audio, Highbridge, etc.) However, for the purposes of this exercise, I'm going to count these books under their print publisher.