Linguistics
The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World, by Joan L. Bybee, Revere Perkins, William Pagliuca
The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure, by Michael Tomasello
Usage Based Models of Language, by Michael Barlow and Suzanne Kemmer
Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation, by Sali Tagliamonte
Regularity in Semantic Change, by Elizabeth C. Traugott and Richard B. Dasher
Modality in Grammar and Discourse, ed. by Joan L. Bybee and Suzanne Fleischman
Ethnosyntax: Explorations in Grammar and Culture, ed. by N. J. Enfield
Other nonfiction
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, by Jonathan Weiner
A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir, by Sandra Gail Lambert
The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, by Jeremy Narby
Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination, by Barbara Hurd
Quirks of the Quantum: Postmodernism and Contemporary American Fiction, by Samuel Coale
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, by Pierre Bourdieu
The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, by Michel Foucault
The Transmission of Affect, by Teresa Brennan
An Environmental History of Northeast Florida, by James J. Miller
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, by Benedict Anderson
Bird Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird, by Tim Birkhead
The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, by Jacob Bronowski
Feh: A Memoir, by Shalom Auslander
The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephan Jay Gould
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut
Literature
The Appointment, by Herta Müller
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
L’écume des jours, by Boris Vian (this one must be read in French)
Immensités: Roman, by Sylvie Germain
La invención de Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Moderato Cantabile, by Marguerite Duras
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Le Rivage des Syrtes, by Julien Gracq (this one must be read in French)
The River’s Memory, by Sandra Gail Lambert
A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum
Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome
TransAtlantic, by Colum McCann
Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, by Samuel Beckett
The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Where the Dogstar Never Glows, by Tara L. Masih