Abbreviated Biography

Venesky grew up in numerous neighborhoods in Erie, PA. He went to public high school, learned how to play guitar, and joined a punk rock bank. During college, his hair was dyed at least 5 different colors (not at once) and he had 9 piercings on his face (all at once). As a Biology major, he almost dropped out of college to pursue music but cringed at the idea of not being able to ask questions about nature. As a student at Gannon, Venesky met a girl named Leanne and he convinced her to take a chance on him. Being from Cleveland, she cringed at the thought of dating a die hard Pittsburgh sports fan. He lucked out. They now have one son, Samuel Wallace Venesky (whose middle name was given in honor of Alfred Russell Wallace), and they reside in Meadville, PA. The Venesky family loves to travel, snorkel, eat good food, and enjoy the simpler things in life. They regularly vacation in the Caribbean each winter where they pursue many of their passions and pleasures. Venesky enjoys reading novels (see his book list below), he cooks as often as he can, and is a connoisseur of bourbon, coffee, and beer (not always in that order). 

Book List

I started keeping a book list at some point when I was in college. 

The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri)

The Immortalists (Chloe Benjamin)

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

The Davinci Code (Dan Brown)

Angels & Demons (Dan Brown)

How I Invest My Money (Joshua Brown)

Other Voices, Other Rooms (Truman Capote)

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

On The Origin Of Species (Charles Darwin)

All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

Cloud Cuckoo Land (Anthony Doerr)

Crime and Punishment (Fyoder Dostoeyvsky)

The Idiot (Fyoder Dostoeyvsky)

Notes from the Underground (Fyoder Dostoeyvsky)

The Brothers Karamazov (Fyoder Dostoeyvsky)

Washington Black (Esi Edugyan)

Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)

As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)

Happiness (Aminatta Forna)

Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster)

Pincher Martin (William Golding)

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

The Tennis Handsome (Barry Hannah)

Geronimo Rex (Barry Hannah)

Hey Jack! (Barry Hannah)

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)

Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)

Death in the Afternoon (Ernest Hemmingway)

Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemmingway)

The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemmingway)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemmingway)

True at First Light (Ernest Hemmingway)

Green Hills of Africa (Ernest Hemmingway)

A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemmingway)

A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemmingway)

Hiroshima (John Hersey)

Siddhartha (Herman Hessee)

Steppenwolf (Herman Hessee)

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

Ill Fares the Land (Tony Judt)

The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)

The Stand (Stephen King)

Needful Things (Stephen King)

The Geography of Nowhere (James Kunstler)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela)

Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel García Márquez)

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)

Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

The High Mountains of Portugal (Yann Martel)

The Orchard Keeper (Cormac McCarthy)

Suttree (Cormac McCarthy)

All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)

The Crossing (Cormac McCarthy)

Cities of the Plain (Cormac McCarthy)

No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)

The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

The Sunset Limited (Cormac McCarthy)

Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

Mark of the Grizzly (Scott McMillon)

The Republican War on Science (Chris Mooney)

Beloved (Toni Morrison)

Tar Baby (Toni Morrison)

Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison)

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)

Invitation to a Beheading (Vladimir Nabokov)

The Little Red Chairs (Edna O'Brien)

Autism's False Prophets (Paul Offit)

Nineteen Eighty Four (George Orwell)

Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens)

The Overstory (Richard Powers)

Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser)

Frakenstein (Mary Shelly)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

The Light Between Oceans (M.L. Stedman)

The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again (J.R.R. Tolkien)

The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien)

The Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien)

The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)

A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)

Rules of Civility (Amor Towles)

The Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles)

This Is Where I Leave You (Jonathan Tropper)

The Book of Joe (Jonathan Tropper)

Rabbit, Run (John Updike)

Rabbit Redux (John Updike)

Rabbit is Rich (John Updike)

Rabbit at Rest (John Updike)

Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese)

We've Got Issues (Judith Warner)

As Good as Gone (Larry Watson)

A Handful of Dust (Evelyn Waugh)

Run Me to Earth (Paul Yoon)