100 Books

I achieved my goal of reading 100 books in 2019. It was more difficult than I expected. Halfway through the year, I found my pace was lagging. I made reading a higher priority. This got me back on track. Going into December I only needed to read 3 more books. I thought I would destroy my goal of 100 books. Between travel and the holidays, I read exactly 100 books to reach my goal. 

Here are the books I read in 2019:

1. Chichen Itza: The History and Mystery of the Maya's Most Famous City by Jesse Harasta
2. Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
3. Prey by Michael Crichton
4. And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
5. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson
6. Understanding Japan: A Cultural History by Professor Mark J. Ravina, Ph.D. 
7. Florida by Laura Groff
8. Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers
9. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
10. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
11. The World as It Is by Ben Rhodes
12. DisneyWar by James B. Stewart
13. Hiroshima by John Hersey
14. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
15. Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
16. There There by Tommy Orange
17. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
18. Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
19. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
20. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
21. Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
22. Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
23. How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky
24. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg
25. Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss by Marty Appel
26. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
27. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
28. The White Tiger: A Novel by Aravind Adiga
29. Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks
30. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
31. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
32. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
33. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: A Magical Story by Marie Kondo
34. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
35. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai
36. Things My Son Needs to Know about the World by Fredrik Backman 
37. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
38. A History of India by Professor Michael H. Fisher, Ph.D.
39. Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India by Gita Mehta
40. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
41. 2 States: The Story of My Marriage by Chetan Bhagat
42. Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins
43. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
44. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
45. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
46. The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman
47. Feel Free by Zadie Smith
48. Thrawn Alliances by Timothy Zahn
49. Origin by Dan Brown
50. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
51. Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi 
52. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
53. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
54. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
55. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
56. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
57. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
58. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
59. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
60. You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
61. The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis
62. Travel as a Political Act, 2nd Edition by Rick Steves
63. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
64. Bhagavad Gita
65. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman
66. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
67. The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Founding of Australia by Thomas Keneally
68. The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
69. 1776 by David McCullough
70. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
71. Jaws by Peter Benchley
72. A Short History of Australia by Manning Clark
73. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
74. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
75. Girt: The Unauthorised History of Australia by David Hunt
76. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
77. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
78. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
79. The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz
80. Inland by Téa Obreht
81. Private Dancer by Stephen Leather
82. The Beach by Alex Garland
83. Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land
84. Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All by Joanna Strober and Sharon Meers
85. Less by Andrew Sean Greer
86. The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum
87. She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
88. Respect: Everything a Guy Needs to Know About Sex, Love, and Consent by Inti Chavez Perez
89.  Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick
90. Where There's Hope: Healing, Moving Forward, and Never Giving Up by Elizabeth Smart
91. Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
92. The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum
93. The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman
94. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
95. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu
96. Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton
97. First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung
98. The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger
99. Becoming by Michelle Obama
100. The Once and Future King by T. H. White

I read many wonderful books this year. I want to highlight the top 3 books I read this year. I would recommend these books to anyone. 

1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Here are a few quotes that I felt capture the essence of this novel:

“...what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”

“He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along.”

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

This book is absolutely fantastic. I laughed, I cried, and by the end of the novel, I felt like I had made a new friend in Count Rostov. This book is fun, clever, and beautifully written. The story has a little bit of everything - intrigue, romance, adventure, espionage, drama, humor, history, and so much more. While this book is a piece of historical fiction based on 20th-century Russia, it is deeply grounded in the human experience. It is a charming story that I will 100% read again. 

2. She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Here is one quote that I felt captures the essence of this novel:

“Jodi cut to the point: The United States had a system for muting sexual harassment claims, which often enabled the harassers instead of stopping them. Women routinely signed away the right to talk about their own experiences. Harassers often continued onward, finding fresh ground on which to commit the same offenses. The settlements and confidentiality agreements were almost never examined in law school classrooms or open court. This was why the public had never really understood that this was happening. Even those in the room with long histories of covering gender issues had never fully registered what was going on.”

This novel tells the story of incredible reporting. The type of in-depth, diligent, detailed reporting that is increasingly rare. It showcases the effort required to unveil the imperceptible apparatus of power that protected Weinstein, Trump, and many other perpetrators of misogyny, assault, and violence against women. Their efforts created the #metoo movement. The movement has forced many harassers to face the consequences of their inappropriate behavior, but we still have significant ground to cover to address the gender issues and violence that are enabled by our society.

3. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu

Here are a few quotes that I felt capture the essence of this novel:

“The statues were symbols. Symbols matter. We use them in telling the stories of our past and who we are, and we chose them carefully. Once I learned the real history of these statues, I knew there was only path forward, and that meant making straight what was crooked, making right what was wrong. It starts with telling the truth about the past.”

“Like it or not, we all carry the past of our country. The unresolved conflicts of race and class lay coiled, ready to erupt, unless we set our minds to an honest reckoning with that past and a search for solutions grounded in genuine truth and justice. Unlike the cursing anonymous voice on a telephone, or the menacing face, or the billy club that split John Lewis's head in Selma, Alabama, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, implicit bias is hard to see; implicit bias is a silent snake that slinks around in ways we don't notice.”

“Once we start to listen rather than speak, see rather than look away, we will realize a simple truth: we are all the same.”

In this powerful memoir, Mitch Landrieu tackles head-on many of the issues that plague our society today. He is an advocate for hope and healing. The world today could use many more leaders like him.

2019 was a great year. I am grateful I set a goal to read 100 books. It pushed me to read more than I would have otherwise. I am proud that I achieved this goal. Next year I am going to take a different approach. I am going to focus less on how many books I read. Instead, I am going to focus on finding joy in everything I read.