My Top Books Read 2021

I read many good books in 2021. I wanted to read 100 books this year, but I wasn't sure if I would make it. Coming into Q4 I was a little behind, but I picked up my pace in November/December and I made it to exactly 100 books. There is something quite satisfying about hitting that nice round number. As I said, I read many excellent books this year. I want to share some thoughts on my favorite books I read this year. There were many worthy books that uplifted me and stories that inspired me. It was hard to narrow down the list, but here are the 10 books that stood out the most to me in 2021:

American Dirt: A Novel by Jeanine Cummins

Why this book is in my top 10:

This book is heart wrenching. At times it felt like a gut punch because I became so connected to the characters and their harrowing journey. This book is particularly timely because migrant caravans and building a wall have entered the national zeitgeist. I am passionate and frustrated by the tenor of the public discourse surrounding immigration in this country. Too often the conversation seems to turn around policy issues at the exclusion of moral or humanitarian obligations. We seldom consider that many of our ancestors were immigrants in search of a better life for themselves and their posterity. We seldom think of current day immigrants as fellow human beings. People with the agency to make their own decisions, people who can contribute to their own bright futures, and to ours, as so many generations of oft-reviled immigrants have done before them. This book while fictional tells a timely story that made me pause and think about the human beings behind the ongoing debates. 

Quotes:

“That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn’t even want them.” 

― Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

"So I hoped to present one of those unique personal stories - a work of fiction - as a way to honor the hundreds of thousands of stories we may never get to hear. And in so doing, I hope to create a pause where the reader may begin to individuate. When we see migrants on the news, we may remember: these people are people.” 

― Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Why this book is in my top 10:

I loved The Martian and enjoyed Andy Weir's followup, Artemis, so when I heard he had a new novel coming out I couldn't wait to read it. I was not disappointed. It has his signature style of science fiction with just enough reality mixed in that it seems like this story could take place tomorrow. This story is an engaging space odyssey whose protagonist is an everyman who is defined by his ability to solve problems with science and technology. I found myself riveted to the story right to the satisfying conclusion. 

Quotes:

“I should be more focused on the "first contact with intelligent aliens" thing or the "save all of humanity" thing, but gosh darn it, I can spend a moment to be happy about being right when everyone said I was wrong.” 

― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“It's a weird feeling, scientific breakthroughs. There's no Eureka moment. Just a slow, steady progression toward a goal. But man, when you get to that goal it feels good.” 

― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West by H. W. Brands

Why this book is in my top 10:

This book was recommended to me by a waiter in Baltimore. I am so glad he recommended it. This may not be the most challenging history of the West, but it presents a scholarly, yet entertaining adventure story of America's expansion into the West. Brands tells the story primarily through character sketches. We bounce around a bit starting with the Louisiana Purchase and winding our way through stories of settlement, conflict, the gold rush and more. The overarching narrative of the book is that the West’s promise of new beginnings and fresh starts often proved illusory. Brands has a deft narrative touch and a talent for highlighting the human drama undergirding historical events. For example, he highlights one irony, especially given current events in the region, is the fact that “by scores, then by hundreds and thousands, illegal immigrants poured into Texas” in the 1820s - illegal immigrants from, what was then the U.S. crossed into Texas and created the conditions that led to war with Mexico. I personally enjoyed the stories of the pioneers, including my own Ancestors, crossing the plains to settle in Utah. Once the Great Plains had been settled, railroads crisscrossed the country, violence had been quelled and cowboys had become the stuff of Hollywood hyperbole, the West began to lose its mystique. It was no longer the mysterious land of adventure and it was then that our story and Brands history came to an end. 

Quotes:

“The West was often viewed as the last bastion of American individualism, but woven through its entire history was a strong thread – at times a cable – of collectivism. Western individualism sneered, even snarled, at federal power, but federal power was essential to the development of the West. The West was America’s unspoiled Eden, but the spoilage of the West proceeded more rapidly than that of any other region. The West was the land of wide open spaces, but its residents were more concentrated in cities and towns than in most of the East. The West was where whites fought Indians, but they rarely went into battle without Indian allies, and their ranks included black soldiers. The West was where fortune beckoned, where riches would reward the miner’s persistence, the cattleman’s courage, the railroad man’s enterprise, the bonanza farmer’s audacity; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East. Its elusiveness simply added to its allure…”

- H.W. Brands, Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Why this book is in my top 10:

I did not have particularly high expectations when I began this book, but I quickly found the subject matter to be absolutely fascinating. In order to get into the depths of what humans actually think, Stephens-Davidowitz analyzed almost a decade’s worth of Google Trends to provide insight into our modern society and the human psyche. The author is able to explore topics people often lie about because this data is a “digital truth serum". It also offers the means to run large-scale randomised controlled experiments – which are usually extremely laborious and expensive – at almost no cost, and in this way uncover causal linkages in addition to mere correlations. Some of the authors facts are depressing, others are funny and a few are even touching. In all Stephens-Davidowitz is able to provide a unique take on what we do and don’t know about ourselves, and it is fascinating to see how the world’s largest search engine drives it all.

Quotes:

“I sometimes suspect that inside every data scientist is a kid trying to figure out why his childhood dreams didn't come true.” 

― Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

“Frankly, the overwhelming majority of academics have ignored the data explosion caused by the digital age. The world’s most famous sex researchers stick with the tried and true. They ask a few hundred subjects about their desires; they don’t ask sites like PornHub for their data. The world’s most famous linguists analyze individual texts; they largely ignore the patterns revealed in billions of books. The methodologies taught to graduate students in psychology, political science, and sociology have been, for the most part, untouched by the digital revolution. The broad, mostly unexplored terrain opened by the data explosion has been left to a small number of forward-thinking professors, rebellious grad students, and hobbyists. That will change.” 

― Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Why this book is in my top 10:

This book is so very sad. Some half a million American's have died from opioid-related overdoses since 1999 and millions more have lost control of their lives to addition. This book focuses on the perpetrators behind this terrible epidemic. While not all of this damage can be attributed to the Sacklers, a lot of it can. By having their company, Purdue Pharma aggressively and misleadingly promote OxyContin as safe and non-addictive they ushered in a new paradigm under which doctors began to routinely prescribe the potent and dangerously addictive narcotic. As a result, the Sacklers became fabulously rich, while many average Americans lost everything. 

This book paints a devastating portrait of a family consumed by greed and unwilling to take responsibly, or show sympathy, for the damage they wrought upon society. Not only did they knowingly peddle dangerous chemicals to the general public - they got away with it. While drug lords like El Chapo are serving a life sentence in prison the Sacklers retain their freedom and most of their vast fortune. This book is important so that the world might at least know this family played the system to become fabulously rich so that hopefully history won't repeat itself. 

Quotes:

“The opioid crisis is, among other things, a parable about the awesome capability of private industry to subvert public institutions.” 

― Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

“It is a peculiar hallmark of the American economy that you can produce a dangerous product and effectively off-load any legal liability for whatever destruction that product may cause by pointing to the individual responsibility of the consumer. “Abusers aren’t victims,” Richard said. “They are the victimizers.” 

― Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

Why this book is in my top 10:

This book is a memoir mixed with a biography. The subject of the biography is David Starr Jordan. Professor Jordan was an ichthyologist, or world-famous fish researcher. He would have taken much umbrage at the title of this book. Miller is fascinated with Jordan's unflappable cheerfulness and dogged relentlessness in pursuit of his professional glory. Miller very effectively weaves the details of her own life and journey with the milestones of David Starr Jordan's career. She shares intimate details - her atheist father promoting the idea of a senseless universe, her shattering at the end of a long-term relationship, a failed suicide attempt, and her obsession with a long-dead collector of dead fish who, in her words, refused to "surrender to Chaos". Miller is fascinated by how Jordan responded when his ballooning fish collection is destroyed, not once, but twice, first by lightning at Indiana University, and later by the 1906 earthquake at Stanford University. Both times he salvages what he could and began anew. As Miller delves deeper into Jordan's life she confronts some painful truths. In his time at Stanford it is likely he poisoned Jane Stanford to protect his position. Also, near the end of his career, Jordan became a leading eugenicists who promoted selective breeding and forced sterilization. Miller is forced to confront a salient issue today - how do we as a society reconcile the good individuals contributed to society with the evil they also perpetuated? How do we parse the good from the bad when we remember the legacy of a human being? There aren't always easy answers to the questions. Miller’s journey to reconcile this question comes in one of the most impactful chapters of the book, which reports on her encounter with one “Anna,” forcibly sterilized, in 1967, at what used to be known as the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Anna’s response to Jordan’s eugenicist meddling - Anger, to be sure, but also something even more effective: Today Anna was, in Miller’s words, living “the hell out of the life the eugenicists didn’t think she was worthy of living.” This book is thoughtful and beautifully written. It is well worth a read. 

Quotes:

“There is grandeur in this view,” scolds a quote from Darwin hanging over my dad’s desk at his lab. The words are written in looping brown calligraphy, enclosed in a varnished wooden frame. The quote comes from the last sentence of *On the Origin of Species*. It is Darwin’s sweet nothing, his apology for deflating the world of its God, his promise that there is grandeur—if you look hard enough, you’ll find it. But sometimes it felt like an accusation. If you can’t see it, shame on you.” 

― Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

“His point is simply that the human mind is not always so good at carving up its world, that the names we place on things often turn out to be wrong. Were “slaves” subhuman creatures, unworthy of freedom? Were “witches” deserving of the stake? His chair example is intended in the same spirit: a reminder to stay humble, to stay wary of what we believe, about even the most basic things in our lives. “I think you have to think that if you want to make progress.” 

― Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

“The true path to progress is paved not with certainty but with doubt, with being 'open to revision.” 

― Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

Why this book is in my top 10:

This books feels like sitting down and having a conversation with Matthew McConaughey. His story is entertaining and full of good lessons. This book is many things - part memoir, part guide to life, part collection of extracts from diaries the actor has been keeping for decades - above all it is an insightful and intimate exploration of one southern boy’s journey to stardom. McConaughey is raw and honest with his audience through every chapter of his life. He toes the line between entertainment and inspiration at a masterful level. That famous “alright, alright, alright” voice is also his narration of the audiobook. Listening to the audiobook is like being right there with him. You hear the inflections in his voice change as he gets passionate about a situation and there is no room to misconstrue the meaning behind his words. I 100% will listen to this book again. 

Quotes:

“Catching greenlights is about skill: intent, context, consideration, endurance, anticipation, resilience, speed, and discipline. We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the red lights are in our life, and then change course to hit fewer of them.” 

― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

“I’d rather lose money havin fun than make money being bored,” 

― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold & Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined & Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry

Why this book is in my top 10:

These are actually 3 different books, but I loved all 3 and couldn't pick just 1. In these books Stephen Fry masterfully retells the Greek Myths. He stays true to the spirit of the original myths, while updating them to be accessible and entertaining to the modern audience. Fry’s retelling of these myths is straightforward, entertaining and incredibly informative. Greek mythology is popular for how human and relatable the gods are. Fry certainly brings these aspects out and brings the gods to life. One of the things I particularly enjoy is Stephen Fry’s frequent reminders of, and delight in, the etymology of words. It’s still easy to forget how ubiquitous Greek words are in English, and how useful knowing a bit about the etymology can be for understanding how our ways of thinking about things has evolved. He does this constantly in the books. What really makes the books wonderful is Fry’s enthusiasm for the stories. I hope he comes out with even more Greek myths reimagined. 

Quotes:

“The Greeks created gods that were in their image; warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate, but vengeful.” 

― Stephen Fry, Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

“You see?” said Prometheus. “It is your fate to be Heracles the hero, burdened with labors, yet it is also your choice. You choose to submit to it. Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.” 

― Stephen Fry, Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined

“No labour was more Heraclean than the labour of being Heracles.” 

― Stephen Fry, Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined

“The moment when flowers and fruits are at their fullest and ripest is the moment that precedes their fall, their decay, their rot, their death.” 

― Stephen Fry, Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert 

Why this book is in my top 10:

This book seems very apropos in this day and age where we are dealing with a multitude of issues caused by our ever expanding civilization. This book is about humans trying to fix the damage they themselves have caused, and in some cases trying to fix the damage that was caused when trying to fix an even older damage created by civilization. Kolbert tracks the spiraling absurdity of human attempts to control nature with technology. Grand, Promethean interventions of the sort of which modernity’s boosters were once so proud – a river’s flow reversed to carry waste to a more convenient location, an aquifer tapped to grow alfalfa in the desert, coal and oil extracted from great depths and burned to move machines – spawn unforeseen disasters. Ever grander interventions ensue, which bring fresh calamities. This book is both a warning and an answer. It shows how past technologies have caused unintended consequences, but also how technology may solve the greatest challenges we face today. Will these new technologies succeed? Only time will tell. 

Quotes:

“The strongest argument for gene editing cane toads, house mice, and ship rats is also the simplest: what's the alternative? Rejecting such technologies as unnatural isn't going to bring nature back. The choice is not between what is and what was, but between what is and what will be, which, often enough, is nothing.” 

― Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

“This has been a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems. In the course of reporting it, I spoke to engineers and genetic engineers, biologists and microbiologists, atmospheric scientists and atmospheric entrepreneurs. Without exception, they were enthusiastic about their work. But, as a rule, this enthusiasm was tempered by doubt. The electric fish barriers, the concrete crevasse, the fake cavern, the synthetic clouds- these were presented to me less in a spirit of techno-optimism than what might be called techno-fatalism. They weren't improvements on the originals; they were the best that anyone could come up with, given the circumstances... 

It's in this context that interventions like assisted evolution and gene drives and digging millions of trenches to bury billions of trees have to be assessed. Geoengineering may be 'entirely crazy and quite disconcerting', but if it could slow the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or take some of 'the pain and suffering away', or help prevent no-longer-fully-natural ecosystems from collapsing, doesn't it have to be considered?” 

― Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amor Towles

Why this book is in my top 10:

I am quite fond of Amor Towles writing. A Gentleman From Moscow is still one of my favorite books. When I saw he had a new novel I had to read it. The Lincoln Highway is a great American Road trip adventure that tails four boys - three 18-year-olds who met in a juvenile reformatory, plus a brainy 8-year-old younger brother, Billy. Billy is determined to follow the Lincoln Highway west to San Francisco, where he hopes to find his mother, who abandoned her family when he was a baby. Elegantly written with beautiful prose Towles explores how evil can be offset by decency and kindness no matter the circumstances. While the settings range from Nebraska's farmland to New York's Adirondacks by way of some of the most iconic sites in NYC the action is packed into a brief 10 day stint. The story itself focuses on the act of storytelling and myth making. Nowhere is this more clear than Billy's obsession with the big red alphabetical compendium of 26 heroes and adventurers - Professor Abacus Abernathy's Compendium of Heroes - from Achilles to Zorro, with the letter Y left blank for You (the reader) to record their own heroic adventure. This novel is packed with fantastic characters and filled with side stories, circuses, magic tricks, sagas, retribution and the messy business of balancing accounts. This novel drives home that sometimes the journey, and not the destination, was the point the whole time. 

Quotes:

“For kindness begins where necessity ends.” 

― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“He too had watched as the outer limits of his life had narrowed from the world at large, to the island of Manhattan, to that book-lined office in which he awaited with a philosophical resignation the closing of the finger and thumb. And then this... This! A little boy from Nebraska appears at his doorstep with a gentle demeanor and a fantastical tale. A tale not from a leather-bound tome mind you... But from life itself. How easily we forget-we in the business of storytelling- that life was the point all along.” 

― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Questions can be so tricky, he said, like forks in the road. You can be having such a nice conversation and someone will raise a question, and the next thing you know you’re headed off in a whole new direction. In all probability, this new road will lead you to places that are perfectly agreeable, but sometimes you just want to go in the direction you were already headed.” 

― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

Here is the full list of books I read in 2021:

1. Luster: A Novel by Raven Leilani

2. Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

3. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

4. Sharks in the Time of Saviors: A Novel by Kawai Strong Washburn

5. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

6. Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story by Ben Carson, Cecil Murphey

7. Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein

8. Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Trethewey

9. The Baker's Secret: A Novel by Stephen P. Kiernan

10. How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel by C Pam Zhang

11. A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir by Colin Jost

12. American Dirt: A Novel by Jeanine Cummins

13. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

14. The Vanishing Half: A Novel by Brit Bennett

15. Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World by Thomas F. Madden

16. Understanding Exposure, Fourth Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera by Bryan Peterson

17. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

18. Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know by Andrew Finkel

19. Turkish Delights by Philippa Scott

20. Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution by Brian Kenny

21. The Jetsetters: A Novel by Amanda Ward

22. The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik

23. Curveball: How I Discovered True Fulfillment After Chasing Fortune and Fame by Barry Zito

24. Deacon King Kong: A Novel by James McBride

25. Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times by David S. Reynolds

26. Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

27. Missionaries by Phil Klay

28. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

29. Programmed to Run: Develop elite running/racing biomechanical and mental skills, regardless of age, gender, or body type. by Thomas S. Miller, Ph.D.

30. Long Bright River: A Novel by Liz Moore

31. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

32. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

33. Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel Lieberman

34. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

35. Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry

36. Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry

37. The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church by Jana Riess

38. Call Me God: The Untold Story of the DC Sniper Investigation by Jim Clemente, Peter McDonnell, and Tim Clemente

39. Everything Is Fucked by Mark Manson

40. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

41. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

42. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

43. Shadows in the Grass by Karen Blixen

44. Rwanda, Inc.: How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World by Andrea Redmond and Patricia Crisafulli

45. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

46. The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

47. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch 

48. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

49. Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds by Joy Adamson

50. The Wisdom of Walt: Leadership Lessons from the Happiest Place on Earth (Disneyland): Success Strategies for Everyone (from Walt Disney and Disneyland) by Jeffrey Barnes

51. A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

52. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

53. Killing the Mob: The Fight Against Organized Crime in America by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

54. Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld

55. Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most by Greg McKeown

56. Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld

57. AMERICAN LION: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham 

58. Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa

59. Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West by H. W. Brands

60. Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert 

61. Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry

62. The Coming Jobs War by Jim Clifton 

63. The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

64. Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki

65. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

66. Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir by Ashley C. Ford

67. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

68. A History of Modern Uganda by Richard Reid

69. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey

70. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

71. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

72. Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght 

73. The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

74. The Island of Sea Women: A Novel by Lisa See

75. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

76. Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen

77. Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

78. The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell

79. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire 

80. Homeland Elegies: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar

81. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

82. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah 

83. No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler

84. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

85. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

86. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

87. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

88. Animal Farm by George Orwell

89. I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story by Hank Aaron

90. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

91. One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com by Richard L. Brandt

92. Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

93. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

94. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance

95. No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox

96. Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

97. The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

98. Don't Call it a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM by Sarah Berman

99. The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed by Sara Gay Forden

100. The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amor Towles