100 Books in 2016
First of all, I didn’t actually manage to make my goal. So, instead, here are the 88 books I read in 2016.
First of all, I didn’t actually manage to make my goal. So, instead, here are the 88 books I read in 2016.
tl;dr: Top Fiction
The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
World War Z, by Max Brooks
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
Runners-up include anything else Junot Diaz has ever written, The Martian, and The Forever War. Candidate for “most disappointing follow-up to Ready Player One” was Armada by Ernest Cline.
tl; dr: Top Nonfiction
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Runners-up include Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus by Douglas Rushkoff, What’s the Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank (can you tell I was thinking about politics a lot?) and The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. The top 5 listed above, however, profoundly impacted my thinking and I would highly recommend them to anyone.
Full List of Fiction
Cry, the Beloved Country
Alan Paton
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Fight Club: A Novel
Chuck Palahniuk
A Hologram for the King: A Novel
Dave Eggers
Underworld: A Novel
Don DeLillo
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
Gene Kim
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Hunter S. Thompson .
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
J.K. Rowling
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Winter of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz
Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
Kurt Vonnegut
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A Novel
Kurt Vonnegut
Look at the Birdie: Short Fiction
Kurt Vonnegut
Player Piano: A Novel
Kurt Vonnegut
Slapstick: Or Lonesome No More: A Novel
Kurt Vonnegut
Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works
Kurt Vonnegut
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks
The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
Midnight's Children: A Novel
Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses: A Novel
Salman Rushdie
The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien
The Sympathizer: A Novel
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Full List of Nonfiction
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Brené Brown
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson
Death of the Liberal Class
Chris Hedges
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
Chris Hedges
I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)
Chuck Klosterman
IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas
Chuck Klosterman
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Chuck Klosterman
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
David Foster Wallace
The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
David Talbot
The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge
Doc Searls
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
Douglas Rushkoff
Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
Douglas Wilson
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
Eric Schlosser
Democratic by Design: How Carsharing, Co-ops, and Community Land Trusts Are Reinventing America
Gabriel Metcalf
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
J.D. Vance
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
Keith Ferrazzi
Ethics of Big Data: Balancing Risk and Innovation
Kord Davis
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Why We Can't Wait
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
Michael Hayden
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Michael Pollan
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan
Guantánamo Diary
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't
Nate Silver
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Nicholas Carr
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
Noam Chomsky
Profit Over People : Neoliberalism and Global Order
Noam Chomsky
The Coming Aristocracy
Oliver DeMille
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces
Radley Balko
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)
Richard Feynman
How Judges Think
Richard Posner
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
Saul Alinsky
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
Sebastian Junger
Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison
Shaka Senghor
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Susannah Cahalan
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
Thomas Frank
Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
Timothy Morton