In 2017, I set a goal of reading 100 books. I made up the reading list as I went along, using friends, the internet, and random trips through Goodwill as inspiration. Here is the full list. Links go to Amazon. Books that I especially recommend have a star (★) by the title.

By the Numbers

Categories: 25

Fiction/Nonfiction: ³¹⁄₇₀

The 100

US History (Military)

★ Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Manchester

The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society by Thomas Lawrence Connolly

Dispatches by Michael Herr

US History (General)

Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May-September 1787 by Catherine Drinker Bowen

My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth by Nora Titone

Sociology

★ Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks

Debt: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the Great American City by Matthew Desmond

World History

★ Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones

The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones

The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front by Peter Hart

Time: Its Origin, Its Enigma, Its History by Alexander Waugh

Contemporary Novels

Underworld by Don Delillo

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Juvenile/YA

A Room Made of Windows by Eleanor Cameron

The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper by E. L. Konigsburg

And Both Were Young by Madeleine L’Engle

A City For Lincoln by John R. Tunis

Sports

Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof

Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball by Donald Hall with Dock Ellis

Classic Novels

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Biography

★ Churchill by Paul Johnson

Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen

Madame Curie: A Biography by Eve Curie (translated by Vincent Sheean)

Business

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

Computer Science and Technology

★ The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig

Computer Security: Principles and Practice by William Stallings and Lawrie Brown

Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems ed. by Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Niall Richard Murphy

Personal Development

★ The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olson

How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Devotional

★ Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan

Praying With Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation by D. A. Carson

Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi

Science Fiction

Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction ed. by Gardner Dozois

Fantasy

Land Under England by Joseph O’Neill

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis

Perelandra by C. S. Lewis

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Mystery and Suspense (Novels)

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

Mystery and Suspense (Short Story Collections)

Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can’t Put Down ed. by Clive Cussler

Grave Predictions: Tales of Mankind’s Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian and Disastrous Destiny ed. by Drew Ford

English and Writing

★ Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper

The Elements of Story: Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing by Francis Flaherty

The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics by John Pollack

Poetry

The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

The Private Dining Room by Ogden Nash

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

Nature

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

Philosophy

The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Francis Ld. Verulam, Viscount St. Albans by Francis Bacon

Psychology/Cognitive Science

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

Human-Computer Interaction: An Empirical Research Perspective by I. Scott MacKenzie

Humor/Satire

The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication by John Steinbeck

archy and mehitabel by Don Marquis

Memoir

★ The Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L’Engle

Kinfolks: Falling off the Family Tree - The Search For My Melungeon Ancestors by Lisa Alther

Out of Africa by Izak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Wait Til Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

General Science

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Unfinished

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans

Orange Is The New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman

Life With Father by Clarence Day