Books I Read in 2023

 

Books I Read in 2023

1. The Postman Always Rings Twice (James M. Cain; audiobook, read by Stanley Tucci)
2. The Day the World Came to Town:  9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland (Jim DeFede; audiobook, read by Ray Porter)
3. Rez Dogs (Joseph Bruchac)
4. In Search of the Free Individual:  The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul (Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Jamey Gambrell)
5. All Systems Red:  The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1 (Martha Wells)
6. War and Peas:  Funny Comics for Dirty Lovers (Jonathan Kunz and Elizabeth Pich)
7. Star Child:  A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler (Ibi Zoboi)
8. American Sirens:  The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics (Kevin Hazzard; audiobook, read by Gilbert Glenn Brown)
9. Catch the Light:  Why I Write (Joy Harjo)
10. 4:50 from Paddington (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Joan Hickson)
11. Aliens:  Dead Orbit (James Stokoe)
12. And There Was Light:  Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Jon Meacham; audiobook, read by Jon Meacham)
13. Rocket Men:  The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon (Robert Kurson; audiobook, read by Ray Porter)
14. South to America:  A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (Imani Perry; audiobook, read by Imani Perry)
15. The 13 Clocks (James Thurber)
16. Above Ground:  Poems (Clint Smith)
17. River of the Gods:  Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile (Candice Millard; audiobook, read by Paul Michael)
18. The Best Strangers in the World:  Stories from a Life Spent Listening (Ari Shapiro; audiobook, read by Ari Shapiro)
19. My Dog May Be a Genius (Jack Prelutsky; audiobook, read and sung by Jack Prelutsky)
20. The Inheritance Games (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)
21. Alive at the End of the World:  Poems (Saeed Jones)
22. These Precious Days:  Essays (Ann Patchett; audiobook, read by Ann Patchett)
23. Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Gabriel Garcia Marquez; translated by Edith Grossman)
24. Liberation Day:  Stories (George Saunders; audiobook read by George Saunders, Tina Fey, Michael McKean, Edi Patterson, Jenny Slate, Jack McBrayer, Melora Hardin, and Stephen Root)
25. Mountains Beyond Mountains:  The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Tracy Kidder)
26. This is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone)
27. Amoralman:  A True Story and Other Lies (Derek Delgaudio)
28. *Assassination Vacation (Sarah Vowell)
29. 55 Strong: Inside the West Virginia Teachers' Strike (edited by Elizabeth Catt, Emily Hilliard, and Jessica Salfia)
30. The Evidence of Things Not Seen (James Baldwin)
31. I Do Everything I'm Told:  Poems (Megan Fernandes)
32. Death in a Prairie House:  Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders (William R. Drennan; audiobook, read by Jim Fleming)
33. Stupid Hope:  Poems (Jason Shinder)
34. Musical Tables:  Poems (Billy Collins)
35. Hallowe'en Party (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Hugh Fraser)
36. The Mystery of the Blue Train (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Hugh Fraser)
37. The Skull (Jon Klassen)
38. ABC Murders (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Hugh Fraser)
39. Hickory Dickory Dock (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Hugh Fraser)
40. Master of the Senate:  The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3 (Robert Caro)
41. Murder in Three Acts (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Hugh Fraser)
42. Yellowface (R.F. Kuang; audiobook, read by Helen Laser)
43. The Book of Delights:  Essays (Ross Gay; audiobook, read by Ross Gay)
44. Sleeping Murder (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Stephanie Cole)
45. The Passage of Power:  The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4 (Robert Caro)
46. Minor Threats, Volume 1:  A Quick End to a Long Beginning (Patton Oswalt, Jordan Blum, Scott Hepburn, Ian Herring, and Nate Piekos)
47. A Fortune for Your Disaster:  Poems (Hanif Abdurraqib; audiobook, read by Hanif Abdurraqib)
48. The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (Christopher Moore)
49. Death in the Clouds (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Hugh Fraser)
50. The Body in the Library (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Stephanie Cole)
51. Thirteen at Dinner (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Hugh Fraser)
52. White Cat, Black Dog:  Stories (Kelly Link)
53. At Bertram's Hotel (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Stephanie Cole)
54. One Above & One Below:  New Poems (Erin Belieu)
55. The Tragedy of Brady Sims (Ernest J. Gaines)
56. Robot Dreams (Sara Varon)
57. Sing To It:  Stories (Amy Hempel)
58. Your Pal Fred (Michael Rex)
59. A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens; audiobook, abridged, read by Patrick Stewart)
60. Old in Art School:  A Memoir of Starting Over (Nell Irvin Painter; audiobook, read by Nell Irvin Painter)

Books I Read in 2022

 

On Books I'll Never Read

There's a chapter in What If?2:  Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, in which author Randall Munroe, a former roboticist for NASA, addresses the following question, submitted to his blog by a reader:

At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime?

Through a variety of calculations, many of which are based on our understanding of human productivity, Munroe concludes that a person's ability to read all available English texts ended "sometime in the late 1500s." This corresponds to the Elizabethan era, in which Shakespeare and Marlowe were writing some of the most foundational works in English literature.

And while this makes sense--Gutenberg's printing press had been in existence for over a century at this point--it is also difficult to accept.

To a lesser extent, Munroe's conclusion is a reminder that only a small fraction of the literature from Shakespeare's era has survived, including some of the Bard's own work. Our understanding of "literature" in those decades are formed from what survives; we read the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their contemporaries, and we extrapolate outwards.

But more importantly, it is a reminder that we live in an unprecedented era for readers. Thanks to apps like Libby and Kindle, which allow people to read books anywhere; sites like Google Books and the Internet Archive, which have digitized millions of texts, including rare and out-of-print works; a gargantuan self-publishing industry; fanfic sites; and a proliferation of audiobook services, like Audible and Libro.fm, it has never been easier to find, purchase, and read books. (Having grown up in a small rural town in the 1990s, the change over the last three decades has been staggering:  back then, our two greatest resources for books were public libraries--the nearest of which was ten miles from our home--and Waldenbooks, which was located in a now-closed shopping mall 20 miles from our home.)

This overabundance of reading material is undoubtedly positive:  independent bookstores are undergoing a massive resurgence in popularity and support, readers are able to find a wealth of materials in even the most niche of sub-genres, stories have become more diverse and inclusive, and so on. But wealth of any kind leads to problems of its own. In this case, the age-old problem of being unable to read as much as one might want.

This problem--if it can be called such--rears its head most notably on social media, where dedicated readers post messages of distress:  "How," they ask, "will I ever read every book that I want to read?" They bemoan the size of their TBR piles, which never seem to shrink, as if the simple task of reading has led each of us into a Borgesian library of our own making--a world in which the stack of books at our bedsides will never get smaller, no matter how much time we dedicate to reading those books.

Note the subtle difference between this problem and the question posed to Randall Munroe. The issue today is not that someone might want to read every work published in their mother tongue. Instead, it's that someone may have a carefully curated collection of books that they want to read, perhaps desperately so, but will be unable to before shuffling off this mortal coil.

Or, to put it more succinctly:  We will die before reading every book we want to read, and we cannot accept it.

*    *    *

Earlier this year, in a fit of curiosity, I created a spreadsheet listing every book I own. Most of these are kept in bookshelves scatted throughout my apartment, though a sizable number are in plastic bins in my garage, moved there due to lack of space. (For the sake of simplicity--and to preserve my own sanity--I didn't list the hundreds of books in my classroom library. Yes, I own those books, and yes, I've read many of them, but I purchased them for my students, not myself.)

As of this writing, there are 764 titles in my collection, and they run the gamut of subjects and genres. There are biographies and works of history alongside novels, plays, and poetry collections. Fantasy, science fiction, horror, and mystery abound, as do oral histories, works of mythology, graphic novels, anthologies, and photography collections. There are books published by long-standing and much-revered companies alongside those published by independent presses, by museums and historical societies, and by the authors themselves. And there are the oddities, too:  William T. Vollmann's seven-volume study of violence, published by McSweeney's, of which I've read only the first slim volume; the collected records of a 19th century fur company; a scientific encyclopedia from the 1950s that spans more than 2,000 illustrated pages, which was a gift from an aunt; a two-volume collection of wildlife photographs by George Shiras, who was active in the early 1900s; and the massive diary of Arthur Inman, a recluse driven to suicide by noise from a nearby construction site.

And while I'm constantly weeding my collection for unwanted books, either donating them to local library sales or turning them in for credit at independent bookstores, the one constant is that I have never read the vast majority of the books I own. In fact, as part of my self-audit, I decided to count the number of books in my personal library that I've actually read. The result? Out of 764 books, I've read 167, or just under 22%.

Which would not be worth mentioning, except that I continue buying books at breakneck speed. Those new books, heaped alongside my desk, will be added to the spreadsheet, placed on a bookshelf (or possibly in a bin), and--if history is any indication--almost certainly ignored for years to come.

*    *    *

I've accepted that I will never stop buying books, even if it means they gather dust on a bookshelf, suffer the changing temperatures of a detached garage, or go unread. They are here in case I ever get around to them, which is a small--but important--comfort for someone who loves reading.

The books I do read are another matter. In compiling a list of the books I read this year, I noticed another trend in my habits:  a majority of the books I read were books I didn't actually want to read.

That is to say, they were not books I was planning to read, or would ever purchase for myself. Books that I buy and keep in my apartment are books I want to read:  I come across them in bookstores or library sales, I hear about them online or from other readers, and I buy them because they peak my interest. 

But a majority of the books I read this year? They were from libraries, first and foremost, rather than from my own collection. What's more, they were read out of convenience--I needed something short and quick, for example, and grabbed whatever I found on a library shelf--or out of obligation, having read and enjoyed the author's previous works. Sometimes they were read on the recommendation of others. And sometimes I read books based on reputation, either of the author or the prose itself. (In a moment of pure dumb luck, I read Annie Ernaux's masterwork Happening a month before she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.) During the school year, when reading time is scarce and fleeting, I rely on graphic novels--slim volumes with very little text, which can be set down at a moment's notice and just as quickly picked back up. During the summer, when my schedule is more open, I tackle lengthy tomes that require extraordinary time and focus--the next volume in Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, for example.

The numbers don't lie. Of the 102 books I read this year, I count 12 that I was earnestly excited to read. This isn't the typical excitement you feel when starting a new book. Instead, this is the excitement a child feels for presents under the Christmas tree:  that nervous, ticklish anticipation of knowing something good is coming your way, that it's something you want and will thoroughly enjoy, if only you're patient for just a little longer. This is the same excitement you feel when you pre-order a book in January, knowing it won't be coming out until March or July or September. It's a feeling that only intensifies as the months pass.

Here are the 12 books I was genuinely excited to read this year:

• Ain't Burned All the Bright (Jason Reynolds; illustrations by Jason Griffin)
• Punching the Air (Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam)
• Habibi (Craig Thompson)
• Godzilla:  The Half-Century War (James Stokoe)
• The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (John Koenig)
• The Sentence (Louise Erdrich)
• Rogues:  True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (Patrick Radden Keefe)
• Woman at Point Zero (Nawal El Saadawi)
• The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 2:  Means of Ascent (Robert Caro)
• Mapping the Interior (Stephen Graham Jones)
• How the Word is Passed:  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Clint Smith; audiobook, read by Clint Smith)
• The Trees (Percival Everett)

These are books I had wanted to read--had been meaning to read, had been excited to read--for some time. In a few cases, these are books that had sat on my shelves for a while. In one or two other instances, they were books I purchased as soon as they were published, and devoured in one or two long, delirious evenings.

I realize this sounds selfish and close-minded. After all, the joy of reading often comes from discovery--plunging into a book without knowing too much about it. And that's true. Looking over my list of books from this year, I see at least six that were random selections--out of reputation, obligation, or convenience--and were some of my favorites:

• Wake:  The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (Rebecca Hall; illustrated by Hugo Martinez)
• My Life on the Road (Gloria Steinem; audiobook, read by Gloria Steinem)
• Happening (Annie Ernaux; translated by Tanya Leslie)
• Dien Cai Dau (Yusef Komunyakaa)
• Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir; audiobook, read by Ray Porter)
• Inciting Joy:  Essay (Ross Gay; audiobook, read by Ross Gay)

But what I'm focusing on next year is returning to purposeful reading--the idea that I should be reading books that nurture my love of storytelling--rather than reading a book for the sake of reading something, anything.

In other words, a focus on quality over quantity.

Too often, especially at the end of one year and start of the next, readers set a goal based on numbers. They want to read a set amount of books or pages, rather than wanting to read books they will enjoy, regardless of the number. This is the pattern I've slipped into, and it's resulted in me reading more books every year, but enjoying very few of them.

Even now, casting a glance over the unread books on my shelves, I see at least a dozen or so that I am desperate to read:  Blood in the Water by Heather Ann Thompson, Love by Toni Morrison, Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, The Dog of the South by Charles Portis, Becoming Abolitionists by Danica Purcell, Let the Record Show by Sarah Schulman, The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King, An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie, The Overstory by Richard Powers, The Known World by Edward P. Jones, The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, Solitary by Albert Woodfox, and so on. All have sat on my shelves for months, if not years, purchased in a fit of unparalleled excitement and just as quickly forsaken in exchange for books that were short, easy, and convenient.

Unlike most of the books I read during the year, these particular books take time. They require something more from me than I have been able to offer so far. And I can set the blame in a dozen different places--my job, the volunteer work I do, the commitments I've made to coworkers, friends, and family--but that is relying on excuses. I have the time and ability. I simply need to shed my fixation on reading a certain number of books by this time next year. 

I need to focus on the books I want, rather than the books I think I want, or that other people tell me I want.

Because, as we all know, time is fleeting and fickle:  one minute you're young and have a seemingly endless amount of time, and the next, you're sitting amongst a horde of books, your aching hands and tired eyes suddenly unsure of task in front of you. Unsure if you'll ever be able to devour those books you spent years gathering for this very moment.

Books I Read in 2022:

1. Gilgamesh:  A Verse Play (Yusef Komunyakaa; concept and dramaturgy by Chad Gracia)
2. *Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel)
3. On Animals (Susan Orlean; audiobook, read by Susan Orlean)
4. Mooncop (Tom Gauld)
5. You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack (Tom Gauld)
6. Squirm (Carl Hiaasen)
7. Baking With Kafka (Tom Gauld)
8. Sylvie (Sylvie Kantorovitz)
9. Ain't Burned All the Bright (Jason Reynolds; illustrations by Jason Griffin)
10. To the Kwai - and Back:  War Drawings, 1939 - 1945 (Ronald Searle)
11. Lost & Found:  A Memoir (Kathryn Schulz)
12. I Know What You Did Last Summer (Lois Duncan)
13. We Can:  Portraits of Power (Tyler Gordon)
14. The Mad Potter:  George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius (Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan)
15. The Orchid Thief:  A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Susan Orlean)
16. Prophet Against Slavery:  Benjamin Lay (David Lester, with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle)
17. Class Act (Jerry Craft)
18. The Jungle:  A Graphic Novel (Upton Sinclair; adapted and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann)
19. Stuntboy, in the Meantime (Jason Reynolds; illustrated by Raul the Third)
20. The Crossroads at Midnight (Abby Howard)
21. I Will Not Die Alone (Debra White; illustrated by Joe Bennett)
22. Punching the Air (Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam)
23. Wake:  The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (Rebecca Hall; illustrated by Hugo Martinez)
24. In the Shadow of No Towers (Art Spiegelman)
25. Keep Moving:  Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (Maggie Smith)
26. Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists:  A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights (Mikki Kendall; illustrated by A. D'Amico)
27. Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters, Volume 1 (Chris Samnee and Laura Samnee; colors by Matthew Wilson; lettering by Christopher Crank)
28. After the Rain (Nnedi Okorafor and John Jennings; illustrated by David Brame; lettering by Damian Duffy)
29. Fantasy Sports, Volume 1 (Sam Bosma)
30. Head Lopper, Volume 1:  The Island, or a Plague of Beasts (Andrew MacLean; colored by Mike Spicer)
31. The Worst Night Ever (Dave Barry)
32. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Roz Chast)
33. Fantasy Sports, Volume 2:  The Bandit of Barbel Bay (Sam Bosma)
34. Head Lopper, Volume 2:  Head Lopper and the Crimson Tower (Andrew MacLean; colors by Jordie Bellaire; letters and design by Erin MacLean)
35. Habibi (Craig Thompson)
36. The Public Burning (Robert Coover)
37. Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper)
38. Head Lopper, Volume 3:  Head Lopper and the Knights of Venora (Andrew MacLean; colors by Jordie Bellaire; letters and design by Erin MacLean)
39. Head Lopper, Volume 4:  Head Lopper and the Quest for Mulgrid's Stair (Andrew MacLean; colors by Jordie Bellaire; letters and design by Erin MacLean)
40. Family Tree, Volume 1:  Sapling (Jeff Lemire; colors by Phil Hester, Eric Gapstur, and Ryan Cody; lettering by Steve Wands; edited by Will Dennis)
41. Something is Killing the Children, Volume 1 (James Tynion IV; illustrated by Werther Dell'edera; colors by Miquel Muerto; lettered by Andworld Design)
42. Godzilla:  The Half-Century War (James Stokoe)
43. Frogcatchers (Jeff Lemire)
44. Something is Killing the Children, Volume 2 (James Tynion IV; illustrated by Werther Dell'edera; colors by Miquel Muerto; lettered by Andworld Design)
45. Something is Killing the Children, Volume 3 (James Tynion IV; illustrated by Werther Dell'edera; colors by Miquel Muerto; lettered by Andworld Design)
46. 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents (Lee Wardlaw)
47. Sullivan's Sluggers (Mark Andrew Smith; illustrated by James Stokoe; colors by Rodrigo Aviles; letters and designs by Thomas Mauer)
48. Delights & Shadows (Ted Kooser)
49. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (John Koenig)
50. Wade in the Water:  Poems (Tracy K. Smith)
51. Sad Horse Music:  Poems (Samantha Fain)
52. The Sentence (Louise Erdrich)
53. American Journal:  Fifty Poems for Our Time (Tracy K. Smith, editor)
54. My Life on the Road (Gloria Steinem; audiobook, read by Gloria Steinem)
55. American Primitive:  Poems (Mary Oliver)
56. The Carrying:  Poems (Ada Limon)
57. The Beauty:  Poems (Jane Hirshfield)
58. Mad Man's Drum:  A Novel in Woodcuts (Lynd Ward)
59. From Heaven Lake:  Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (Vikram Seth)
60. The Madman's Library:  The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities From History (Edward Brooke-Hitching)
61. The Beauty of Dusk:  On Vision Lost and Found (Frank Bruni; audiobook, read by Frank Bruni)
62. Wild Ducks Flying Backward:  The Short Writing of Tom Robbins (Tom Robbins)
63. Happening (Annie Ernaux; translated by Tanya Leslie)
64. Medium Raw:  A Blood Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (Anthony Bourdain; audiobook, read by Anthony Bourdain)
65. Rogues:  True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (Patrick Radden Keefe)
66. Dien Cai Dau (Yusef Komunyakaa)
67. Too Loud a Solitude (Bohumil Hrabal)
68. I'd Like to Play Alone, Please:  Essays (Tom Segura; audiobook, read by Tom Segura)
69. Woman at Point Zero (Nawal El Saadawi)
70. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning:  How to Free Yourself and Your Family From a Lifetime of Clutter (Margareta Magnusson; audiobook, read by Juliette Stevenson) 
71. Happy-Go-Lucky (David Sedaris; audiobook, read by David Sedaris)
72. There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby:  Scary Fairy Tales (Ludmilla Petrushevskaya; translated by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers)
73. Putting the Rabbit in the Hat:  A Memoir (Brian Cox; audiobook, narrated by Brian Cox)
74. The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 2:  Means of Ascent (Robert Caro)
75. Mapping the Interior (Stephen Graham Jones)
76. The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman; audiobook, read by Neil Gaiman)
77. My Name is Jason. Mine Too. Our Story. Our Way (Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin)
78. Finding Me:  A Memoir (Viola Davis; audiobook, read by Viola Davis)
79. Manga Yokai Stories:  Ghostly Tales from Japan (Lafcadio Hearn; retold by Sean Michael Wilson; illustrated by Inko Ai Takita)
80. Generations:  A Memoir (Lucille Clifton)
81. As You Wish:  Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (Cary Elwes; audiobook, read by Cary Elwes, Christopher Guest, Carol Kane, Norman Lear, Rob Reiner, Chris Sarandon, Andy Scheinman, Wallace Shawn, and Robin Wright)
82. Fat, Crazy, and Tired:  Tales from the Trenches of Transformation (Van Lathan Jr.; audiobook, read by Van Lathan Jr.)
83. Who Killed My Father (Edouard Louis; translated by Lorin Stein)
84. Two Old Women:  An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival (Velma Wallis)
85. Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir; audiobook, read by Ray Porter)
86. Better, Not Bitter:  Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice (Yusef Salaam)
87. Spies of Mississippi:  The True Story of the Spy Network that Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement (Rick Bowers)
88. How the Word is Passed:  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Clint Smith; audiobook, read by Clint Smith)
89. The Path to Kindness:  Poems of Connection and Joy (James Crews, editor)
90. Nimona (N.D. Stevenson)
91. Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)
92. *Train Dreams (Denis Johnson; audiobook, read by Will Patton)
93. My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite)
94. Revenge of the Librarians (Tom Gauld)
95. Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help (Larissa MacFarquhar; audiobook, read by Larissa MacFarquhar)
96. The Philosophy of Modern Song (Bob Dylan; audiobook, read by Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, John Gooman, Oscar Isaac, Helen Mirren, Rita Moreno, Sissy Spacek, Alfre Woodard, Jeffrey Wright, and Renee Zellweger)
97. *The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die (April Henry)
98. Great Short Books:  A Year of Reading--Briefly (Kenneth C. Davis; audiobook, read by Kenneth C. Davis)
99. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (Carl Rovelli; translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre)
100. What If 2:  Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (Randall Munroe)
101. Inciting Joy:  Essay (Ross Gay; audiobook, read by Ross Gay)
102. The Trees (Percival Everett)

*a reread

Books I Read in 2021

 

1. Astounding:  John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (Alec Nevala-Lee)
2. Home:  A Memoir of My Early Years (Julie Andrews; audiobook, read by Julie Andrews)
3. One Ring Circus:  Dispatches From the World of Boxing (Katherine Dunn)
4. Dunce (Mary Ruefle)
5. Flamer (Mike Curato)
6. The Bad Beginning:  A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 1 (Lemony Snicket; illustrated by Brett Helquist)
7. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat:  Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking (Samin Nosrat; audiobook, read by Samin Nosrat)
8. I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf (Grant Snider)
9. Black Widow:  A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like "Journey" in the Title (Leslie Gray Streeter; audiobook, read by Leslie Gray Streeter)
10. Bone, Volume 1:  Out From Boneville (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
11. Dear Martin (Nic Stone)
12. The Book of Gutsy Women:  Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience (Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton; audiobook, read by Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton)
13. The 13-Story Treehouse (Andy Griffiths, illustrated by Terry Denton)
14. Clean Getaway (Nic Stone)
15. Twins (Varian Johnson; illustrated by Shannon Wright)
16. The Breakaways (Cathy G. Johnson)
17. Bone, Volume 2:  The Great Cow Race (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
18. Bone, Volume 3:  Eyes of the Storm (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
19. When Horses Pulled the Plow:  Life of a Wisconsin Farm Boy, 1910 - 1929 (Olaf F. Larson)
20. Memorial Drive:  A Daughter's Memoir (Natasha Trethewey)
21. Bone, Volume 4:  The Dragonslayer (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
22. Bone, Volume 5:  Rock Jaw (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
23. Bone, Volume 6:  Old Man's Cave (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
24. Bone, Volume 7:  Ghost Circles (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
25. Bone, Volume 8:  Treasure Hunters (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
26. Bone, Volume 9:  Crown of Horns (Jeff Smith; Steve Hamaker, colorist)
27. I Can't Date Jesus:  Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyonce (Michael Arceneaux; audiobook, read by Michael Arceneaux)
28. How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America:  Essays (Kiese Laymon; revised edition)
29. Light for the World to See:  A Thousand Words on Race and Hope (Kwame Alexander)
30. Elegy for Mary Turner:  An Illustrated Account of a Lynching (Rachel Marie-Crane Williams)
31. Electric Arches (Eve L. Ewing)
32. Last Call:  A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York (Elon Green)
33. Dust Tracks on a Road:  An Autobiography (Zora Neale Hurston)
34. Sailing Alone Around the Room:  New and Selected Poems (Billy Collins)
35. New Kid (Jerry Craft)
36. Earth Keeper:  Reflections on the American Land (N. Scott Momaday; audiobook, read by N. Scott Momaday)
37. 102 Minutes:  The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn)
38. Can't and Won't:  Stories (Lydia Davis)
39. Tomboyland:  Essays (Melissa Faliveno; audiobook, read by Melissa Faliveno)
40. How Y'All Doing?:  Misadventures and Mischief From a Life Well Lived (Leslie Jordan; audiobook, read by Leslie Jordan)
41. Welcome to the Monkey House (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
42. The Ten Year War:  Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage (Jonathan Cohn)
43. My Life as a Villainess (Laura Lippman)
44. The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
45. A Little Devil in America:  Notes in Praise of Black Performance (Hanif Abdurraqib)
46. Queer Love in Color (Jamal Jordan)
47. On Juneteenth (Annette Gordon-Reed)
48. In Pieces (Sally Field; audiobook, read by Sally Field)
49. The Complete Far Side, Volume 1:  January 1980 - June 1984 (Gary Larson)
50. Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust:  My Friendship with Patsy Cline (Loretta Lynn; audiobook, read by Patsy Lynn Russell)
51. Smethurst's Luck:  The Story of Dr. Thomas Smethurst, "The Richmond Poisoner" (Peter Maggs; ebook)
52. Go Ahead in the Rain:  Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (Hanif Abdurraqib)
53. Beyond the Gender Binary (Alok Vaid-Menon)
54. Murder in Canaryville:  The True Story Behind a Cold Case and a Chicago Cover-Up (Jeff Coen)
55. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins (Terrace Hayes)
56. The Path to Power (Robert A. Caro)
57. I Feel Bad About My Neck:  And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Nora Ephron; audiobook, read by Nora Ephron)
58. In the Freud Archives (Janet Malcolm)
59. We Had a Little Real Estate Problem:  The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy (Kliph Nesteroff)
60. Crazy Brave:  A Memoir (Joy Harjo)
61. The Icepick Surgeon:  Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science (Sam Kean)
62. Minor Feelings:  An Asian American Reckoning (Cathy Park Hong)
63. Mr. Know-It-All:  The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder (John Waters; audiobook, read by John Waters)
64. Rememberings (Sinead O'Connor; audiobook, read by Sinead O'Connor)
65. Zinky Boys:  Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War (Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Julia Whitby and Robin Whitly)
66. Cherry (Mary Karr; audiobook, abridged, read by Mary Karr)
67. The Fran Lebowitz Reader (Fran Lebowitz; audiobook, read by Fran Lebowitz)
68. Brother & Sister:  A Memoir (Diane Keaton; audiobook, read by Diane Keaton)
69. The Breadwinner:  A Graphic Novel (Deborah Ellis and Nora Twoney)
70. 1491:  New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Charles C. Mann)
71. Gulp:  Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (Mary Roach)
72. A Strange Loop:  A Musical (Michael R. Jackson)
73. Dead People Suck:  A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed (Laurie Kilmartin; audiobook, read by Laurie Kilmartin)
74. Last Pick (Jason Walz)
75. Last Pick:  Born to Run (Jason Walz)
76. Dragon Hoops (Gene Luen Yang)
77. Under-Earth (Chris Gooch)
78. Run:  Book One (John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, and L. Fury)
79. Born Standing Up:  A Comic's Life (Steve Martin; audiobook, read by Steve Martin)
80. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
81. Dark Days of the Rebellion:  Life in Southern Military Prisons (Benjamin F. Booth)
82. Exit West (Mohsin Hamid)
83. Seek You:  A Journey Through American Loneliness (Kristen Radtke)
84. Fun Home:  A Family Tragicomic (Alison Bechdel)
85. *The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die (April Henry)
86. Brown Girl Dreaming (Jacqueline Woodson)
87. Nat Enough (Maria Scrivan)
88. The Magic Fish (Trung Le Nguyen)
89. Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands:  Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will (Judith Schalansky)
90. Forget Me Nat (Maria Scrivan)
91. Sweeth Tooth, Book One (Jeff Lemire; colors by Jose Villarrubia, letters by Pat Brosseau)
92. Notes on Grief (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
93. The Complete Far Side, Volume 2:  July 1984 - June 1988 (Gary Larson)
94. *Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Brandon Sanderson)
95. The Complete Far Side, Volume 3:  July 1988 - December 1994 (Gary Larson)
96. The Worst Class Trip Ever (Dave Barry)
97. Fuzz:  When Nature Breaks the Law (Mary Roach)
98. Department of Mind-Blowing Theories (Tom Gauld)
99. Dora Bruder (Patrick Modiano)
100. Dogs on the Trail:  A Year in the Life (Blair Braverman and Quince Mountain)
101. Yours Cruelly, Elvira:  Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark (Cassandra Peterson)
102. The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)
103. Sweeth Tooth, Book Two (Jeff Lemire; colors by Jose Villarrubia, letters by Carlos Mangual)
104. Sweeth Tooth, Book Three (Jeff Lemire; colors by Jose Villarrubia, letters by Carlos Mangual; Matt Kindt, artist)
105. *Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
106. The 1619 Project:  Born on the Water (Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson; illustrated by Nikkolas Smith)
107. Everyone At This Party Has Two Names (Brad Aaron Modlin)
108. Bone (Yrsa Daley-Ward)
109. Taste:  My Life Through Food (Stanley Tucci; audiobook, read by Stanley Tucci)
110. Sucker's Portfolio (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
111. An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good:  Stories (Helene Tursten; translated by Marlaine Delargy; audiobook, read by Suzanne Toren)
112. The Resurrection of Johnny Cash:  Hurt, Redemption, and American Recordings (Graeme Thomson)
113. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
114. Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders)
115. The Tuesday Club Murders (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Joan Hickson)
116. Fiasco:  A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops (James Robert Parish)

*Rereads

Books I Read in 2020

1. She Came to Slay:  The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman (Erica Armstrong Dunbar; audiobook, read by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Robin Miles)
2. Dread Locks (Neal Shusterman)
3. The Women of a State University:  An Illustration of the Working of Coeducation in the Middle West (Helen R. Olin)
4. The Princess Diarist (Carrie Fisher; audiobook, read by Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd)
5. The Magician's Elephant (Kate DiCamillo)
6. Chi's Sweet Home, Volume 1 (Konami Kanata)
7. The Fiddler in the Subway:  The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts...and Other Virtuoso Performances by America's Foremost Feature Writer (Gene Weingarten)
8. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)
9. David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall (David Sedaris; audiobook, read by David Sedaris)
10. Chi's Sweet Home, Volume 2 (Konami Kanata)
11. David Sedaris:  Live For Your Listening Pleasure (David Sedaris; audiobook, read by David Sedaris)
12. A Prairie Home Companion:  Live From the Hollywood Bowl (Garrison Keillor; audiobook, performed by Garrison Keillor, Royal Academy of Radio Actors, etc.)
13. Chi's Sweet Home, Volume 3 (Konami Kanata)
14. God Help the Child (Toni Morrison)
15. Oklahoma's Atticus:  An Innocent Man and the Lawyer Who Fought for Him (Hunter Howe Cates)
16. Counting Americans:  How the U.S. Census Classified the Nation (Paul Schor; translated by Lys Ann Weiss)
17. *Knucklehead:  Tall Tales and Mostly True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka (Jon Scieszka)
18. The View From the Cheap Seats:  Selected Nonfiction (Neil Gaiman; audiobook, read by Neil Gaiman)
19. The BFG (Roald Dahl)
20. The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros)
21. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson; audiobook, narrated by Bill Bryson)
22. *American Born Chinese (Gene Luen Yang)
23. Tales of the Talented Tenth:  Bass Reeves (Joel Christian Gill)
24. i:  six nonlectures (e.e. cummings)
25. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Charlie Mackesy)
26. Tales of the Talented Tenth:  Bessie Stringfield (Joel Christian Gill)
27. Bad Feminist:  Essays (Roxane Gay)
28. Monsters & Other Stories (Gustavo Duarte)
29. Born to Fly:  The First Women's Air Race Across America (Steve Sheinkin; illustrated by Bijou Karman)
30. A Private War:  Marie Colvin and Other Tales of Heroes, Scoundrels, and Renegades (Marie Brenner; audiobook, read by Marie Brenner)
31. Bossypants (Tina Fey; audiobook, read by Tina Fey)
32. Savage Appetites:  Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (Rachel Monroe)
33. Medallion Status:  True Stories from Secret Rooms (John Hodgman; audiobook, read by John Hodgman)
34. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie; ebook)
35. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Phoebe Judge)
36. A Black Women's History of the United States (Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross)
37. The Great Influenza:  The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (John M. Barry)
38. *At Home:  A Short History of Private Life (Bill Bryson; audiobook, read by Bill Bryson)
39. How To:  Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems (Randall Munroe; audiobook, read by Randall Munroe)
40. In the Dream House:  A Memoir (Carmen Maria Machado)
41. *A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson; audiobook, abridged, read by Bill Bryson)
42. Sula (Toni Morrison)
43. Bill Bryson's African Diary (Bill Bryson; ebook)
44. *In a Sunburned Country (Bill Bryson; audiobook, read by Bill Bryson)
45. *One Summer:  America, 1927 (Bill Bryson; audiobook, read by Bill Bryson)
46. Why Fish Don't Exist:  A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (Lulu Miller)
47. This Brilliant Darkness:  A Book of Strangers (Jeff Sharlet)
48. Comet in Moominland (Tove Jansson)
49. The Warmth of Other Suns:  The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Isabel Wilkerson)
50. Say Nothing:  A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (Patrick Radden Keefe)
51. Flora & Ulysses:  The Illuminated Adventures (Kate DiCamillo; illustrated by K.G. Campbell)
52. Be Prepared (Vera Brosgol)
53. Snapdragon (Kat Leyh)
54. Jane, the Fox, and Me (Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, translated by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou)
55. El Deafo (Cece Bell; David Lasky, colorist)
56. Anya's Ghost (Vera Brosgol)
57. Roller Girl (Victoria Jamieson)
58. Losing the War (Lee Sandlin; ebook version)
59. Navigate Your Stars (Jesmyn Ward; illustrated by Gina Triplett)
60. Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents (Isabel Wilkerson)
61. Becoming Duchess Goldblatt:  A Memoir (Anonymous)
62. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask (Anton Treuer)
63. Essex County, Volume 1:  Tales from the Farm (Jeff Lemire)
64. Essex County, Volume 2:  Ghost Stories (Jeff Lemire)
65. The Chancellor and the Citadel (Maria Capelle Frantz)
66. Press Enter to Continue (Ana Galvan)
67. Failure is an Option:  An Attempted Memoir (H. Jon Benjamin; audiobook, read by H. Jon Benjamin)
68. The Fearless Benjamin Lay:  The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Marcus Rediker)
69. The Boardinghouse in Nineteenth-Century America (Wendy Gamber)
70. Beyond the Trees:  A Journey Alone Across Canada's Arctic (Adam Shoalts)
71. Essex County, Volume 3:  The Country Nurse (Jeff Lemire)
72. Counting Descent (Clint Smith)
73. The Tradition (Jericho Brown)
74. Life Before Legend:  Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy (Marie Lu)
75. The Female Economy:  The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860 - 1930 (Wendy Gamber)
76. How Long 'til Black Future Month (N.K. Jemisin)
77. Bloodchild and Other Stories (Octavia Butler)
78. Solutions and Other Problems (Allie Brosh)
79. Intimations (Zadie Smith)
80. Before the Ever After (Jacqueline Woodson)
81. The Lady is a Spy:  Virginia Hall, WWII Hero of the French Resistance (Don Mitchell)
82. In the Dark Streets Shineth:  A 1941 Christmas Eve Story (David McCullough)
83. Conundrum (Jan Morris)

*indicates a reread

titles in bold were favorites

Books I Read in 2019

1. Emancipation's Diaspora:  Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (Leslie A. Schwalm)
2. The Onts: Secrets of the Dripping Fang, Book One (Dan Greenburg)
3. Booked (Kwame Alexander)
4. Stardust (Neil Gaiman)
5. Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor (Jon Scieszka; illustrated by Brian Biggs)
6. Women in Science:  50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World (Rachel Ignotofsky)
7. She Has Her Mother's Laugh:  The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity (Carl Zimmer)
8. The Library Book (Susan Orlean)
9. The Devil and Dave Chappelle: And Other Essays (William Jelani Cobb)
10. Buried Lives:  The Enslaved People of George Washington's Mount Vernon (Carla Killough McClafferty)
11. Bronx Masquerade (Nikki Grimes)
12. Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
13. Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography (Andrew Helfer and Randy DuBurke)
14. Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps (edited by Bill Aguado and Richard Newirth)
15. Good And Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (Rebecca Traister; audiobook, read by the author)
16. A Man Without a Country (Kurt Vonnegut)
17. *Booked (Kwame Alexander)
18. Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Vine Deloria Jr.)
19. March: Book One (John Lewis and Andrew Ayedin; art by Nate Powell)
20. March: Book Two (John Lewis and Andrew Ayedin; art by Nate Powell)
21. Love That Dog (Sharon Creech)
22. March: Book Three (John Lewis and Andrew Ayedin; art by Nate Powell)
23. The 57 Bus:  A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives (Dashka Slater)
24. Lu (Jason Reynolds)
25. Einstein's Refrigerator:  And Other Stories From the Flip Side of History (Steve Silverman)
26. Animus (Antoine Revoy)
27. Shout (Laurie Halse Anderson)
28. Dragons in a Bag (Zetta Elliott)
29. Rhyme Schemer (K.A. Holt)
30. Fake Blood (Whitney Gardner)
31. Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic (Eugenie Tsai and Connie Choi)
32. The Poisoner: The Life and Crimes of Victorian England's Most Notorious Doctor (Stephen Bates)
33. Writing Radar:  Using Your Journal to Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories (Jack Gantos)
34. Extraordinary Lives:  The Art and Craft of American Biography (William Zinsser, editor)
35. Bloody Times:  The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis (James Swanson)
36. Stop Pretending:  What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy (Sonya Sones)
37. Working:  Researching, Interviewing, Writing (Robert Caro)
38. *Arsenic and Old Lace (Donald Kesselring)
39. Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights:  From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment (Deborah Kops)
40. *Orbiting Jupiter (Gary Schmidt)
41. The Handmaid's Tale:  Graphic Novel Version (Margaret Atwood; illustrated by Renee Nault)
42. Furious Hours:  Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Casey Cep)
43. Thick: And Other Essays (Tressie McMillan Cottom)
44. Dying of Whiteness:  How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland (Jonathan W. Metzl)
45. Stark Mad Abolitionists:  Lawrence, Kansas, and the Battle Over Slavery in the Civil War Era (Robert K. Sutton)
46. The Impeachers:  The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (Brenda Wineapple)
47. Are Prisons Obsolete? (Angela Y. Davis)
48. Soulless:  The Case Against R. Kelly (Jim DeRogatis)
49. Operation Mincemeat:  How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (Ben MacIntyre)
50. The Butchering Art:  Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine (Lindsey Fitzharris)
51. Last Witnesses:  An Oral History of the Children of World War II (Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
52. Lost and Found: Helping Behaviorally Challenging Students (Ross W. Greene)
53. Negroland: A Memoir (Margo Jefferson; ebook)
54. Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; ebook)
55. Becoming (Michelle Obama; audiobook, narrated by Michelle Obama)
56. The Season of Styx Malone (Kekla Magoon)
57. Sisters (Raina Telgemeier)
58. Smile (Raina Telgemeier)
59. Ada Blackjack:  A True Story of Survival in the Arctic (Jennifer Niven)
60. I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir (Malaka Gharib)
61. Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories About Mental Illness (Darryl Cunningham)
62. The Poet X (Elizabeth Acevedo)
63. The Undefeated (Kwame Alexander; illustrated by Kadir Nelson)
64. The Body: A Guide for Occupants (Bill Bryson)
65. Look Both Ways:  A Tale Told in Ten Blocks (Jason Reynolds)
66. House Arrest (K.A. Holt)
67. How We Fight For Our Lives:  A Memoir (Saeed Jones)
68. Guts (Raina Telgemeier)
69. Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered:  the Definitive How-To Guide (Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark; audiobook, narrated by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark)
70. Dreamland:  The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, A Young Adult Adaptation (Sam Quinones)
71. For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem (Ntozake Shange)
72. For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem (Ntozake Shange; audiobook, narrated by Thandie Newton)
73. My Beloved World (Sonia Sotomayor; audiobook, narrated by Sonia Sotomayor and Rita Moreno)
74. Elevation (Stephen King; audiobook, narrated by Stephen King)
75. The Borden Murders:  Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century (Sarah Miller)
76. The Rise of the Public Normal School System in Wisconsin (William Harold Herrmann)
77. Born a Crime:  Stories from a South African Childhood (Trevor Noah)
78. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference (Greta Thunberg)
79. One Day:  The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America (Gene Weingarten)
80. Catch and Kill:  Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (Ronan Farrow)