Book nook

100 Books in 26 Months

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I set a goal to read 100 books over the course of my service (June 2012 - July 2014). This page served as an ongoing record of my progress, and is now a window into those many hours spent happily reading.

1. The Geography of Bliss – Eric Weiner
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
3. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
4. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
5. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (book club*)
6. Room – Emma Donoghue
7. Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (book club)
8. Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
9. Cleopatra: A Life – Stacy Schiff
10. A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail – Bill Bryson
11. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (book club; re-read)
12. The Art of Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein
13. Naked – David Sedaris (book club)
14. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn (book club)
15. A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
16. Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Katherine Boo
17. Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse (book club)
18. A Clash of Kings – George R.R. Martin
19. A Storm of Swords – George R.R. Martin (book club)
20. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
21. Telegraph Avenue – Michael Chabon
22. Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri
23. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
24. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty – Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee
25. Kabul Beauty School – Deborah Rodriguez
26. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
27. Super Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
28. Zeitoun – Dave Eggers
29. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
30. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk – David Sedaris
31. Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman - Jon Krakauer
32. This is How You Lose Her – Junot Diaz (book club)
33. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
34. The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak
35. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
36. I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards
37. The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World - Michael Pollan
38. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
39. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (book club)
40. Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne
41. And the Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
42. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (book club)
43. A Feast For Crows - George R.R. Martin
44. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail - Cheryl Strayed
45. The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
46. A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin
47. La guerra del fin del mundo - Mario Vargas Llosa
48. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
49. In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson (book club)
50. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? - Maria Semple
51. White Teeth - Zadie Smith
52. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead - Sheryl Sandberg
53. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
54. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us - Michael Moss
55. The Silver Star - Jeannette Walls (book club)
56. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
57. How Soccer Explains the World - Franklin Foer
58. This Is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper
59. A Hologram for the King - Dave Eggers
60. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human - Jonathan Gottschall
61. Adverbs - Daniel Handler
62. Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas - Tom Robbins
63. East of Eden - John Steinbeck (re-read)
64. Let's Pretend This Never Happened - Jenny Lawson (book club)
65. Divergent; Insurgent; Allegiant - Veronica Roth
66. House of Stone - Anthony Shadid
67. The Old Patagonian Express - Paul Theroux
68. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (book club)
69. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (book club)
70. The Untouchable - John Banville
71. City of Thieves - David Benioff
72. Beautiful Ruins - Jess Walter
73. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Anne Fadiman
74. The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (book club)
75. Polio: An American Story - David M. Oshinsky
76. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
77. The Circle - Dave Eggers (book club)
78. The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker
79. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
80. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
81. My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk
82. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls - David Sedaris
83. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (re-read)
84. You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers
85. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
86. Empire Falls - Richard Russo
87. Swamplandia! - Karen Russell
88. A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
89. The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson
90. Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men - Mara Hvistendahl
91. The Privileges - Jonathan Dee
92. The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
93. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
94. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
95. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling (re-read)
96. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain
97. War Trash - Ha Jin
98. David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell
99. The Lost City of Z - David Grann
100. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

*Myself and a couple other volunteers started a book club - every month we rotated turns picking a book that we then all read, and eventually remembered to talk about.