Thursday, November 28, 2019

100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend

I did it!

I believe 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend has been a thoughtful and important project. It took some mettle to recommend a book on a daily basis with a reflective write-up. The pace was intense, and I handled it.

At the end of the day, I love these books, so it was not that big of a deal. I committed to this project and stayed with it!

I guess the big takeaway is that reading is crucially important. Sadly, reading, curiosity and exploration typically aren't taught in schools, and so the masses don't really read, follow their curiosity or explore the world of ideas, life and experience books offer.

Too often, I am reminded that we live in a superficial culture. With books, we can delve into new ideas or go deeper into important ones. Life constantly evolves, as do I, and I truly have loved soaking in these 100 books. My reading will continue even more so after this project, and I view this project as a beginning to go deeper into my education and to create more meaningful writing and art.

The books are not ranked in order of importance by any means, but here is my list of 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend. Here's advice. Do a little research before you commit your time to reading a book. I stand by all of these 100 and only did popular books that read well too. Yes, I have many wildly popular books on this list, and they deliver. Life is too short for books that are strong on marketing and weak on prose.

Now, you might ask why I just didn't come out with this list and save the 110 (100 reviews plus 10 recaps) blog entries. Well, here's the thing. We live in an era in which the image, the list, the fake is what most are becoming accustomed. Click bait is an actual thing.

This is an actual project of 100 nonfiction books recommended by a guy who read them all and could talk in depth about all of them (save the David Sedaris one that I hardly remembered). Feel free to click on the book for the write-up in case you missed it. Enjoy!

Big Time and Deserving:
1. Outliers (2008) by Malcolm Gladwell
2. Daring Greatly (2012) by Brene Brown
3. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) by Joan Didion
4. Thrive (2014) by Ariana Huffington
5. Tribe of Mentors (2017) by Tim Ferris
6. Leaders Eat Last (2014) by Simon Sinek
7. Option B (2017) by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
8. The Creative Habit (2003) by Twyla Tharp
9. On Writing (2000) by Stephen King
10. A Curious Mind (2015) by Brian Grazer with Charles Fishman
Parenting:
11. How To Raise An Adult (2015) by Julie Lythcott-Haims
12. Nonviolent Communication (1999 original, 2015 third edition) by Marshall Rosenberg
13. How We Love Our Kids (2011) by Milan and Jay Yerkowich
14. The Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys (1995) by Jawanza Kunjufu
15.  iGen (2017) by Jean Twenge
16. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011) by Amy Chua
17. Grit (2016) by Angela Duckworth
18. How Children Succeed (2012) by Paul Tough
19. Fraternity (2019) by Alexandra Robbins
20. A Promise to Ourselves (2008) by Alec Baldwin
Personal Growth:
21. Mindset (2006) by Carol Dweck
22. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016) by Mark Manson
23. Money (2014) by Tony Robbins
24. The Art of Asking (2015) by Amanda Palmer
25. You Are a Badass (2013) by Jen Sincero
26. Girl, Wash Your Face (2018) by Rachel Hollis
27. The Art of Non-Conformity (2010) by Chris Guilleabeau
28. The Omnivore's Dilemma (2007) by Michael Pollan
29. The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins
30. The Power of Now (1997) by Eckhart Tolle
Humor:
31. Born Standing Up (2007) by Steve Martin
32. Poking a Dead Frog (2014) by Mike Sacks
33. Modern Romance (2015) by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg
34. Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) by David Sedaris
35. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole (Yes, it's technically fiction, but it's freaking funny!)
36. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) by Dave Eggers
37. Fresh Off the Boat (2013) by Eddie Huang
38. How to Make White People Laugh (2016) by Negin Farsad
39. The Comedy Writer (1998) by Peter Farrelly
40. Brain Droppings (1997) by George Carlin
Education:
41. Letters to a Young Teacher (2007) by Jonathan Kozol
42. The Homework Myth (2007) by Alfie Kohn
43. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (2017, 20th anniversary edition) by Beverly Daniel Tatum
44. Punished (2011) by Victor Rios
45. Excellent Sheep (2014) by William Deresiewicz
46. In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015) by Fareed Zakaria
47. You Are Not Where You Go (2015) by Frank Bruni
48. Readicide (2009) by Kelly Gallagher
49. Rethinking School (2018) by Susan Wise Bauer
50. On Your Mark (2014) by Thomas Guskey
Social Conscience:
51. The New Jim Crow (2010) by Michelle Alexander
52. White Fragility (2018) by Robin DiAngelo
53. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) by Paulo Freire
54. Born on Third Base (2016) by Chuck Collins
55. Dark Money (2016) by Jane Mayer
56. The Vanishing American Adult (2017) by Ben Sasse
57. Food Not Lawns (2006) by Heather Jo Flores
58. So You Want to Talk about Race (2018) by Ijeoma Oluo
59. Black Boy (1945) by Richard Wright
60. Night (1956) by Elie Wiesel
"Grab Bag":
61. Lost Connections (2018) by Johann Hari
62. Humans Are Underrated (2015) by Geoff Colvin
63. The Mask of Masculinity (2017) by Lewis Howes
64. This Is Marketing (2018) by Seth Godin
65. The Power of Glamour (2013) by Virginia Postrel
66. A Book of Mentors (2015) by Gillian Zoe Segal
67. The Rules Do Not Apply (2017) by Ariel Levy
68. The Souls of Yellow Folk (2018) by Wesley Yang
69. The Body Keeps the Score (2014) by Bessel Van Der Kolk
70. Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995, new edition 2018) by James Loewen
Sports:
71. A Pitcher's Story (2001) by Roger Angell
72. Why Baseball Matters (2018) by Susan Jacoby
73. String Theory (2016) by David Foster Wallace
74. Little Red Book (1992, with 2012 anniversary edition) by Harvey Penick with Bud Shrake
75. Zen Golf (2002) by Joseph Parent
76. The Big Miss (2012) by Hank Haney
77. The Whore of Akron (2011) by Scott Raab
78. Back from the Dead (2016) by Bill Walton
79. Word Freak (2001) by Stefan Fatsis
80. Relentless (2013) by Tim Grover
Leadership:
81. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002) by Patrick Lencioni
82. Multipliers (2010) by Liz Wiseman
83. Ego Is the Enemy (2016) by Ryan Holiday
84. A More Beautiful Question (2014) by Warren Berger
85. Crucial Conversations (2002, 2012 edition) by Kerry Patterson, et. al.
86. Conversational Capacity (2013) by Craig Weber
87. Leadership on the Line (2002) by Marty Linsky
88. Good to Great (2001) by Jim Collins
89. This Fight Is Our Fight (2007) by Elizabeth Warren
90. Positive Deviance (2010) by Richard Pascale, et. al.
Recommended by Readers:
91) EntreLeadership (2011) by Dave Ramsey
92) Letters from the Earth (1962) by Mark Twain
93) Fantasyland (2017) by Kurt Andersen
94) The Death of Truth (2018) by Michiko Kakutani
95) Pleasure Activism (2019) by Adrienne Marie Brown
96) Aware (2018) by Daniel Siegel
97) The Moment of Lift (2019) by Melinda Gates
98) Loonshots (2019) by Safi Bahcall
99) Raising Cain (1999) by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson
100) Quiet (2012) by Susan Cain

Happy Thanksgiving! This blog is going on hiatus until New Year's Day 2020. Enjoy these reviews, and I'll see you back in 2020.

10 comments:

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  2. Merry Christmas, Garima! I checked out your blog as well and was impressed. Let's hope the Interwebs follows our lead, and we keep seeing stuff with substantial content — and not just click bait.

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  4. 12 hrs mostly bc im with my friends on my phone.

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  5. I don't spend that much time o n my phone so its like 1 hour and 30 minutes per day. While I spend a lot of time on my computer so I would say my screen time on my computer would be 2-3 hours.

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  6. I have 3 hours of screen time per day. However, that is just on my phone. With all the video games I play and tv I watch I would say I have over 6 hours of screen time per day. I think that this is a lot because this is on top of my online classes. I would like to change my time and lower it. This can prove challenging though since there is covid and I don't have that much other things to do.

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  7. Most of my screen time is sent on computer for both games and also school and studying. I think this is not such a bad thing as there are still other things people should be more worried about that are more important. While the screen time is not something that's normal it is also not proven to be bad

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