Bookshelf
One of the items on my bucket list is to read 500 books between my 40th and 50th birthdays. Below is a running list of what I’ve read so far. Each book is linked to Amazon in case you want to add it to your own reading list. Also, I’d encourage you to check out the Overdrive library app. You can use it to check out both digital and audio books from your local library. I started using it a few years ago and use it primarily for audiobooks. Overdrive makes my commute more enjoyable and helps me make it through about 20 additional books per year.
2013
- Wool, Hugh Howey
- Do The Work, Steven Pressfield
- The Art of Non-Conformity, Chris Guillebeau
- Boomerang, Michael Lewis
- Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
- Getting Things Done, David Allen
- Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, Tony Horwitz
- The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
- The Big Short, Michael Lewis
- The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls
- My Life in France, Julia Child
- A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
- The Four Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne
- On Writing, Stephen King
- Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, David Sedaris
- The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, Victor David Hansen
- World War Z, Max Brooks
- Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, Piers Paul Read
- Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, Michael Pollan
- Grand Ambition, G. Bruce Knecht
- Child of God, Cormack McCarthy
- Everyman, Phillip Roth
- Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bordain
- Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom
- No Easy Day, Mark Owen
2014
- Jack London: An American Life, Earle Labor
- The Graveyard Book, Niel Gaiman
- Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel, Rolf Potts
- The Call of the Wild, Jack London
- Walden, Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
- The Sea Wolf, Jack London
- Robinson Curusoe, Daniel Defoe
- Open, Andre Agassi
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
- My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir
- Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
- East of Eden, John Steinbeck
- The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
- Start Something that Matters, Blake Mycoskie
- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
- Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson
- Roughing It, Mark Twain
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, James Thurber
- The Martian, Andy Weir
- Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
- Escape From Davao, John D. Lukacs
- White Fang, Jack London
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville
- Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson
- John Barleycorn, Jack London
- A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
- Travels With Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck
- The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World, Stephen Mansfield
- The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer
- A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
- Moneyball, Michael Lewis
- A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
- Wooden on Leadership, John Wooden
- The Happiness of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau
- The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, Joël Dicker
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax, Rebecca Skloot
- The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin
- 61 Hours, Lee Child
- 12 Years A Slave, Solomon Northup
- Worth Dying For, Lee Child
- A Wanted Man, Lee Child
- Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
- Never Go Back, Lee Child
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The River of Doubt, Candice Millard
- We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance, David Howarth
- A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
- The Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King
- Lawerence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Scott Anderson
- Sailing Alone Around the World, Joshua Slocum
- One Man’s Wilderness, Sam Keith and Richard Proenneke
2015
- Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, Blaine Harden
- An Inland Voyage, Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Stand, Stephen King
- The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes
- Personal, Lee Child
- Charles Dickens: A Life, Claire Tomalin
- Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed
- The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg
- C. S. Lewis: A Life, Alister McGrath
- How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World, Steven Johnson
- The Crack Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles Mann
- Dad is Fat, Jim Gaffigan
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- Life of Pi, Yann Martel
- American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Jon Meacham
- Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright
- Mud, Sweat and Tears, Bear Grylls
- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely
- Zero to One, Peter Thiel
- Paul Newman: A Life, Shawn Levy
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg, McKeown
- In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, Michael Pollan
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
- The People of the Abyss, Jack London
- The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman
- I am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes
- Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
- The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
- The Wright Brothers, David McCullough
- Citizen Soldiers, Stephen Ambrose
- Lost in Shangri La, Mitchell Zuckoff
- The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber
- Devil May Care, Sebastian Faulks
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman
- A Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, David McCullough
- Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Erik Larson
- A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley
- Make Me, Lee Child
- Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, Bob Spitz
- How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams
2016
- H is for Hawk, Helen McDonald
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
- The Natural, Bernard Malamud
- Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
- Flags of our Fathers, James Bradley
- Alone on the Ice, David Roberts
- Brave Companion: Portraits in History, David McCullough
- Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Sarah Vowell
- D-Day, Stephen Ambrose
- Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Jon Meacham
- Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon, Ghiglieri and Myers
- The Shining, Stephen King
- American Pastoral, Philip Roth
- One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
- All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
- Solo: A James Bond Novel, William Boyd
- Colonel Roosevelt, Edmund Morris
- The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy
- Three Cups of Deceit, Jon Krakauer
- Cities of the Plain, Cormac McCarthy
- Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela
- The Road to Little Dribbling, Bill Bryson
- Truman, David McCullough
- Timeline, Michael Crichton
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
- The Blind Side, Michael Lewis
- The Monkey’s Raincoat, Robert Crais
- Brain on Fire, Susan Cahalan
- Stalking the Angel, Robert Crais
- The Girl in the Spider’s Web, David Lagerkrantz
- Who Moved my Cheese, Spencer Johnson
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath
- Gratitude, Oliver Sacks
- When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Márquez
- 1776, David McCullough
- Turn Right at Machu Picchu, Mark Adams
- Hero Tales, Theodore Roosevelt
- Hallucinations, Oliver Sacks
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
- The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday
- Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday
- The More of Less, Joshua Becker
- Remote: Office Not Required, Jason Fried
- Medium Raw, Anthony Bourdain
- Between the World and Me, Ta-Nahesi Coates
- The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo
- Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, Candice Millard
- Free Fall, Robert Crais
- On Writing, Stephen King
- Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, Thomas Sowell
- Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Thomas Sowell
- Tribe, Sebastian Junger
- 13 Hours in Benghazi, Mitchell Zukoff
- A Death in Belmont, Sebastian Junger
- Mindset, Carol Dweck
- One More Thing, BJ Novak
- Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
- Deep Down, Lee Child (short story)
- The Affair, Lee Child
- Bad Luck and Trouble, Lee Child
- The Long Walk, Stephen King
- The Outsider: A Memoir, Jimmy Connors
- A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at 100, George Will
- It’s a Long Story, Willie Nelson
2017
- Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Market, Al Ries and Jack Trout
- Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming
- Night School, Lee Child
- Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, Wayne Dyer
- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
- Paul McCartney: A Life, Peter Ames Carlin
- The Torrents of Spring, Ernest Hemingway
- Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, Phil Knight
- A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic’s Wild Ride to the Edge and Back, Kevin Hazzard
- Tell My Sons: A Father’s Last Letters, Mark Weber
- The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
- Catch 22, Joseph Heller
- A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
- A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
- Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway
- Before the Fall, Noah Hawley
- The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill
- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
- A Farewall to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
- The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Alice Schroeder
- Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
- Frozen in Time, Mitchell Zukoff
- All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
- A Life in Parts, Brian Cranston
- Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann
- The Snowman, Jo Nesbo
- Smarter, Faster, Better, Charles Duhigg
- The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
- The Green Mile, Stephen King
- Lord of the Flies, William Golding
- The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
- Acros Islands and Oceans: A Journey Alone Around the World, James Baldwin
- Foundation, Isaac Asimov
- The Dinner, Herman Koch
- Echo Burning, Lee Child
- The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway
- In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway (contained in Complete Stories)
- Men Without Women, Ernest Hemingway (contained in Complete Stories)
- The Nick Adams Stories, Ernest Hemingway (contained in Complete Stories)
- The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway
- Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance
- Mystic River, Dennis Lehane
- Night, Elie Wiesel
- Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Eric Metaxas
- The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Green
- Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway
- The Art of War, Sun Tzu
- Testimony: A Memoir, Robbie Robertson
- Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
- American Assassin, Vince Flynn
- 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Charles Mann
- To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway
- The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf
- Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
- Argo, Antonio Mendez
- The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
- Across the River and into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway
- A Storm of Swords, George RR Martin
- Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, Mark Manson
- Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
- The Dangerous Summer, Ernest Hemingway
- The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
- Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, JK Rowling
- Complete Poems, Ernest Hemingway
- Deep Work, Cal Newport
- Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
- Mocking Jay, Suzanne Collins
- True at First Light, Ernest Hemingway
Note: Since I have my own books for sale on Amazon, I am a part of their Amazon Affiliate program. The links above are affiliate links, which simply means that if you buy a book after clicking one of the links, Amazon (at no additional cost to you) will pay me a small commission that I use to help cover the costs of this site. That’s not why I recommend the books, of course, but I wanted to be sure to make you aware of it.