I Read 159 Books This Year. These are My 33 Favorites
Every year I set a goal for myself to read more books than the previous year. This year my goal was 120 books, and I surpassed it by 39. Below is a list of all the books that received five stars.
A book gets five stars if it is either brilliantly or creatively written or if it changed my life in a permanent way. They are listed in the order that I read them.
If you are interested in learning about some of the other books I read, I’d be happy to share them. Also, if you have any great recommendations, please leave them in the comments. Happy reading!
Non-Fiction:
“Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.”
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – Stephen King
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative – Austin Kleon
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything – Ken Robinson
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money – Ron Lieber
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose – Tony Hseih
“In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.”
The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank
Dry: A Memoir – Augusten Burroughs
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All – Tom Kelley
As a Man Thinketh – James Allen
When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
“Rather than teaching a mile wide in every subject, we ought to first teach kids to use platforms, then let them go deep in the areas that interest them.”
Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking – Shane Snow
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph – Ryan Holiday
When Bad Things Happen to Good People – Harold S. Kushner
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance – Angela Duckworth
The Wright Brothers – David McCullough
Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood – Lisa Damour
Fiction:
Eleanor & Park – Rainbow Rowell
“Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
The Storyteller – Jodi Picoult
Only Time Will Tell (The Clifton Chronicles, #1) – Jeffrey Archer
“For when Ashima and Ashoke close their eyes it never fails to unsettle them, that their children sound just like Americans, expertly conversing in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.”
Memory Man (Amos Decker, #1) – David Baldacci
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories – Stephen King
The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah
Unwind (Unwind, #1) – Neal Shusterman
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