Behold! I pledge to read these 100 books by the end of next year.

These are all books that I already own, and in many cases have owned for some time. (They are, naturally, not ALL of the books I own.) If I don’t finish them by December 2016, they must leave this house, never to be purchased again.

“But what if a book proves unsatisfactory?” I already hear you protesting. Thank you for your concern. In that case, I get a Mulligan: I may replace it with another comparable book that I already own, provided that I dispose of the unsatisfactory book. (I’m looking at you, textbook on science and creationism that somehow snuck into this photo!)

Of course, I plan on reading other books (and many comics!) over the next 14 months. But these are definite. No compromises, no exceptions.*

This may be my most ambitious challenge yet!

*Other than the exceptions outlined above, of course.

In roughly thematic order:

Nonfiction

1. Eugene Robinson, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America
2. Baratunde Thurston, How to Be Black
3. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
4. Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Inoculation
5. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
6. Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty
7. James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
8. Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
9. Steve Jones, The Serpent’s Promise: The Bible Interpreted Through Modern Science
10. Jonathan Dudley, Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics
11. Dick Taverne, The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism
12. Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
13. Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish: Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
14. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe
15. Ashley Montagu, editor, Science and Creationism
16. Science, Evolution, and Creationism
17. Randall Munroe, What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
18. David Epstein, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
19. Matt Richtel, A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age
20. Scott Stossel, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind
21. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
    
22. Ronnie Greene, Shots on the Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina
23. Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
24. Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land
25. Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club
26. Mary Karr, Cherry
27. Alexandra Fuller, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
28. Tom Horton, An Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake
29. Amy Fusselman, Eight
30. Jeannette Winterson, Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit
31. Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
32. Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
33. Nora Ephron, I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections
34. Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
35. Joan Didion, Blue Nights
36. Sacha Z. Scoblic, Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety
37. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
38. Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory
39. Dave Cullen, Columbine
40. Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
41. Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates
42. Dave Isay, Ties That Bind: Stories of Love and Gratitude from the First Ten Years of StoryCorps
43. Ted Gup, A Secret Gift: How One Man’s Kindness—and a Trove of Letters—Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression
44. William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
45. William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir
46. Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, editors, Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide
47. Beth Kephart, Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir
48. Joy Castro, editor, Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family
49. Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
50. Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
51. Michael Larson, How to Write a Book Proposal
52. Natalie Goldberg, The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language
53. Michelle Goodman, My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire
54. Nick Hornby, Shakespeare Wrote for Money
55. Nick Hornby, Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt
56. Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
57. Nina Sankovitch, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
58. Sterling Archer, How to Archer: The Ultimate Guide to Espionage and Style and Women and Also Cocktails Ever Written

Fiction

1. Carolyn Parkhurst, The Dogs of Babel
2. Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin
3. Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
4. Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
5. Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation
6. Ellen Feldman, Scottsboro
7. Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes
8. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
9. Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
10. Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
11. Laura Lippman, Baltimore Blues
12. Bonnie Jo Campbell, Mothers, Tell Your Daughters
13. Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
14. Virgina Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
15. Anne Tyler, The Beginner’s Goodbye
16. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
17. Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
18. Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
19. Justin Torres, We the Animals
20. Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
21. Christina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans
22. Uwem Akpan, Say You’re One of Them
23. NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
24. Ellen Banda Aaku, Patchwork
25. Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth
26. Marlen Bodden, The Wedding Gift
27. Sara Farizan, If You Could Be Mine
    
28. Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
29. Malindo Lo, Ash
30. David Levithan, Every Day
31. David Levithan and Jonathan Farmer, Every You, Every Me
32. Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
33. Sarah Guillory, Reclaimed
34. Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim
35. Lucy Christopher, Stolen
36. Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits
37. Amy Reed, Over You
38. Cara Hoffman, So Much Pretty
39. Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone
40. Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, Wildwood
41. Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
42. Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men