This year's challenge:

This year, I embarked on a new challenge: a book a week. Here's a glimpse into my year so far.

1: The Devil You Know by Charles M. Blow

“Racism doesn't wither, but is trained when to advance or retreat. It becomes self-regulating.”

A new perspective on the redistribution and recuperation of power for marginalized groups. Blow articulates that for black people to achieve self-determination, they must migrate and colonize the American South and codify black power as a regional function of American politics.

Also, see the derived HBO documentary, "South to Black Power."

2: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

“Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”

Wilkerson argues that the key to understanding America is by understanding its caste system, that some lives are assigned more value than others, and that in the United States, it is based on skin color.

Also, see the movie: Origin

3: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

In a fire of anguish, kindled by wit and magic, Roy artfully tells the story of twins Rahel and Esthappen. Two twins with a crumbling family must create their childhood as they learn that "things can change in a day" and grapple with the inevitability of change.

4: Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan

“Learn to say no. And when you do, don’t complain and don’t explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way.”

Summarized perfectly on Goodreads, "Tell Me More is a moving and meaningful take on the power of the right words at the right moment to change everything."

5: On The Courthouse Lawn by Sherrilyn Ifill

"Douglass reportedly wanted to accept a commission to join the Union army, but he was prevented from doing so by the Lincoln administration because of fear of white reaction."

Ifill documents and explores the history of complicity woven into our societies; using two Maryland lynchings to show the ubiquitousness of our history.

6: Passing by Nella Larson

“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.”

Larson explores race and identity in telling the story of Irene Redfield, an affluent and notably light-skinned woman in Harlem. She lives a thriving, comfortable life until she runs into her childhood friend, Clare Kendry. Clare is also light-skinned but has been passing as a white woman, even to her racist husband, for years.

A fascinating and timely exploration of the ways we all try to "pass."

Also, see the movie: Passing

7: The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

“The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.”

Both Wes Moore and The Other Wes Moore came to highly similar situations in their young lives, yet their choices in these moments brought them to strikingly different conclusions. Through letters and prison visits, the parallel narrative tells the story of a generation of young boys and their choices in loss and gain

Also, see the documentary: All the Difference

8: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”

Adichie uses her clever writing to unsheathe her definition of feminism today. She argues against the physical and societal institutions that marginalize women while using anecdotal observations and humor to provide an accessibly nuanced approach to sexual politics and the gender problem.

Also, see the TedX: We should all be feminists

9: Outlive by Peter Attia

“One macronutrient, in particular, demands more of our attention than most people realize: not carbs, not fat, but protein becomes critically important as we age.”

Attia's manifesto on "living better and longer" through his personalized, proactive framework for mainstream medicine.

10: Atomic Habits by James Clear

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

Atomic Habits is a guide to creating positive habits through small, incremental changes to your life. Clear outlines that success is not a singular goal but a journey of improvement and refinement of your craft, the craft of "you."

11: The Negativity Fast by Anthony Iannarino

“If you are going to attribute intentions to a person, make them good intentions and hope that others do the same for you when you are struggling and not at your best."

In his book, Iannarino argues that "positivity is a choice, and it’s possible to spend more time in a positive state versus a negative one," and it's only by removing all sources of negativity from your life—media, people, etc.—and replacing them with positive sources that you can truly absolve yourself of negativity.

12: Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

“You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.”

Goggins' autobiography, from his ostensibly difficult childhood to success in the military and public speaking, oddly, depicts the reader as its hero. The book is filled with Goggins's successes and failures but truly aims to be a "self-help" or "self-improvement" guide to strengthen personal resolve.

13: Upper Hand by Sherrell Dorsey

Per Wiley: Upper Hand offers guidelines, insights, and frameworks for navigating the new world of work that is dominated by Silicon Valley-rooted technologies, inaccessible networks, and constant automation that continues to slash jobs in the Black and Latinx population.

Dorsey explores how we can ensure that the underserved aren't abandoned or left behind as technology inevitably progresses.

14: White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

“The dreams of the rich, and the dreams of the poor—they never overlap, do they? See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of? Losing weight and looking like the poor.”

Entrepreneur turned murderer Balram Halwai gets his chance when he's hired as a driver for the richest man in the village. Balram watches the bribes, lobbying, and bartering while learning all the skills from the trade. Adiga's writing shows the underbelly of India, from prostitution and worshippers to corruption and trafficking. Yet, he shows the value of decency and a little attentiveness in a corrupt world.

Also, see the movie: The White Tiger

15: Never Finished by David Goggins

“It is a lifelong quest for more knowledge, more courage, more humility, and more belief. Because when you summon the strength and discipline to live like that, the only thing limiting your horizons is you.”

David Goggins guide to "unshackling your mind" and "breaking the glass ceiling." In this memoir, he gives insight on how to develop yourself and push your limits.

16: Wildby Cheryl Strayed

“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”

Wild tells the story of Cheryl Strayed's radical decision to drop everything and hike over 1000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail alone.

17: Our Hidden Conversations by Michele Norris

“Racism is a shape-shifter. It is not the same thing today as it was yesterday, and it will not be the same tomorrow or ten years from now. That’s shorthand for the academic definition that describes racism as a ‘multi-dimensional , highly adaptive system that ensures unequal power and distribution of resources among racial groups.’ The group that controls he levers of paw and distribution of resources weaves the interests into the gears of that system.”

Michele Norris gives us the eyes and ears of America in her work, Our Hidden Conversations. In a time of much division, she compiled 12 years worth of stories to tell how Americans see themselves and one another. The stories show the depth of race and identity and how it present itself throughout our melting pot. It is undoubtedly one of the best and most easily accessible books on the dialogue of race and identity in America.

18: Living with the Monks by Jesse Itzler

“People are always waiting for something to happen before they change their lives. But they have it backward; when you change your life, big things are more likely to happen”

Coming after his book, Living with a SEAL, Living with the Monks is Itzler's memoir and guide to a less stressful and more peaceful life. Itzler learns about the lives of New Skete monks and, in turn, questions his own life, motives, and beliefs.

19: A Perilous Path by Sherrilyn Ifill, Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson

A highly complex and nuanced read, described and articulated well by The New Press:

Covering topics as varied as “the commonality of pain,” “when ‘public’ became a dirty word,” and the concept of an “equality dividend” that is due to people of color for helping America brand itself internationally as a country of diversity and acceptance, Sherrilyn Ifill, Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson engage in a deeply thought-provoking discussion on the law’s role in both creating and solving our most pressing racial quandaries. A Perilous Path will speak loudly and clearly to everyone concerned about America’s perpetual fault line.

20: Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au

“She made no attempt to hide her grief, which must have been her father’s grief also, and this surprised me, that she would not try and mask it somehow, that she was not ashamed of the drama, as my family would have been, but inhabit it with rage and sadness, as if it were the cloak of some great animal that she had just slain.”

Cold Enough For Snow is a slow, delicate, contemporary novel about a mother and a daughter's trip to Japan. A carefully paced and short read, it's a well-written novel with a lot of value if you're willing to dig.

21: The Four by Scott Galloway

“Don’t follow your passion; follow your talent.”

Articulated well here: Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google) that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can't match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.

22: Unmasking AI by Joy Boulamwini

“When companies require individuals to fit a narrow definition of acceptable behavior encoded into a machine learning model, they will reproduce harmful patterns of exclusion and suspicion.”

As “the conscience of the AI revolution” (Fortune), Dr. Joy Buolamwini presents the unethical and already present downfalls of AI in what she calls "the coded gaze." AI, trained on learning models that are discriminatory, produces similarly discriminatory data.

Also, see the TedX: How I'm fighting bias in algorithms

23: How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis

“You do not have to earn the right to rest, connect, or recreate. Unlearn the idea that care tasks must be totally complete before you can sit down. Care tasks are a never-ending list, and if you wait until everything is done to rest, you will never rest.”

Told through 31 daily thoughts, Davis provides her gentle and compassionate guide to stategically approaching keeping house.

24: ADHD For Smart Ass Women by Tracy Otsuka

“You see, we’re not hyperactive, just otherworldly energetic. We’re not distractible, just incessantly curious. And yes, we can be impulsive, but some experts believe that creativity is simply impulsivity gone right."

ADHD coach Tracy Otsuka presents her guide, stock full of her experience coaching women, psychological research, levity, and personal anecdotes specifically for girls and women with ADHD.

25: Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis

“You don’t know a language, you live it. You don’t learn a language, you get used to it.”

Benny Lewis's guide to self-teaching and becoming fluent in any language in 3 months provides his blueprint for language learning as well as debunking many myths surrounding it.

26: The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Filled with magic and wonder, Coelho tells a story of self-discovery through Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy traveling in search of treasure. Yet, his fantastical journey brings treasure far greater through its wisdom.

27: Stamped From The Beginning by Ibram X Kendi

“I know that readers truly committed to racial equality will join me on this journey of interrogating and shedding our racist ideas. But if there is anything I have learned during my research, it’s that the principal producers and defenders of racist ideas will not join us. And no logic or fact or history book can change them, because logic and facts and scholarship have little to do with why they are expressing racist ideas in the first place.”

With thorough research and dense chronology, Kendi recounts racist ideas and their impact throughout American history. Kendi shares how racist thinking does not originate from hatred but rather attempts to defend and rationalize entrenched and baseless discriminatory inequities.

Also, see the movie: Stamped from the Beginning

28: Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan M Metzel

“Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die for his place in this hierarchy, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities."

Metzel shows the consequences of conservative politics, even for those they promise to help. Metzl, a physician, interviews a range of Americans and analyzes how racial resentment fuels dangerous local policies leading to more deaths; namely via gun violence and a lack of care.

29: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King Jr

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. isolated himself from the demands of his position and wrote his final manuscript, in which he laid out his plans and dreams for the future of America. His plans included a call to end poverty worldwide, as we as a human race had the resources and technology to do so.

30: Life and Other Love Songs by Anissa Gray

“He couldn’t help but look back. That was because he knew that what he was leaving would never leave him.”

A mystery, showcasing the lives of a Black American family grappling with the disappearance of a husband and father. Throughout the days, months, and years, they retrace the life of the man they thought they knew.

31: The Comfort Book by Matt Haig

“You have survived everything you have been through, and you will survive this too. Stay for the person you will become. You are more than a bad day, or week, or month, or year, or even a decade. You are a future of multifarious possibility. You are another self at a point in future time looking back in gratitude that this lost and former you held on. Stay.”

Originally spanning his personal notes, lists, and stories, Haig sourced a diverse array of sources, offering his compassionate writing to help remind us of the beauty in life and how to appreciate it.

32: Think Outside The Building by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

“Given such strong defenses against change, fresh ideas come from those who do more than think outside the box. They think outside the building.”

Kanter offers her unique perspective on leadership theory to aid in handling social and environmental problems.

33: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

“You can forever remember the wrongs done to you as long as you live,” she said. “But if you forget ’em and go on living, it’s almost as good as forgiving.”

A discordant and whimsical story with overlapping stories built on enjoyable characters. McBride takes us through the unraveling of a skeleton found at the bottom of an abandoned well and how the town's white establishment was involved in it. Undoubtedly an enjoyable read.

34: The Marriage Season by Jane Dunn

“Even when you have nothing left in your life, hope is the one thing that can never be taken away.”

Dunn writes from the Regency period in The Marriage Season. Much like Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice (of which I'm a big fan) and Persuasion (of which I'm more of an air conditioner), the story is full of suitors, parties, and drama and comes to a witty, satisfying end.

35: I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown

“When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it’s easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination. The problem with this framework—besides being a gross misunderstanding of how racism operates in systems and structures enabled by nice people—is that it obligates me to be nice in return, rather than truthful. I am expected to come closer to the racists. Be nicer to them. Coddle them.”

Austin learned that her parents named her Austin so employers would think she was a white man, and she's been challenging racialized America ever since. This book is Brown's view on how white, middle-class evangelicalism contributes to racial hostility and perpetrates racial injustice, and in addition, how blackness and godlyness can help solve it.

36: Things Fall Apart by China Achebe

“There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”

The story of Okonkwo and his experience with the pain of colonization and the swift, widespread effect on his culture. A masterful writer who illustrates not only the tragic fall of Okonkwo, but also every complex, and nuanced party in the narrative.

37: Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” From Hawaii to England to Marrakech, Lies and Weddings tells the story of an earldom and a hidden affair.

38: Innovating Innovation by David Morey

“In business, creativity is the bridge to innovation. It allows businesses to innovate and market and redefine their own success. In politics, creativity allows future leaders to push beyond America’s current famine of political and social imagination. Across this bridge, we change leaders must march from imagination to innovation. We must do this because no one else will ever be sufficiently hungry and foolish enough to redefine what innovations means, what change means. We are the crazy ones just mad enough to change the world.”

Morey created what he delineates as “a step-by-step handbook for teaching and at times even tricking your organization, your culture, and your company into real-world change. It is the new battlefield book for innovation.”

39: Becoming by Michelle Obama

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something, and that’s the end.”

There's little that hasn't been said about Michelle Obama's award-winning memoir. Highly reflective with extraordinary storytelling, Obama brings readers through experiences shaping her life. From her childhood to the White House, Obama tells her full-lived experience with honesty and unerring wit, providing an inspiring and unforgettable story.

40: The Dragons The Giant The Women by Wayétu Moore

“Barely one year in and our new country let us know, every day, that we were different.”

The Dragons The Giant The Women is Wayétu Moore's memoir about escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United States. What is captured is a vivid, grueling, and heartbreaking reality that increasingly pervades migrants. Through her imaginative and lush prose, Moore provides her outlook on the political and societal spheres that continue to affect migrants.