Welcome to Dragons Den’s 100th post!

To celebrate this monumental occasion, I have collected a list of my top 100 books. Each book on the list is a book that 1) I own, 2) has had a positive impact on my life, and 3) belongs in everyone’s den of books. This list is broken down into categories and is by no means the whole of my personal library. You can check out most of these books at your local bookstore or from the author’s websites.

Comics: 

• Graphic Novels
  • Serenity Rose by Aaron Alexovich 
  • The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
  • One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry
  • The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal by E.K. Weaver
  • Bone by Jeff Smith
  • Between Gears by Natalie Nourigat
  • Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
  • Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
  • Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  • Vattu: The Name & The Mark by Evan Dahm
• Manga
  • Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma
  • Bride’s Story by Kaoru Mori
  • Milkyway Hitchhiking by Sirial
  • Black Butler by Yana Toboso
  • Madoka Magica by Magica Quartet and Hanokage
  • Rayearth by CLAMP
  • Gate 7 by CLAMP
  • Alice in the Country of Hearts by QuinRose & Soumei Hoshino
  • Another by Yukito Ayatsuji & Hiro Kiyohara
  • GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class by Satoko Kiyuduki

Poetry

• Contemporary
  • Diwata by Barbara Jane Reyes
  • What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison by Camille Dungy
  • Excavating The Filipino in Me by Eileen R. Tabios
  • True Crime by Donna de la Pierriere 
  • Shahid Reads His Own Palm by Reginald Dwayne Betts
  • her beckoning hands by Arlene Biala
  • A Murmuration of Starlings by Jake Adam York
  • Come, Thief by Jane Hirshfield
  • Goodbye, Flicker by Carmen Gimenez Smith 
  • The Wellspring by Sharon Olds
• Non-Contemporary
  • The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe 
  • The Weary Blues by James Mercer Langston Hughes
  • The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
  • Howl by Allen Ginsberg
  • Emerson: Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams
  • Paradise Lost by John Milton 
  • Ezra Pound: Poems and Translations (Library of America) by Ezra Pound
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton

Fiction

• Contemporary
  • A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan 
  • Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
  • Storm Front: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • a mercy by Toni Morrison
  • The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
  • The Book of Heroes by Miyuki Miyabe
  • The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
  • Kindred by Octavia E. Butler 
  • The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
• Non-Contemporary
  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
  • The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Nonfiction

• Science
  • Cosmos by Carl Sagan
  • Space Chronicles by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
  • A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking 
  • The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin 
  • The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
  • Synchronicity: The Art of Coincidence, Choice, and Unlocking Your Mind by Dr. Kirby Surprise
  • Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku
  • Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart
  • The Demon- Haunted World by Carl Sagan 
  • The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum
• Social Studies (i.e. everything non-science or fiction)
  • Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser 
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
  • Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  • Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 
  • The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Gareth Stedman Jones 
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
  • The Elements of Style (Elements of Composition Series) by William Strunk Jr., E.B. White
  • America Is in the Heart: A Personal History by Carlos Bulosan

Misc. (I.E. I wanted to include these just because I love them so.)

• In No Particular Order:
  • The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair
  • Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. 
  • Filipino Ghost Stories: Spine-Tingling Tales of Supernatural Encounters and Hauntings by Alex G. Paman
  • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg 
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan
  • One Tribe by M. Evelina Galang 
  • Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett 
  • Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples 
  • Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
  • Alice by Christina Henry 
  • Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
  • The Tales of H.P. Lovecraft selected and edited by Joyce Carol Oates
  • Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region
  • The Best American Poetry
  • The Fault in our Stars by John Green 
  •  A Dragon Lover’s Treasury of the Fantastic
  •  The Dragon Quintet
  •  Dragon Champion by E. E. Knight 
  •  1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
  • The Bible