
I don’t write often enough about the books I’m reading. Time flies, you know. This year, I decided to track what I’m reading in a book journal. Now I can’t find the journal. That’s how I roll.
From memory, I’m recreating the list, which I think is accurate, give or take a few. One or two might be end-of-the-year 2016, and I’m sure I missed a few.
First, I want to highlight a book I finished last night: It Looks Like This by Rafi Mittlefehldt. My 13-year-old daughter handed it to me with a demand to READ IT NOW. So I did. It sounds pretentious to say a book is “profound” and “important,” but damn, this book is a profound and important story about a boy’s sexual awakening and the disturbing events that follow.
When you’re an author, you go through fits of author envy, shaking your head and thinking, I wish I wrote this well. I have a severe case of Mittlefehlt envy. Buy it. Read it. Share it. Read it again. Thank me sometime during the process.
Now, here’s a list of my reading material from 2017, in no particular order, and not including picture books:
It Looks Like This by Rafi Mittlefehldt
Pax by Sara Pennypacker
Rain Reign by Ann Martin
Slider’s Son by Rebecca Fjelland Davis
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
The Giver by Lois Lowry
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook
Magnus Chase: Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton
Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
Found by S.A. Bodeen
The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm
Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper
Big & Little Questions (According to Wren Jo Byrd) by Julie Bowe
Original Fake by Kirstin Cronn-Mills
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer
Land of Stories: The Enchantress Returns by Chris Colfer
Land of Stories: A Grimm Warning by Chris Colfer
Heal Your Headache by David Buchholz
The Migraine Miracle Diet by Josh Turnkett
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
Lunar Chronicles: Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Lunar Chronicles: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
What Came From the Stars by Gary D. Schmidt