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Kimberly’s Favorite Reads of 2020

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I’m going to close out the year with 61 books read, compared to my average of 100. Part of that smaller figure is due to the fact that I’m reading more books for adults and fewer for children and teens, so they take longer to read. But the reason is mostly that I just didn’t read as much because of the pandemic and the election.

In the early part of the year, I dedicated a not insignificant amount of time to volunteering in the Democratic primary. When the pandemic and subsequent shutdown hit, I figured I’d get in a lot more reading time. The time was there, but my ability to read was not. I found it difficult to maintain the kind of focus that sustained reading requires; my mind was almost always elsewhere. I know many of you are feeling this keenly too.

Still, I did manage to read a few really great books. All but one are nonfiction, and none of them were written for kids and teens. Here they are, in no particular order.

 

A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough

Only partially an autobiography, Attenborough calls this his “witness statement and a vision for the future.” He writes about the dramatic loss of biodiversity on our planet as observed over the course of his long life, and then looks to the future, to the points of no return and what our continued unwillingness to make big changes will mean for the future of humanity and the rest of life on Earth. It’s a devastating account.

This was the most emotional book I read this year; it frequently made me tear up over the colossal scale of the tragedy and how little hope there seems to be for our future. But Attenborough dedicates a lot of the latter part of the book toward solutions. His tone here is serious but hopeful, encouraging readers to share in that hope while also taking action to ensure that hopeful future comes to pass.

 

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

Junger’s short book provides his explanation for why so many white colonists in America willingly abandoned their Western society and culture and went to live with Native American tribes – but there are no records of the reverse ever happening. He weaves this question together with the fact that many American soldiers returning from war have PTSD not only because of the extreme violence they witnessed and participated in, but because of the struggle of leaving behind a communal society (soldiers in war) and trying to reintegrate into an extreme individualist one (modern American society at peace). Certainly he is not arguing that war is good – but the more communal cultures of both the armed forces and Native American tribes exert an inexorable pull on humans. It’s a fascinating book that provides a lot to think about.

 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Harari has written an ambitious book about the history of humankind, from 100,000 years ago to the present. Among the most interesting things for me personally were these two bits: there were half a dozen or more different human species that lived at the same time as homo sapiens (not just the Neanderthals as most of us think); and the agricultural revolution may have been ultimately good for 21st century humans, but for most of its duration it actually caused a decrease in the quality of life for most people (not to mention animals).

This isn’t my highest rated book of the year, but it’s the one I think about and talk about the most. It’s also the one that made me decide to eat a more plant-based diet, a decision that was reinforced when I read A Life On Our Planet later in the year.

 

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

This modern classic of nonfiction writing is just the kind of nonfiction I love, a mix of history and science that’s fascinating from beginning to end. It tracks the rise of human civilizations all over the world, elegantly and convincingly arguing that geographical and environmental factors shaped humanity (and all its differences) much more than did any innate qualities of race or DNA. Along with Tribe and Sapiens, these three books all share the common theme of why humans are the way we are – an endlessly fascinating topic that I’ve really dug into this year.

 

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

My favorite fiction book of the year is also one that made me realize I liked short stories. Every single story is good, in part because Chiang really thinks through his ideas, carefully creating worlds and characters that follow the set of fictional rules he’s established for his SF premises. But they also say a lot about humanity without diving too far into the “literary” stereotypes where plot is often sacrificed. These are SF stories that revel in their SF-ness. My favorite story now is not one I mentioned in my original review. It’s called The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, and it’s about truth, memory, and how they intertwine, a topic I come back to often in my own ruminations. I asked my husband to read it, and we had a long and interesting discussion about it afterward.

 

 

My Favorite Books of 2019

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I’m so glad I didn’t write my favorite books post earlier this month because one of my favorite reads came very recently. I’m glad I don’t have to skip including it, since it’s one that got a bit of buzz but maybe not as much as it should, and certainly not in the format I read it. I’ve listened to a significant number of audiobooks this year, and while some of my favorite audio titles will be included here, I’ll pull together a list next week with some of my favorite listens of 2019.

This list includes books I read this year which published this year. I read a lot of back list titles, especially in audio, but I wanted to put the spotlight on the newer titles. My final tally on books will likely be in the neighborhood of 190, which is about what my reading averages tend to be every year. These are in alphabetical order by title and cover a little bit of everything: YA, literary fiction, and nonfiction.

I could have easily doubled this list, but I limited myself to just ten.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking The Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

If there’s one book I recommended more than any other in 2019, it was this one. I listened to it on audio and while I cannot recommend that experience enough — these sisters are so great at performing their work! — I think this is a book I’ll go back and purchase in print because I want to be able to reference it.

Let me begin by saying that, if you know anything about how stress works on the body, you won’t be surprised at the information in this book. But it’s the way the Nagoskis are able to explain why we need to have a release of our stress to complete the cycle that makes this book so good. We always hear that when we’re stressed, we should work out. Yes, we should, but the why is lost in that. The Nagoskis give the why.

The book really digs into the importance of rest, as well. Resting allows our brains to do a ton of work. I was kind of blown away by the fact we’re to rest 40% of our days, but when they break down what that entails, it’s really not that challenging (they are good about the caveats, of course).

The chapter on the “bikini industrial complex” and about how women choosing to be liberated from body hatred is so good. It’s not about body love or acceptance, which is something I really dislike. You can’t go from one extreme to the other without whiplash, and frankly, it’s just not realistic. But they offer up ways to think about having and operating within a human body that are really worthwhile. As someone who cares deeply about body stuff, I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear the history of some of the medically-ingrained biases, and yet, I still was.

The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage, and A Girl Saved By Bees by Meredith May

I think about this book almost daily.

May’s memoir is about growing up in a dysfunctional series of homes and how she came to find beekeeping a way of not only working through her familial challenges but also as a means of finding hope.

When she was young, May’s parents went through a messy divorce following her mother’s outbursts and abuse toward her father. Her mother took her and her brother from their home in Rhode Island to the home of her grandparents in Big Sur, California. Mom disappeared into herself, leaving May and her brother to grow up under the watch of a demanding and unfriendly grandmother and a man that they only ever know as their grandfather — a kind, generous, loving man who had a penchant for beekeeping and encouraged May to join him while he taught her about the ins and outs of the honeybees. This man was not May’s grandfather by blood though; he was a step-grandfather, and the discovery of this unravels into the history of abuse that plagued her family for generations. May’s father never quite reemerges except for one excellent trip back to Rhode Island for her, and her mother becomes more abusive toward her as she grows up. There is a lot of fear and anger throughout the story, but it’s tempered beautifully with the magic of bees and May’s grandfather.

We can’t rank dysfunction, but the level of fear and terror in this memoir isn’t as pronounced as EDUCATED or THE GLASS CASTLE, but readers who find those books to be captivating will find this to be one worth picking up. May’s writing is stunning, and her passion for bees comes through, both in her own voice and in the voice of that unbelievable grandfather in her life.

I grew up in a family that, although not like May’s, was one where I found myself close with my grandfather, too, so this one hit home in a lot of ways. It’s a lovely homage to the people in our lives who give us hope and love, even when we don’t know we need it. Likewise, the naturalist aspects of beekeeping and the incredible power bees have in the world made this bee-lover satisfied. The bulk of this book happens during May’s childhood and teenage years, so it’s totally appropriate for teens who eat up these kinds of true life stories.

Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson

This book absolutely surprised me, and it’s the one I referenced above. I didn’t read it until this month and was blown away by it — and this is one I could not stop listening to on audio, with great credit to Marin Ireland’s performance and spot-on southern accent.

Lillian and Madison went to a private high school together for a short period of time, and when Madison was caught with drugs, Lillian took the fall. She was kicked out of the school, and it further cemented to her what it meant when someone has financial privilege and when someone else doesn’t (she doesn’t). Years later, when Madison offers her a job and security, Lillian takes the opportunity because she wants to get out of the rut that her life has been in since she was young.

That job? Taking care of the children from Madison’s husband’s first marriage. His ex-wife has died, and since he’s running for political office, he needs to present a certain image that those kids don’t project.

Those kids start on fire.

Though this is a book about fire kids (what a hook!), it’s really about class and what privilege can do. It’s also a book about friendship and family, and Lillian is such a complex, compelling, and easy-to-love character, even when she gets prickly. The children are well-drawn and way more than simply kids who have a condition that causes them to become engulfed in flames. It’s heartening, it’s sad, and it’s also quite funny.

The Revolution of Birdie Randolph by Brandy Colbert

My new tradition to begin every year is to start with a Brandy Colbert book, and I love how even 12 months later, they’re on my mind. It makes me sad that this book seems to have fallen off many reader radars, as it’s maybe her strongest work yet. This is a book about following the rules and breaking them, as well as a book about the family we’re born into and the families that we make along the way.

Birdie’s aunt shows up at her family’s apartment right before the summer begins, and that’s when everything changes; it’s at this same time Birdie is secretly dating a boy she knows her very strict, proper parents wouldn’t like. Despite never pushing boundaries before, these two new people in her life encourage her to take some chances and learn some lessons she never would have on her own.

Colbert depicts her aunt Carlene’s alcoholism with tenderness and offers up the whole range of emotions people experience both as those who are addicts and those who are friends and family of addicts. There is support, but there is also caution exercised around Carlene that showcase hope for her to find recovery but also experience in knowing that this is a disease that is challenging to manage.

The Chicago setting is vibrant and real, and isn’t also afraid to highlight the racial challenges within the city, in terms of violence, racism, and bigotry, and the places and spaces where those do and don’t overlap.

Also handled really fabulously is anger and anger management, recovery from trauma and what that does and doesn’t look like, and it offers such a refreshing perspective on teens, especially teens of color, who’ve been in the juvenile justice system.

The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson

This little book was an absolute surprise to me when I read it, and like the others on this list, it comes back into my mind frequently. Note that in discussing this title, I’ve included the spoiler because that’s ultimately what made this one stand out.

Jake Breaker is a neurosurgeon and he knows how complex the brain can be. The story begins with him talking about the delicacy involved in surgery, and it weaves in the history of one summer in his youth in 1980s Niagara Falls, Canada. He’s been the victim of a vicious bully, which puts him in contact with Billy, the Metis boy who becomes a long-time friend. Over the course of the summer, Jake and Billy, as well as Billy’s older sister Dove (who struggles with bipolar disorder) become close to Jake’s eccentric uncle Cal, who runs an occult store in their small town. Cal suggests that they create a weekly ghost club, taking the lead on treating and terrorizing his nephew and nephew’s friends to stories of the ghosts that haunt their small town. The stories are horrific, though they’re far more about loss and sadness than they are about being scared. They’re stories of death, of people gone missing, of the relics of lives that never got to become what they were meant to be.

But one night, Jake learns that everything his uncle has taught him is simply reconstructed memories from Cal’s own horrific experiencing of losing his wife and unborn child. Cal, who has no recollection of these things, believes these to be ghost stories and not the facts of his own life. Jake wrestles with knowing the truth, both at his youthful age and now, as a neurosurgeon reflecting upon that summer which changed everything he thought he knew.

It’s heartbreaking and heartwarming, as it’s a story about love and loss and the things that we do when we’ve experienced tremendous pains and powerful highs. It’s a short story but one that packs a punch. For readers who are put off by horror, this would make an excellent read in the genre, and the comparisons to Stranger Things and Stand By Me are excellent. It reminded me, too, of the children’s sections of Stephen King’s It, minus Pennywise. This has some great crossover appeal — which isn’t surprising, given that Davidson’s other writing alias has become a Canadian horror writer with huge appeal to teen readers. Gorgeous, poetic, nostalgic writing.

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby

I’m not going to talk about this one in depth, in part because I wrote a whole piece about this book over on Book Riot. It’s a tragedy that it did not take home the National Book Award (I don’t think it’s fair to compare books, but I also read 1919, this year’s winner, and I had a number of issues with it that made me wonder why that was the ultimate winner). This was also one of Kimberly’s favorites of the year.

One of the things I started doing this year was dedicating one day a week to writing dates with fellow author Alyssa Wees (her The Waking Forest is a fabulous dark fairy tale, a la Pan’s Labyrinth). As soon as I finished Ruby’s book, I told Alyssa she needed to read it ASAP because I knew she’d love it. I wasn’t wrong, and we spent one of our two-hour dates raving about it.

 

 

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

I never would have picked this book up or become an impassioned fan of Tolentino’s writing were it not for a friend who told me to pick this one up and read the first essay about Twitter, since it’d likely articulate a lot of feelings I had about the platform after I chose to leave it. She was right. But more than that, this entire book was an outstanding, challenging, and thoughtful exploration of a number of social and cultural phenomenon explored through the lens of a millennial feminist of color. I told everyone I could to read it, and nearly every one of them also put this book on their favorites list this year. This is a book of meaty, challenging essays that takes time. I read it over the course of months.

I selected this book as my favorite for Book Riot’s Best Books roundup this year. Here’s the short blip I wrote: “Tolentino’s debut essay collection sinks its teeth deep into what it means to be a Millennial in today’s capitalist, hustle-focused culture. Whether it’s Twitter, athleisure, $12 salad lunches consumed at one’s work desk, weddings, or reality TV, each piece shines a feminist lens on what they mean on both the micro and the macro level. Meticulous and critical, Tolentino’s essays challenge readers to think deeply and broadly. This collection is humorous and erudite and offers a sense of relief to fellow Millennials feeling over and under whelmed with the current state of the world.”

We Set The Dark On Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia

The only thing I did not love about this book was that I was half-way through before realizing it was a duology. I felt like salt was added to this wound when I got a package from the publisher not too long ago and there was a publicity one-sheet for the second book but the book itself wasn’t actually in the package (I have it now!).

On the Island, there are the privileged and those who aren’t privileged. But, if you play the system a bit, you can rise above your status and become an elite. This is what happened to Dani, whose parents sacrificed everything for her to attend the Medio School for Girls, where she trained to become a Primera, one of the two wives a man of status takes. She keeps her status as a lower-than-low class girl quiet, and she regrets ever telling Carmen when she believed them to be friends years earlier.

So when Carmen is named the Segunda to her Primera for one of the most powerful men in the country, Dani panics. Can she trust her? How awful will it be living her life with Carmen and this boy forever?

But Dani had been offered something she couldn’t refuse just before the marriage. And it sets her up on a course as a spy from inside the grounds of her new home and not only does it mean defying all of the social mores of her elite status, but it means choosing loyalties. It also means she has to decide whether to harm another girl to get what she needs. Carmen, too, seems to becoming closer and closer to her, too, and Dani becomes more paranoid she’s the target of a ruse.

There’s no secret this book is super queer, and it’s pretty evident from early on who will fall for who. It isn’t a surprise — and it’s really a wonderful relationship. Mejia develops full, round female characters who are caught up in a patriarchal system and choosing to act as they do to not only better themselves, but to also better their sisters. And more, this is a book about class, about borders, and about why it is the elite hate those who are of a lower class than them. It’s about resistance, about power, and about using your voice and your status to make the world better, as opposed to worse.

Compelling, immersive, and beautifully written, this book is feminist as hell, it’s a book that would be perfect to hand to readers who are not necessarily fantasy readers, and those who enjoy mythology, stories of taking down power, and the dynamics of female relationships as they exist in a world meant to keep girls as enemies, rather than as friends or lovers.

We Speak in Storms by Natalie Lund

Genre-blending books — particularly those which blend ghost stories with contemporary stories — have stood out to me this year. Lund’s debut checked literally every box I have when it comes to books that are catnip for me: it’s about tornadoes, about ghosts, small midwestern towns, and it’s set about 20 miles from where I live (not a necessity, but a bonus, as I could picture so many of these places and could read up on the history of the real events that inspired the book).

Fifty years after Mercer’s infamous, deadly tornado, another tornado rolls through, waking the ghosts of those who died in the first storm. The ghosts become close companions to Callie — currently losing her mother and so much of her stability to cancer; to Joshua — coming out as gay, in a fat body, with a stepfather who won’t accept him at all; and to Brenna — struggling post-breakup to reconcile her Latina heritage with her current life with a single mother in a small town where she’s one of a mere handful of people of color.

Their voices are interwoven with the ghosts, which speak like a Greek chorus.

The language is lush, imagery evocative, and the characters are all rich. This reminded me so much of Jenna Blum’s The Stormchasers, another book I absolutely loved.

Who Put This Song On? by Morgan Parker

If there’s a book I can point to on this list and say it was wildly overlooked. . . I could point to a lot, actually. But Parker’s debut YA novel may be at the very top. This book is one of the best depictions of depression and anxiety I’ve read, and it’s especially noteworthy that Morgan, the main character who is based on Morgan the author, is black, as her mental illnesses intersect directly with her experiences being black.

By turns funny and heartbreaking, this book is a slice of life into Morgan’s ups and downs in her conservative Christian school and very white suburban southern California youth. She doesn’t apologize for her experiences, nor feel the need to make excuses for them. She struggles, and it’s honest.

Morgan’s faith plays a big role in the story. She wants to believe in Christianity, but wrestles with what some of the teachings say and how they go against her own beliefs. It’s neatly juxtaposed with how she lays into being an emo kid, despite the fact she is the antithesis of what people believe an “emo” kid to be — white, sad, and covered in eyeliner. She instead loves herself some vintage fashion, is black, and just enjoys (as much as she can!) feeling her feelings to intense music.

One of the criticisms I’ve seen of this book is the thing that makes this such a REAL depiction of depression: Morgan isn’t likable all the time, and she’s not sympathetic all the time. Depression does this. It makes you a monster, even though deep down, you’re hoping to be anything but; we see this tension tugging at Morgan page after page.

The climax of the book is a moment where Morgan puts on a public art performance/activist project and it’s one that really seals the way her mental illness intersects with her blackness, as well as the history of black activism in the United States.

This is one of those books you’ve got to also read through the author’s note and resources. Those are as vital to the story — to Morgan — as every other chapter in the book.

Memories of a Reading Life

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Memories of a reading life, in roughly chronological order:

Reading Oz books aloud to my dad while he did the dishes.

Reading The Westing Game with my mom and keeping a notebook of all the clues so we could try to solve the mystery alongside the characters.

Walking home from middle school reading a brand-new Ann Rinaldi book my mom brought to me during lunch (from a stack of five or so, recommended by the public librarian). The mylar was fresh and the book pure and unsoiled – reading a new library book is one of my favorite things. This is also the first time I can remember discovering a new-to-me author and being able to take a deep dive into her backlist.

Falling in love with On Fortune’s Wheel and Biting the Sun thanks to friends’ recommendations; these remain two of my favorite books of all time.

Reading Swan Song with the new (at the time) Britney Spears CD as my soundtrack. The fact that it was a pretty odd combination did not occur to me; they were simply two things I really loved.

The smell of The Amber Spyglass, which my mom gave me as an early gift after a particularly bad day at school (freshman year was tough). This is still one of my favorite physical books.

Listening to countless audiobooks during our annual summer vacation road trips: scary stories, mysteries, historical fiction, stuff my siblings and I chose ourselves from the shelves of the library and stuff my parents were into as well. I read widely now thanks in large part to this practice.

The sound of the cassette player overheating on these road trips and the narrator speaking in a chipmunk voice for a few seconds as a result.

Re-reading The Giver in my high school library during lunch, sneaking bites of a cookie I bought from the vending machine.

Discovering that The Giver had two sequels. This is something that is easy to learn now thanks to the internet, but finding them just sitting on the shelf at the library with no prior knowledge felt magical to me.

Buying a whole bag of books at the end of the public library’s book sale, when they offered a special deal to clear out as many books as possible. This is how I accumulated Jean Auel on my dad’s recommendation and almost all of Anne Perry’s works on my mom’s.

Checking out dozens of romance novels from the library just to read the dirty parts, and being disappointed when I read an author who did fade to black instead.

Buying whole trilogies of adult fantasy from Half Price Books at once, based solely on how promising the covers were. This is how I discovered Elizabeth Haydon, James Clemens, Jennifer Fallon, and many others.

Visiting the Barnes and Noble near the University of Texas campus on a high school trip and realizing that when I went away to college, I’d be able to do this whenever I wanted. I bought my first Juliet Marillier book and my first Sharon Shinn book from that store.

Staying up until 2 am reading the last Harry Potter book, trying to slow myself down so it could last forever.

Listening to audiobooks my dad sent me while I was in college at the University of North Carolina. Giving books “just because” is one of my favorite expressions of love.

Reading Jane Eyre for the third time as an undergrad English major and finally getting it; this is my favorite classic, and “Reader, I married him” will always be my favorite line.

Finishing up The Book Thief on a sunny day on the Texas Capitol grounds during grad school, before it was tainted by my knowledge of exactly what goes on there. It’s still one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I’ll never again be able to feel the same way I felt during that day. The memory will have to be enough.

Listening to the Amelia Peabody books on the bus to grad school and falling in love with them all over again.

The smell of the exhibit hall during the Texas Library Association annual conference and how it just felt like possibility.

Listening to Jim Dale read Harry Potter in the mornings while I got ready for work during my first year as a professional librarian.

What are some of your strongest reading memories?

3 Books I’d Take to Prison

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In The Walls Around Us, the story in a book is sometimes all a girl may have to herself in the world, now that her freedom has been taken away. I understood this deeply when I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. I would have been the girl in Aurora Hills who gravitated toward that book cart, who read every single title in that library at least once and probably more, who found an escape route in those pages… and stayed as long as she could.

Nova Ren Suma wrote a lovely piece on her blog about the use of books in her most recent novel, The Walls Around Us. Her words here resonated with me for a number of reasons. I relate to that, of course, as a girl who lost and found herself in books over and over, especially as a teenager. Her words also resonated because they reflected what she wrote about in her essay for Feminism for the Real World. But you’ll be treated to that in the future.

She rounds her piece about the importance of books in our lives with a question: what three books would you take to prison with you? Or, perhaps, this is a question that could be posed as what books you’d take with you on a deserted island for the rest of your life?

I’ve chewed this question over many times in my life. I’ve certainly got a stack of books I consider influential, the kinds of stories I’ll read and reread. But what books would make that final, all-important cut? Which ones would I choose to keep with me?

The first book I’d take with me is my all-time, absolute favorite book: Ann Patchett’s The Magician’s Assistant. 

the magician's assistant

 

I first read this book early in my college career. I reread it time and time again thereafter, completing yet another reread early last year. This book has changed with me; in the last reread, I picked up on things I’d never seen before — namely, how young, how inexperienced, how grappling-with-becoming-adults the characters in the book are. Through college, the cast had been older than me, but reading it at age 30, suddenly, they were mostly my age or younger. Yet, it still struck me with beauty and starkness, with the challenges of relationships. The settings of this book are always what sparkle for me, between the glitz and glamor of Los Angeles and the bleak, cold, snow-covered plains of Alliance, Nebraska.

In college, my husband and I did a lot of traveling by car, and on one summer, we drove from Iowa to Montana to see my roommate get married. From Montana, we drove down to Austin, Texas, so I could see the University. On the way, we did an overnight in Alliance — the sky threatening tornadoes, the wind and rain battering our car and the windows of the somewhat shady hotel we’d selected. We drove around and it was incredible to see what did and didn’t match up with the novel. Both of us had read and loved the story, and being in that place, just a few months after we’d both been to Los Angeles for the first time, impressed something into me about this book, about the power of stories, and about how moving setting and place can be.

the ghost with trembling wings

 

I’m a huge non-fiction fan, and I attribute a lot of that to falling madly in love with Scott Weidensaul’s The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking, and the Search for Lost Species. I’ve only read this once, but I think about it regularly. I know it’s the kind of book I’d want with me in prison/on an island because this is a book about people who believe and the lengths they’ll go to in order to follow a hunch.

Weidensaul follows scientists who are convinced about the existence of extinct or lost species. It’s fascinating to see what drives these people to seek out things that no longer exist. If you’re familiar with John Corey Whaley’s Where Things Come Back, there is an element of the book about the search for the Lazarus Woodpecker; this piece of Whaley’s story is also a precisely what Weidensaul’s book is about. Where are those long-lost woodpeckers? Who seeks them out? What happens and who believes the story if one of these so-called lost species are found?

Being in isolation in any capacity requires some kind of hope that there is more than the present moment. Falling into a book — non-fiction — about human’s search through wishful thinking and discovery could only bring comfort and connection.

So what would book #3 be?

The truth is, I can only pick two. That third spot I leave empty because it is downright impossible for me to select a title I’d need to have with me. Not that there aren’t books that would fill that hole; instead, there are too many, and I want that space saved for all of those books I simply can’t take.

Perhaps I’d use that third space to bring along a notebook, where I could capture my own stories, as well as the stories of those who might, however impossibly, stumble upon me in a prison cell or a deserted island.

Tell me: what would YOUR three books be?

This Week on Book Riot & The Book Smugglers

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This week, Kimberly and I were part of The Book Smuggler’s annual Smugglivus celebration. We took the prompt a little differently this year, talking about 3 of our favorite books from this year, 3 books we’re eager to read next year, and then we picked 3 books we read this year that we think each other should read. Here’s what our picks are!

Over at Book Riot this week…

  • After writing a little bit about the cover redesign for Anne of Green Gables over here as part of my Toronto International Book Fest post, I had to look at other designs of the classic. Here are 6 different takes on the book’s cover — each unique and reaching a different audience. 
  • I put together a “starting/ending” post for YA in 2014. These are the books that people who want to catch up on their 2014 YA reading should check out, the books I think would be solid gifts for a YA reader, and what I think sort of depicted what YA looked like in 2014. This is a different take on the “best of,” so there’s some popular titles and some that were a little more under-the-radar.