For tonight’s means of procrastinating while I should be grading, I am going to type a list of books and/or short stories with a brief explanation of why I love them. I am permitting myself exactly 15 minutes to complete this exercise, and the list will be biased toward things I’ve read recently, I’m sure - I’m just typing what pops in my head for 15 minutes. K. Here goes.

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf - my fav. There’s sentimental value because going to see The Hours was my first date with my wife, and a copy of this novel her first gift to me, but it’s also amazing. No one narrates the small moments like Woolf.

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy - This was my gateway to Hardy, whose sense of scale and capturing a bygone world enthralled me. Thus, it was a comfort book for me at the start of the pandemic, despite the fact that it ends sadly. You know, like every other Hardy novel.

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare - If I need to pick one book for a desert island, is it cheating to say The Complete Works of Shakespeare? This one’s my fav. Dark, brutal, and gorgeous, and somehow the same dude who wrote the world’s most favorite lovestruck teens also wrote the “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech.

“Old Man at the Bridge” and “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway - I know: “white dude recommends Hemingway” is a punchline. But seriously... these are great, less tainted by Hemingway’s chauvinism than other works (and I do think the chauvinism is a problem that often hinders his work), and I do think anyone with aspirations of writing prose owes it to themselves to spend some time contemplating Hemingway’s style. It’s not the alpha and omega some make it out to be - I like Woolf more, and she’s his antithesis! - but Hemingway’s minimalism is instructive.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen - Hilarious. Hilarious. Hilarious. If you’re new to Austen, try using the BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth as a companion, and pick up What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew as a reference tool (for this and any other 19th century British text).

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro - because not all unreliable narrators are in batshit crazy Poe stories. Just reread this. A restrained butler reckons with his life. Heartbreaking.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates - “white liberal recommends BtWaM” is also a punchline, but there’s a reason he won a MacArthur grant after this one. Really, I’d read anything by Coates - brilliant stylist. The Beautiful Struggle, about his Baltimore childhood, is also great, and while you might disagree with his conclusions, everyone should read his modern classic of longform journalism from The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” which sure as heck helped me to better grasp A Raisin in the Sun.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - so, so good. ’Nuff said.

Wolf Hall, by Hillary Mantel - and the whole trilogy, but especially this and Bringing Up the Bodies. Stunning historical fiction of Thomas Cromwell, who rose to be Henry VIII’s key advisor. Ack, I’m running out of time...

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald - my pick for “The Great American Novel.” Lyrical and gorgeous. (For the curious, Huckleberry Finn doesn’t stick the landing, and Moby Dick sucks.)

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad - Chinua Achebe is right about it, and you need to read his famous critical essay, too. But still an incredible, complex text.

and now, with time elapsed, I glance at my bookshelves and select with a glance -

The Oresteia, by Aeschylus - Greek tragedy is fascinating, and this trilogy is as early as we still have. Aeschylus, in particular, reads as much as ritual as theatre; you can hear it in the chorus so clearly you’d be forgiven for turning around to see if there was a nearby goat sacrifice.

crap! I forgot things!

“The Dead,” by James Joyce - requires some notes on Irish history, but my God... the last paragraph...

The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene - As a (mostly) recovered Catholic, I had to include either this or Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited to deal with the religion that shaped and scarred me, and I’m choosing Greene on a whim.

Alright, bolding the titles and authors for readability, then posting sans edits. Send complaints to the comment section :)

If you do plan on reading the (now-lengthy) comment section, can I suggest doing so on the beta site? Having some of the comments nested makes it MUCH easier to read: https://beta.theprose.com/post/429324

Each list is ordered from most to least kid-friendly, since a lot of these books are from when I was younger but still enjoyed. Some of them are more tween books (9-12) ish, even though I read a lot of them a little bit younger than that, that’s the target age, and some of them are a lot darker and cover much heavier themes. A couple are just placed more towards the bottom of the list because the older you are when you read them, the more you will get out of the book and pick up on the symbolism and underlying themes.

Historical Fiction

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

Dear America Series by many authors

Jimmy’s Stars by Mary Rodman

Rodzina by Karen Kushman

Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Refugee by Alan Gratz

The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis

Auma’s Long Run by Eucabeth Odhiombo

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

My Mother the Cheerleader by Robert Sharenow

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

Holocaust/World War Two (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata

The War Outside by Monica Hesse

The Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse

A Chance to Live by Pieter Kohnstam

The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke

Mapping the Bones by Jane Yolen

Realistic Fiction

Wonder and Auggie and Me by R. J. Palacio

Drumroll Please by Lisa Jen Bigelow

Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Drive Me Crazy by Terra Elan McVoy

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

Counting by Sevens by Holly Goldberg Sloan

One For The Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott, Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis

Forget Me Not by Ellie Terry

Don’t Even Think About It by Sarah Mylknowski

Everything I Know About You by Barbara Dee

The Running Dream by Wendelin van Draanen

Runaway by Wendelin van Draanen

Run by Kody Keplinger

Now is Everything by Amy Giles

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

Wild Bird by Wendelin van Draanen

3 Little Words by Ashley Rhodes Courter

Good Enough by Jen Petro-Roy

Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

People Like Us by Dana Mele

These last few I would put in the 12 or 13+ category without a doubt, especially the last three.

13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Heroine by Mindy McGinnis

Paperweight by Meg Haston

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Impulse and Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Realistic Fiction With Magical/Fictitious Elements

(yes, that is a genre now)

The Swap by Megan Shull

Bounce by Megan Shull

Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer

Horror/Dystopian

One for Sorrow by Mary Downing Hahn

Before She Was Found by Heather Gudenkauf

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Divergent by Veronica Roth

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Dry by Neal Shusterman

Fantasy

These are technically all children’s books or written for younger audiences but I still would enjoy all of them now...especially Harry Potter and Land of Stories, two all-time favorites.

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

Candy Shop Wars by Brandon Mull

Percy Jackson by Rick Riordian

Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan

The Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

Land of Stories by Chris Colfer

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Classical Literature

A pretty small category, but I don’t read very many classics (though I hope to change that.) These are my absolute favorites of what I have read!

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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And just for fun: Books that a lot of people like (and also some sort of obscure or not that popular books that I’ve read) that I personally think aren’t worth reading, but you are entitled to your own opinion, no judgement!

1. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

I really tried with this one. I swear, I tried.

2. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Wood

Winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, Newberry Medal, and NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Youth / Teens, but I just couldn’t get into it. I finished it, but didn’t find it particularly interesting.

3. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

I was told it was an extremely scary book and thus rated 18+ on some websites. I didn’t think it was scary at all, I guess I can see that it’s scary because it is true (supposedly?), but I wasn’t a huge fan.

4. Dragonwatch by Brandon Mull

I have read his other series, Fablehaven, but Dragonwatch was very difficult to even start, so I gave up eventually.

1. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

2. Penguin Highway by Tomihiko Morimi

3. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

4. The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

6. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

7. Emma by Jane Austen

8. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

9. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

10. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

11. The October Country by Ray Bradbury

12. Coraline by Neil Gaiman

13. East of Eden by John Steinbeck

14. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

15. The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer

16. Poetics of Music by Igor Stravinsky

17. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

18. The Night is Short, Walk on Girl by Tomihiko Morimi

19. The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa

20. If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

Okay, so I am twenty-one (I think?) but I LOVE middle-grade books, so here's a list of books that I loved enough to remember nearly a decade later. Most of them are mysteries or deal with puzzles and logic, but there are a few that deviate from that. I hope you check some of them out and if so, tell me if you liked them!

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin - Read this one for school. Very good mystery from what I remember

The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg - Think this one was also for school. First-ever book I read that had an omniscient narrator

Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett - This book was my introduction to Jacques Vermeer, who is an awesome Dutch artist of the 1600s. It's a really good mystery

The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart - I distinctly remember these books being a minimum of 400 pages long and I LOVED every second. I guess I should've made an explanation for all of these books, huh? Fuck. I'll fix it at some point. Anyway, if you choose this book, do it soon because a movie is being made about it.

The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch - I love this book series so much! I started reading the series when I was nine I think and I loved it. My favourite part is the fucking footnotes (very funny). He's like if Lemony Snicket and one of those snarky YouTubers like SixteenLeo (Who I'm listening to currently) or Nick Diramio had a child that wrote books for kids. I would ESPECIALLY recommend his book, Write this Book, especially if you're writing for kids. It's really funny.

Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey - Okay, this is probably the least sophisticated book on this list but I literally love this book series. It's so funny and childish and I'm in love with it. Every page is a visual gag or something silly, which I think you can enjoy if you're young or old, but if you have a small human in your life that hates books, maybe slide this their way.

Hide and Seek by Ida Vos - So, while the ones above are fun and silly for the most part, this one is a departure from that. I was ten-ish when I first read this book, which is about a little girl who lives through the Holocaust. This one stands out from the other Holocaust books I read as a kid because it follows the trauma and strife after the war ends when the main character and her family are able to go back to living. The book is autobiographically based on the life of the author, which makes it even more hard-hitting.

Wings by Aprilynne Pike - I remember getting this one when I was in my first week in ninth grade. I loved it (until the end but that's just because I was very anti-romance) so much because I love faeries, and this book was the only book I've ever seen include faeries. It's the only young adult novel on here, and while I have qualms with it, it was still noteworthy enough to remember.

As a Pre-K teacher, I read more books for kids than books designed for people my age. Here are some of my favorites to read to my class.

1. Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus by Mo Willems

The Pigeon has become one of my favorite characters since reading his books for the first time at work. I read these with a Iago inspired voice that has become one of my staple voices, and many past students still ask me to "do the Pigeon voice" when I see them in the hallway.

2. The Piggie & Elephant series by Mo Willems

Another excellent series from the same author. These books always generate lots of young laughs.

3. Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka

A simple, yet effective tale of two boys who meet and become friends. This is a great one to recite with kids.

4. Where Is My Balloon? by Ariel Bernstein

A fun story about a monkey who accidentally breaks his owl friend's balloon, and struggles to cover up his mistake.

5. Are You Scared, Darth Vader? by Adam Rex

I found this one and read it to my class on Star Wars day. It was an instant classic.

6. The Monster At The End of This Book by Jon Stone

This book stars Grover. Grover's voice is incredibly fun to imitate. So this definitely makes the list.

7. Misunderstood Shark by Ame Dyckman

This book has a hilarious story, complete with fun shark facts. There is a sequel that resolves the dark ending as well.

8. First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg

A great story about Sarah not wanting to go to a new school on her first day, with a great twist ending. This is a book I read every year on the first day of school. Last Day Blues by the same author is also a great one to read on the last day of school.

9. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Well, I have to include a Dr. Seuss book for sure! This one is a lot of fun to read out loud, especially with voices.

10. Who Said Boo? by Phyllis Root

A Halloween staple in my classroom. Short but sweet.

11. We're Going On A Ghost Hunt by Susan Pearson

Another great Halloween read. It is similar to "We're Going On A Bear Hunt," but cooler.

Thanks for reading my list! Now it's time to find some books for my own age group....

A sample of my Pigeon and Grover reading voices: https://voicespice.com/Player.aspx?c=p&h=B299A6FC&j=2824A6

1.Percy jackson

2.Trials of Apollo

3.Magnus chase

4.Maximum Ride

5.Dragon slippers

6.Daniel X

7.Little women

8.Candy makers

9.Menagerie

10.Wrinkle in time

Anything by Stephen King, I'm an avid King reader

The Tiger's Heart by Lewis Orde This book has everything! It's my favorite

The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare The television series they attempted to make did not do the series justice. Tv never does.

A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer A non-fiction book about a boy who was labeled the most abused child in the U.S. A heart breaking story, be prepared for tears.

Just a few suggestions to get you started!

Wool (trilogy) - Hugh Howey (disturbingly prescient)

Ishmael - Daniel Quinn - (truth bombs galore)

virtually anything by Chuck Palahniuk (Choke and Rant being high on the list)

same for Derrick Jensen (Endgame, A Language Older than Words, etc)

At The Gas Station, by Phil Dupp.

Classical Composers, by Ann Dell.

The King's Fool, by Jess Turr.

The Defeatist, by Y. Bother.

Self-Cleansing, by Ike Lean.

Broken Cranium, by Ed Hertz.

Where To Wait, by Stan Dare.

Hurricane, by Gail Force.

Cool Down, by I. C. Bath.

The Coast, by C. Shaw.

Good books aren't always easy to find, here are some that I have enjoyed.

The Rangers Apprentice series. It's about an intelligence force in medieval times.

The Maze Runner This is a series that I just finished. It's about a boy named Thomas who wakes up in a Maze, with no memories, and a bunch of other teenaged boys with him.

Sacagawea A book told from the perspective of Sacagawea's son as he finds out the story of Lewis and Clark's adventure. Sacagawea had accompanied them as a translator. It's a good book, although sometimes a little difficult to follow.

Ahsoka This is a Star Wars Fanfiction off of the character Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalkers Apprentice in the Clone Wars series. She survived Order 66, and this is her story a year after the Republic fell.