The Library

On The Nightstand (Adult):

Seriously, the stack is this high. Maybe yours is higher.

Sea Wife, Amity Gaige (just finished reading and highly recommend)
Surfacing, Kathleen Jamie (can already highly recommend)
The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel
Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades, Daniel G. Amen (I have a kid)
The Library Book, Susan Orlean
Untamed, Glennon Doyle
The Wonder of Boys, Michael Gurion (I have a boy)
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett
The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson (any nightstand’s ultimate staple)
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (will never leave the nightstand)
Building Your Child’s Self-Esteem, Dorothy Corkille Briggs (stays on nightstand!)
The Ocean World, Jacques Cousteau (will be reading in perpetuity)

On The Nightstand (Children’s/YA–see also “…filed children’s/YA” below)

The Pendragon series (we are embarking on this series for Family Book Club)
The Mermaid and the Bear, Ailish Sinclair
Forever, Rick Riordan
The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
The Hazel Wood, Melissa Albert
The Jamie Drake Equation, Christopher Edge
The Language Of Spells, Garret Weyr
The Midnight War Of Mateo Martinez, Robin Yardi
A Diamond in the Desert, Kathryn Fitzmaurice (MUST-READ–will stay on nightstand for inspiration)
Destiny, Rewritten, Kathryn Fitzmaurice (exquisite–will also keep on nightstand for inspiration)

Read And Filed To The Livingroom Bookshelves–Or Not… (Adult):

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (you can’t not read this)
All the Single Ladies, Rebecca Traister (you can’t not read this)
The Snow Child and To The Bright Edge Of The World, Eowyn Ivey
How To Party With An Infant, and The Descendants and House Of Thieves, Kaui Hart Hemmings
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (I’ve been keeping up with his work since The Shell Collector)
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple (instant favorite)
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton (genius)
All of Louise Penny’s Gamache/3 Pines novels
The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson (I survived)
The Goldfinch, Donna Tart (gah! but will keep)
The Signature Of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert (gah! but will keep)
The Descendants, Kaui Hart Hemmings (so much more rewarding than the film–and I loved the film)
The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obrecht
Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows (will always be a re-read and a favorite–movie was charming, but nothing beats the book)
A God in Ruins, Kate Atkinson (bildungsroman on speeeeeeed!)
Alice I Have Been, Melanie Benjamin (lived in Oxford when I was a child—perception of Lewis Carroll now changed forever…gah!)
All Ngaio Marsh

Read/Filed/Already On Living Room Bookshelves (Children’s/YA):

Every Rebecca Stead book
The Secret Commonwealth (see below)
Dust, by He Who Should Always Be Named
The Girl Who Drank The Moon, Kelly Barnhill
Inkheart, and everything else by Cornelia Funke
The Wild Robot and The Wild Robot Escapes, Peter Brown
The One And Only Ivan, K.A. Applegate (I wish K.A. was my friend)
All of Jeanne Birdsall’s books
Doll Bones, Holly Black (those crazy boat-stealing kids!)
Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech (QUEEN Sharon)
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Jacqueline Kelly
The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart
All Ransom Riggs
Goblin Secrets, William Alexander
The Year the Swallows Came Early, Kathryn Fitzmaurice (5 gold stars)
Veronica Rossi’s trilogy
The Fires Beneath the Sea, Lydia Millet (another YA author writing middle grade–or is it the other way around?)
All Zilpha Keatley Snyder, ALL
The City Of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a character passing out so many times in one novel)
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary E. Pearson
The Giver, Lois Lowry
The Cuckoo Tree, Joan Aiken
The Tail Of Emily Windsnap, Liz Kessler
A Wind In The Door, Madeleine L’Engle (have you read it again, too?)

Poetry:

RIP Mary Oliver. You helped.
Life on Mars, Tracy K. Smith
Blud, Rachel McKibbens
The Traps, Louise Mathias
The Glimmering Room, Cynthia Cruz
Stag’s Leap, Sharon Olds
Randall Jarrell, The Woman At The Washington Zoo
Above All Else, The Trembling Resembles A Forest, Louise Mathias (look–if you love poetry, you must read Louise’s chapbook and all her books–case closed)
Black Hope, Marsha de la O
Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, Dianne Seuss (title poem a mindblower)
The Sleep Hotel, Amy Newlove Schroeder (a luminous debut)
Dearest Creature, Amy Gerstler (I hope I meet her some day)
Glass Town, Lisa Russ Spaar (I always return to it)
Always returning to Sarah Hannah’s books. They haunt me.

Music