Somebody (I don’t remember who anymore, sorry!) asked me for a post of all the books I read in 2015. Since I’m on Goodreads, I like to do the yearly challenge. Last year I set my goal at 25 books. I figured a couple a month was a fair goal with a new baby and all. As you can see, I surpassed that goal; I read 35 books!
I credit my students and our Reading Workshop. Since I have told my students that reading matters, and that when something matters, you find time to do it, I have made a commitment to reading every day. Usually I do it after the kids are in bed, but sometimes, if I’m not conferencing with my students, I will read my book when they have their reading time. In fact, because of this I am already on my second book of 2016!
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
This is a look back at the books I read in 2015, in order that I read them. I am too lazy to link to all of them, by the way, but I know you all know how to use the search function on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I put the MUST READs in bold if you need some to add to your to read list (although to be fair, there is not a book on here I would say “meh” to. They are all recommendations, really. Just get them all, but read the ones in bold first). The books with a * are Young Adult Lit.
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (nonfiction)
- The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr (nonfiction)
- The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
- Gone Girl by Jillian Flynn
- Apron Strings by Mary Morony
- Open Boxes by Christine Organ (nonfiction)
- Jeneration X by Jen Lancaster (nonfiction)
- The Shakespeare Conspiracy by Jeffery Hunter McQuain
- The Potty Mouth at The Table by Laurie Notaro (nonfiction)
- From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler*
- Butter by Erin Jade Lange*
- All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven*
- Paper Towns by John Green*
- Me, Earl, and The Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews*
- The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller (nonfiction)
- The Chosen by Chiam Potok*
- We Were Liars by E. Lockhart*
- We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen*
- Landline by Rainbow Rowell
- Me Before You by Jo Jo Moyes
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (nonfictionish)
- Write Like This by Kelly Gallagher (nonfiction)
- Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson (nonfiction)
- Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
- Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher*
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio*
- George by Alex Gino*
- Jerk, California by Jonathan Friesen*
- Both of Me by Jonathan Friesen*
- Stand Off by Andrew Smith*
- Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan*
- Fightball: Dying of Suck by Kris Wehrmeister (nonfiction)
This year I set my goal at 40. I think I can do it if I keep up the momentum that I set for myself in 2015.
Another thing I started doing this year is writing in a Reader’s Journal. I want my students to do this, so I model it by doing it myself. I have my notebook available in the classroom for students to flip through to see examples. They also like to flip through it for book recommendations. I admit I love reading their notebooks for this same reason. My To Read List grows as I talk to my students and read their thoughts about their books!
Knowing my students are looking to me as a model reader helps keep me reading. I try to read a mixture of Young Adult Literature and “regular” fiction/literature, just as I try to read a variety of fiction and nonfiction. That is part of my modeling for students too. Sometimes they get stuck on a genre and I want to show them there is awesome stuff across genres.
My other book goal for 2016 is to increase my classroom library by 100 more books. I added just under that (82 books) in 2015, so I think I can hit that goal this year. Right now my records show that I have 928 titles, and if I can surpass 1000 by the end of the year? Well, I will be ecstatic! To think that in the spring of 2014 I only had 104 books is crazy!
If you want to help, I keep a Wish List on Amazon of books that my students request as well as books I read about that I know my students will enjoy (I read a lot of new release and award lists).
Now tell me…what are you reading? What do you want to read? What should I read?