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?
I love to read books that are super good, but are not the ones that are being talked about all over Facebook and the Today show. The ones that someone recommends to you because they loved it, but whenever you ask anyone else if they’ve read it, they say no.