Last year my goal was 40 books and I read exactly 40 books. This year, I pushed the goal to 50, was on a pretty good roll, and then got cancer which in and of itself didn’t slow down my reading, but chemotherapy made my brain mush.
I still read 35 books though, so I made my annual list for you.
The ones in BOLD are the ones I recommend the most. The ones wit (YA) are young adult lit, (MG) are middle grade books, (P) are novels that are written in verse/poetry, (N) are nonfiction, and (C) are children’s books (aimed at an audience younger than middle school).
- To Be Where You Are by Jan Karon
- Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties by Dav Pilkey (C)
- The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi (C)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (YA)
- Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word by Linda Christensen (N)
- Six Degree: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas (N)
- The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
- Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing and Making a Difference by Richard Beach and Alan Webb
- I’m With the Bears: Short Stories From a Damaged Planet by Mark Martin
- Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction by Manjana Milkoreit
- The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Gosh (N)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (YA)
- Flush by Carl Hiassen (MG)
- Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (YA)
- I’m Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering by Janelle Hanchett (N)
- My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
- 100 Days to Brave: Devotions for Unlocking Your Most Courageous Self by Annie F Downs (N)
- Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (YA)
- Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart (YA)
- Fat Angie by e.e. Charlton-Trujillo (YA)
- 180 Days: Two Teachers and The Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle (N)
- The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
- Still Life with Tornado by A.S. King (YA)
- The Path to Serendipity: Discover the Gifts Along Life’s Journey by Allyson Apsey (N)
- Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (N)
- Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy by James Williams (N)
- Mockingbird by Kathryn Erksine (MG)
- I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez (YA)
- Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology by Kentaro Toyama (N)
- Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other by Sherry Turkle (N)
- Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in the Digital World by Maryanne Wolf (N)
- Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson (N) (P)
- Dog Man: Lord of the Flies by Dav Pilkey (C)
- Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild by Dav Pilkey (C)
- The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed (YA) (currently reading, but will finish before the New Year)

I’m not really sure what to make my reading goal this year. I know I will read a lot for my PhD classes, but that may not be actual books. It’s hard to know. I think I will split the difference between the past two years’ goals and go with 45.
I have quite a pile over here To Be Read. See?

Follow me over at GoodReads to see what I actually read in 2019!
And tell me…what should I add to my To Read pile? What did you read in 2018 that you loved?
The one I recommend the most is “We’re going to Need More WIne for this,” by Gabrielle Union! Such a good book. I read 80 books, my goal was 52. I ended up reading a lot of middle grade books and I think that helped my number count this year. That and the many read alouds I did with my fam/kiddo.