Sure, I’m a little late to welcome the new year with my second-annual reading list run down, but I promise I have a good excuse! With the help of gravity and my beloved mountain bike, I ended the year with a bang…to the head. My son and I were shredding some sick singletrack when I wiped out. I’m glad I was wearing a helmet. Take good care of your brains, people! It’s hard to read with a concussion!
Speaking of reading (see what I did?) and without further head-injury-related ado, here is my 2024 reading list. Almost a third are titles I’ve read in the past and returned to last year. Second, third, eleventh readings, they all lend new insights, especially if you read intentionally with a different lens or viewpoint.
| Title | Author | Age Range and Genre | Notes |
| The Knife of Never Letting Go | Patrick Ness | YA Science Fiction | I have to be honest, I watched the Tom Holland movie with my daughter first, before I knew about this series. This and the next two titles complete the trilogy. Set in a futuristic sci-fi/wild west mashup, this story was very original and thought-provoking. A tale of love and war (and aliens), at times the violence was too graphic for my taste, but otherwise compelling. |
| The Ask and the Answer | Patrick Ness | YA Science Fiction | |
| Monsters of Men | Patrick Ness | YA Science Fiction | |
| The Miracle of Trees | Olavi Huikari | Adult Nonfiction | |
| The Pig Did It | Joseph Caldwell | Adult Fiction | |
| Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | JK Rowling | YA Fantasy | Can’t resist returning to Hogwarts every so often. |
| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | JK Rowling | YA Fantasy | |
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | JK Rowling | YA Fantasy | |
| Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | JK Rowling | YA Fantasy | |
| The BFG | Roald Dahl | MG Fantasy | This as a read-aloud is sure to bring on the giggles. |
| Unless It Moves the Human Heart | Roger Rosenblatt | Craft/Writing Life | |
| The God of Hope and the End of the World | John Polkinghorne | Where science and eschatology meet. Very interesting read. | |
| The Alchemist | Paulo Coehlo | Adult Fiction | |
| Where the Red Fern Grows | Wilson Rawls | MG Fiction | This was the first book to ever make me cry. I haven’t read it since that time I sobbed my eyes out as a kid, so it was quite the experience to go back to the same pages as an adult and examine how it pulled my young heartstrings. |
| A Nearer Moon | Melanie Crowder | MG Fantasy | I love Melanie Crowder’s writing. Her characters always seem to carry the weight of both deep love and grief. This one’s a magical tale of a girl who will do absolutely anything to reverse a deadly curse on her sister, risking her whole village in the process. |
| The Spiritual Life | Evelyn Underhill | Adult Nonfiction | |
| Something Like Waking | Adam Rex | YA Fantasy | The moment I realized Adam Rex wrote a YA novel I ordered it. He possesses such a distinct creative voice, both visually and authorially, in his books for younger readers. This sweet and mind-bending adventure delivered. |
| The Plot Whisperer | Martha Alderson | Craft | |
| Dreamlander | KM Weiland | Adult Fantasy | I have learned a lot from KM Weiland’s writing podcast and resources, so I loved jumping into her own fiction. |
| The Seer and the Sword | Victoria Hanley | YA Fantasy | Same as above, I was reading Victoria Hanley’s craft book and wanted to see her work in action. |
| Once a Queen | Sarah Arthur | MG Fantasy | |
| Windswept | Margi Preus | MG Fantasy | I discovered Margi Preus this summer! This one was a fun, fairytale adventure. |
| West of the Moon | Margi Preus | MG Historical Fiction | But this one was even better. The story of a girl who rescues herself and her sister from a life of indentured servitude and attempts to sail across the sea from Norway to America, all while working out what she really believes to be true about herself and the world. |
| West of the Moon (again, immediately) | Margi Preus | MG Historical Fiction | I loved so much about Preus’s storytelling that I read the book again right away, this time with the eyes of a writer, to see how she pulled it off. |
| Brown | Hakon Ovreas | MG Fiction | Translated from the original Norwegian |
| ADHD is Awesome | Penn & Kim Holderness | Adult Nonfiction | Collectively, the Holdernesses are my spirit animal. |
| Home Learning Year by Year | Rebecca Rupp | Adult Nonfiction | Guess what new adventure my family started this year? |
| The Homeschooling Option: How to Decide When It’s Right for Your Family | Lisa Rivero | Adult Nonfiction | |
| Homeschooling for Dummies | Jenny Kaufeld | Adult Nonfiction | |
| The Girl who Drank the Moon | MG Fantasy | Rereading as a mentor text for my own project. | |
| The Diary of Elisabeth Koren | Elisabeth Koren | Adult Memoir | |
| Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls | MG Fantasy | Such a fun and fresh setting for a timeless tale of self-discovery and magic! | |
| Between Flowers and Bones | Carolyn Leilaglou | MG Fantasy | Book Two of the Restorationists |
| The Peace of Wild Things | Wendell Berry | Poetry | To shake things up a bit |
| Jenny | Sigrid Undset | Adult Fiction | Translated from the original Norwegian |
| Solomon Snow and the Silver Spoon | Kaye Umansky | MG Fiction | |
| The Heart of a Samurai | Margi Preus | YA/MG Historical Fiction | |
| Wild Ink: How to Write Fiction for Young Adults | Victoria Hanley | Craft | |
| Strange Happenings | Avi | MG Short Stories | |
| Light: A Fairy Tale | Sarah Adams | Fairytale Physics | This was a really interesting concept: telling fairy tales in order to help teach concepts in physics. |
| Newton’s Laws: A Fairy Tale | Sarah Adams | Fairytale Physics | While the providing a helpful extended mnemonic device for Newton’s Laws, the story felt a little forced. |
| Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faerie | Heather Fawcett | Adult Fantasy | |
| A Boy Called Bat | Elana K Arnold | Young MG Fiction | |
| Green Glass House | Katie Milford | MG Mystery | This was such a fun mystery! It was a cozy wintertime read, getting snowed in along with the characters. |
| The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe | CS Lewis | MG Fantasy | How many times have I traveled through the wood into Narnia? I ended up listening to it this time (which was easier on my now-concussed head). |
| A Long Walk to Water | Linda Sue Park | MG Historical Fiction | |
| Time and Despondency | Nicole Roccas | Adult Nonfiction | |
| The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins | YA Dystopia | Another repeat, this time reading as a writer, examining the storytelling mastery of this work. I don’t normally gravitate toward dystopia, but when I first read this trilogy, I was so moved that I stuck post-it notes all over my house resolving to become a better writer. |
Thanks for coming along for the wild ride of my year in books. What did you read in 2024? Did you reread any of your favorites with a new perspective?
Wear your helmet!
