What better way to remember a year than to revisit the stories it contained? Here’s a (spottily) annotated list of what I read this year, with a few titles left out because they’re no one’s business, and a lot of others left out because I didn’t keep track of picture books.
You will see a LOT of middle grade titles. That’s where my current work-in-progress fits, and it’s always good for a writer to read widely in their intended genre and age range. (Plus, I like them.) It was also important to me to choose books that were published recently as well as books from decades ago. It’s interesting to see what has and hasn’t changed.
Are any of your favorites here? What did you read in 2023? What should be on the list in 2024?
| Title | Author | Age Range and Genre | Notes |
| The Spiritual Life | Evelyn Underhill | Adult Nonfiction/Spiritual | A brief and beautiful way to start the year. |
| Letters to Malcolm | CS Lewis | Adult Fiction/Spiritual | Lewis’s last work, and I learned that Malcolm is actually fictional. I found him all the more charming a correspondent for it. |
| The Westing Game | Ellen Raskin | MG/YA Fiction | Newbery Medal Good, old-fashioned mystery! |
| Esperanza Rising | Pam Munos | MG Fiction | Pura Belpré Award Jane Addams Children’s book Award |
| The Magic Words | Cheryl B. Klein | Craft | |
| Into the Land of the Unicorns | Bruce Coville | MG Fantasy | This was my absolute favorite book as an eight-year-old! |
| The Book of Stolen Dreams | David Farr | MG Fantasy | |
| Remarkably Bright Creatures | Shelby Van Pelt | Adult Fiction | Book Club pick. A widow befriends an octopus and finds peace with her broken past. |
| On Writing | Stephen King | Craft | Classic for writers. Also, the only Stephen King book I’ve read because I’m a wimp. |
| Howl’s Moving Castle | Diana Wynne Jones | MG Fantasy | This one threw me for a loop. Should I see the movie? |
| Life After Life | Kate Atkinson | Adult Historical Fiction | Another Book Club. Thought-provoking! |
| First Light | Rebecca Stead | MG Speculative | |
| The Messy Lives of Book People | Phaedra Patrick | Adult Fiction | Book Club. Fluffy but fun. |
| The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina | Zoraida Cordova | Adult Magical Realism | |
| The Lost Symbol | Dan Brown | Adult Fiction | Yeah, yeah….I know… |
| Peer Gynt | Henrik Ibsen | Play | I had the suite by Edvard Grieg playing in my head the whole time. What a wild ride that Peer Gynt goes on. |
| A Man Called Ove | Fredrik Backman | Adult Fiction | Ove: how you say “loveable curmudgeon” in Swedish. |
| 83 Days in Mariupol | Don Brown | YA Graphic Novel Nonfiction | Graphic Novels have incredible storytelling power. This was a hard book to get through, but I’m grateful it was made. |
| The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor | Theodore Taylor | MG Fiction | Want to fly? Be careful what you wish for. |
| Red, White, & Whole | Rajani La Rocca | MG Novel in Verse | Newbery Honor |
| A Spoonful of Time | Flora Ann | MG Fiction | |
| Oliver Twist (Classics Illustrated Deluxe Graphic Novels) | Loic Dauvillier | MG Graphic Novel | I read this after my son brought it home from the library. I was amazed at how vividly the story was conveyed through the illustrations. |
| The Charlatan’s Boy | Jonathon Rogers | MG Fiction | |
| Something Close to Magic | Emma Mills | YA Fiction | Fun fairytale adventure with a dose of puppy love romance. |
| The Green Ember | SD Smith | MG Fiction | Epic rabbit-based adventure trilogy. Who could ask for more? |
| Ember Falls | SD Smith | MG Fiction | |
| Ember Rising | SD Smith | MG Fiction | |
| Outwitting Ticks | Susan Carol Hauser | Nonfiction | Because I moved to Missouri |
| Does Everyone Have ADHD? | Christine Peterson | YA Nonfiction | In answer, no. |
| The Year of Billy Miller | Kevin Henkes | Young MG Fiction | Newbery Medal Captures the voice and experience of being seven in this quiet but triumphant story. |
| Henry and the Chalk Dragon | Jennifer Trafton | Young MG Fiction | |
| Beneath the Swirling Sky | Carolyn Leiloglou | MG Fiction | |
| Why We Create | Brown/Scharl | Nonfiction Essays | A provocative and lovely exploration of the creative life in collected essays. |
| Across the Universe | Beth Revis | YA Science Fiction | Little Free Library Find! |
| A Million Suns | Beth Revis | YA Science Fiction | |
| Shades of Earth | Beth Revis | YA Science Fiction | |
| Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | JK Rowling | MG Fiction | |
| Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | JK Rowling | MG Fiction | I think this is my favorite of the whole series. I love how so many different threads tie together in the end. I love it when a character isn’t who they seem to be. |
| Alone | Megan E Freeman | MG Novel in Verse | Colorado Book Award Loved that this took place in Colorado! |
| Walk Two Moons | Sharon Creech | MG Fiction | Newbery Medal Easy to see why it was an award winner. Such an honest and well-crafted look into family, grief, and compassion. |
| The Art of Slow Writing | Louise DeSalvo | NF Craft | This book was so encouraging to me! I recommend it for writers who worry their projects are taking too long. |
| Writing with Pictures | Uri Shulevitz | NF Craft | I have so much respect for the talent and skill it takes to be an illustrator. This classic opened my eyes to the craft of illustrating children’s books. |
| How to Tell a Story | Aristotle | NF Craft | A new translation of Poetics side by side with the Greek. |
| From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler | EL Konigsburg | MG Fiction | Newbery Medal Who wouldn’t want to run away to the MET? |
| Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats | Kristen Iverson | Memoir | The story of a woman who grew up in Arvada, Colorado, downwind of the nuclear weapons facility at Rocky Flats, and how she learned the truth about its far-reaching influence. |
Happy reading in 2024!
Oh my gosh I remember loving into the land of the unicorns though I honestly can’t remember it and would need to reread! I just started remarkably bright creatures!