Book Love

Even if you’re from a small, remote town in Alaska, you can get outside that place by getting inside a book. I love the experience of reading, especially when a story transports me somewhere, fully and completely. Here are various books that grabbed me and took me to a new place.

Graphic Novels

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Tina’s Mouth by Keshni Kashyap
Fun Home by Alyson Bechdel
Blankets by Craig Thompson
Stitches by David Small
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes

Young Adult – realistic fiction

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Sex and Violence by Carrie Mesrobian
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Before I Die by Jenny Downham
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Fault Line by Christa Desir
Melt by Selene Castrovilla

Contemporary Literary Fiction that reads like Young Adult

Vera Violet by Melissa Anne Peterson
Dryland by Sara Jaffe
Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
My Abandonment by Peter Rock

Young Adult – realistic fiction with a twist

Every Day and Another Day by David Levithan
Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff
This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers
Dreamology by Lucy Keating

Young Adult – sci-fi + fantasy

His Fair Assasin Series by Robin LaFevers
The Dust Lands trilogy by Moira Young
Under the Never Sky trilogy by Veronica Rossi
Mara Dyer trilogy by Michelle Hodkin
Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas
Delirium series by Lauren Oliver
Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones
The Snow Globe by Jenna Nelson
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
The Mermaid’s Sister by Carrie Ann Noble
Feed by M.T. Anderson

Short Story Collections

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
Tenth of December by George Saunders
Get in Trouble by Kelly Link

Poetry

Satan Says by Sharon Olds
What the Living Do by Marie Howe
You are Happy by Margaret Atwood
Nothing Between Us by Wendy Barker
Deepstep Come Shining by C.D. Wright

More Random Excellent Books

Educated by Tara Westover
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
Ghostbread by Sonja Livingston
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Beloved by Toni Morrison

About books I love: A strong voice is critical for me. And musicality. And stuff happening. Because what’s a story without, you know, a story? Also magic. Sometimes actual magic, but not always. Magical language or big magic moments work, too. Graphic novels are magical because visual artists ARE GODS.