Recommended Reading
I wasn't a fan of reading until my third-grade teacher recommended the Goosebumps series to my parents. After that, I became voracious, and I've been enjoying a delightful lifelong problem ever since. Below, I've put some of the beloved books I grew up with and some current favorites.
Goosebumps
R.L. Stine
My mom likes to tell the story of Mr. Clark, my third-grade teacher, recommending the kids' horror series Goosebumps during a parent-teacher conference. Later that week, I opened one, highly skeptical, and then I blacked out and woke up here. I can't explain the hold these had on me in any way better than to say they were like the feeling of finding your favorite snacks in the cupboard after you got home from school.
The Grand Escape
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Next, I was brought to the bookstore and told that I could buy any three books I wanted. I wandered through the kids' section and picked three books with cats on the covers. (I was a meticulous decision-maker.) This one is the story of two indoor cats who decide to escape their comfortable home. It's always stayed in my heart as the first book that moved me and made me cry.
(In a good way! In a good way! Don't worry, they're fine.)
Their names are Marco and Polo.
Tell me that isn't adorable.
Time Cat
Lloyd Alexander
This was the second of the three cat books I picked. I was in the midst of my Ancient Egypt obsession, and I clearly had an affinity for cats, so I think I might've squeaked when I saw this cover. Because of Gareth, I absolutely tried talking to my cat and was offended when he didn't take me on adventures through history.
Redwall
Brian Jacques
I read this series for years and years, and I grew to love this world of medieval woodland animals. Most books follow a familiar story-beat structure, so they make for a satisfying comfort series. Anyone who reads these books develops an insatiable hunger for cuisine that doesn't exist. Someone please make a Redwall restaurant.
(As someone who loves foxes and wolves, I did feel they were unjustly villainized a lot of the time, but Jacques did sometimes write in some sympathetic examples.)
Animorphs
K.A. Applegate
The third cat book I picked was book three of this series. It had Rachel becoming a cat on the cover.
I got the first two after I read the cat one.
(I said I was meticulous, not smart.)
This series was a game-changer for me. This is the series that really shaped me as a reader and a person. These books consumed my nine-year-old brain, and I'd binge-read them in the backseat during road trips, spending about an hour on each.
On the surface, this is a series about kids fighting an alien invasion, but the authors wisely included the realities of what a war like that would do to children fighting in it. I think those of us who grew up reading Animorphs were less surprised by the world's capacity for cruelty, and I'm still grateful to the authors for that.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith
Humans! As a kid, I read about them, too! (Sometimes!) Of all the books I had to read for school, this is the one I loved most and remember most vividly. I grew up in Vermont with a good amount of privilege. This book gave me kernels of truth to understand worlds outside my own. I didn't know many systemic injustices firsthand, but I'd read a book where an immigrant father wrote down the address of a house in an advantaged area so his daughter could attend a better-funded school. Empathy can grow over time from a variety of sources.
(I also recommend the live-action series, which captured the tone of the book excellently.)
Good Omens
Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
This was the first book that made me laugh out loud in public. I can't even remember what line it was, but I was on the train with my parents and I just let out a fiendish little cackle. I was surprised myself, then delighted. It was probably one of Terry Pratchett's lines; he had such a gift of observational humor that never wavered. I've also yet to find a more succinctly evocative description of a character than of Crowley, the demon who "did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards."
Howl's Moving Castle
Diana Wynne Jones
I remember where I was when I finished this one. I was on a MetroNorth train in New York heading home from visiting relatives, and the setting sun was slanting in through the windows, and I closed this book and felt absolutely blissful. Everything about this one felt perfect in my heart. Sophie and Howl are so deliciously antagonistic to each other, and it's absolutely sublime because they love each other just as fiercely.
I also recommend the Ghibli movie, as well as this marvelous explanation of how Miyazaki Hayao's adaptation built on Jones's work.
Fire from Heaven
Before I'd grasped anything about my own sexuality, before queer books were as accessible as they are now, I'd spend hours in the history section skimming books to find references to Alexander the Great and his extremely platonic buddy friend Hephaistion. You did well if you bet I reread this novel obsessively once I found it.
Mary Renault
This was my Song of Achilles. I mean, just. Do me a favor and read this:
"[Hephaistion’s] feelings were confused; he wanted to grasp til Alexander's very bones were somehow engulfed within himself, but knew this to be wicked and mad; he would kill anyone who harmed a hair of his head."
Is it really love if you don't want to subsume their bones?
At Swim, Two Boys
Jamie O'Neill
So much of this book is in the scaffolding of my teenage heart. The writing. Again, just read this:
"I'd give you me badge, only they stole that on me. Keep this instead while I'm away. It's my pledge to you. We'll have our Easter swim, my hand and heart on that. We'll make them rocks together, Jim. Are you straight so?"
"I'm straight as a rush," Jim said. He sniffed. "I am too."
"Old pal o' me heart," said Doyler.
"Come what may," said Jim. "Come what may."
Doyler grinned. "Come Easter sure. 1916."
There will come a day where I'll know how to talk about my love for this book, but it is not this day.
The House on the Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune
Growing up in the States in the '90s, I didn't have many queer stories that let me close a book with an unburdened smile. And since unhappy endings were so common in my formative years, I got into the habit of checking the back of a book to know what I was in for. So I mean this as the highest compliment when I say that I never once checked the back of this one. It was clear throughout from the warmth and gentle tone that I was in safe hands. And when I closed the book: a smile.
She Who Became the Sun
Shelley Parker-Chan
There's so much to praise about this one. The writing is so visceral it takes you directly into the danger, and the descriptions are so stark and evocative that I kept rereading the same paragraphs over and over purely because I admired the phrasing so much. Look, look:
The ghosts of her father and brother were different from how they had been when alive. Their brown skin had grown pale and powdery, as if brushed with ashes, and they wore rags of bleach-bone white.
Glorious.
The Jasmine Throne
Tasha Suri
The world-building in this one grabbed me from the first paragraph. And then it just continuously unfurled more and more into an incredibly intricate and brilliantly constructed world. The relationships kept me entranced. Not just between Priya and Malini, but between every pair. Every dynamic is unique and every single one, from those with the weight of long familiarity to the newly acquainted, feels real and significant. Magnificent.
The Unbroken
C.L. Clark
First of all, the development between Touraine and Luca is extremely enticing and charming. Second: readers of this book will understand my feverishly protective feelings for Touraine. She is doing! her! best! It is my zealously earnest belief that she deserves absolutely everything: the world, a hug, and a lifetime supply of anything she wants.
#ProtectTouraine
The Deep
Rivers Solomon
What if the pregnant and enslaved Africans thrown into the sea during their gruesome transatlantic crossing had given birth? The Deep explores cataclysmic intergenerational trauma, community, history, humanity, and more through the question: "Could it be possible for humans to breathe underwater?"
Cemetery Boys
Aiden Thomas
Yadriel's inner certainty of himself is so beautifully portrayed, and to see it constantly challenged when the surrounding world misinterprets or sees through him just hurts. This book also truly nailed one of life's quietest frustrations: getting what you want without the reward of satisfaction.
Yadriel huffed a laugh. "You just don't get how it works," he said, crossing his arms. "That's not enough."
"Not enough for who, though?" Julian questioned. He wasn't being pushy about it, not on purpose anyway. He just seemed curious, which only irritated Yadriel further. "Not enough for them, or not enough for you?"
Every page of this book made me feel so profoundly.
