My Reading List: 25 Books of The Year

“The Top 10 Books of The Year”

“The Top 10 Books of Last Week”

“The Top 10 Books of Yesterday”

“The 150 Epic Poems Every Writer Should Reread Annually”

So it was a relief to encounter Joshua Bodwell’s essay, “You Are What You Read: The Art of Inspired Reading Lists” in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Poets & Writers.  He opens with an epiphany–“I won’t get to all the books I want to read in my lifetime”–and backs it up with statistics: there were 300,000+ books published in 2010.  As he points out, that’s almost 900 books a day.  No one could get through them all, or even through all the good ones.  And, of course, there are the millions already out there on the shelves.

Once you give up on the idea that everyone has to read particular books from a universal best-of list, you can embrace the idea that you have your own literary niche.  Relish the knowledge that you can follow a theme or author to its natural works of literature, replacing the should-reads with the want-to reads.

Bodwell made his own list of books, “Bodwell’s Baker’s Dozen,” of books, both old and new, that inspired him over the past year.  I think this is a valuable idea for all of us–and for our children and students.  (You can do the same with movies, television shows, or even music.)

Any of these lists can provide an insightful look back into your mind over the past year.  In that spirit, here’s my list:

Of the Books I Read in the year 2011, Here Are 25 Notable Ones (and Some Audio Books)

I read books about education:

• Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Children a Real Education With or Without School by Grace Llewellyn and Amy Silver (More about this book in my post “essential book for parent”)
• Radical Unschooling: A Revolution Has Begun by Dayna Martin
• The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma
• The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child’s Classroom by Mary Griffith

And self-help:

• Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy
• Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living by Tsh Oxenreider
• Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes by Jenny Anderson and Paula Szuchman

Books for older children:

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Tme by Mark Haddon
• Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
• The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall (More about the Penderwick series in my post “why I love the penderwick”)
• The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall
• The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall

And much younger:

• Dear Zoo: A Lift-the-Flap Book by Rod Campbell
• Dinosaur’s Binket by Sandra Boynton
• I Kissed the Baby! by Mary Murphy
• Look, Look! by Peter Linenthal

And books about children, including how to prepare for and then raise them:

• The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two by William Sears, M.D.
• Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, Birth to Age 5 by the American Academy of Pediatrics
• New First Three Years of Life by Burton L. White

And how others prepare for and raise them:

• Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman
• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
• Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein
• Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family by Catherine Newman

And how they cope when their children struggle or suffer:

• Blue Nights by Joan Didion
• Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation by Cristina Nehring