My 2015 Reading Year in Review

It’s the last day of 2015, and I’m happily sitting here in my pajamas, with a clementine-clove candle burning, ignoring the pile of dishes in the sink and thinking back on the past year. I thought I’d give this long-neglected blog some attention with an end-of-year post on my year in reading.

This year I read 101 books (not including the ones I re-read along with my students as I taught them). I read 2 nonfiction books, 3 adult novels, 33 middle grade, and 63 young adult. Of the MG and YA novels, 15 were fantasy, sci-fi, or magical realism, and the rest were realistic; 6 were verse novels; 2 were graphic novels; 21 were 2015 (or early 2016) debuts; and 15 were written by Vermont College of Fine Arts alums. Next year, I may try to read a few more graphic novels and a few more adult ones, just to keep things varied. But overall, it was a great reading year, and here are some of my personal highlights.

Here’s me in a perfectly shaded reading spot on a beach in Puerto Rico in July, devouring The War that Saved My Life.

Favorite new books to teach: I’m always looking to keep the 7th and 8th grade reading lists fresh, so I’m excited when I discover books that fit the curriculum. This year, I loved teaching A.B. Westrick’s Brotherhood and Melanie Crowder’s Audacity. Both books are brilliantly researched historical fiction that my students learned from and enjoyed, and both led to wonderful discussions and exciting Google Hangouts with the authors.

Favorite “trend”: I’m not sure this is a trend, exactly, but I’ve read a handful of new books this year that have dual timelines and alternate between “now” and “then” storylines, and I’m a fan. Gina Ciocca’s Last Year’s Mistake and Jennifer Longo’s Up to This Pointe are two YA books that make great use of the past/present storylines, and Ali Benjamin’s The Thing about Jellyfish is a MG that does this beautifully.

Favorite younger YA/older MG: As you may know if you’ve read this blog, I have a major soft spot for books that are youngish YA or mature MG, because I teach 7th and 8th grade and feel like those are big reading years that are sometimes neglected in the market. My favorite YA books that hit this sweet spot this year were Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You, Emery Lord’s The Start of Me and You, Jennifer Mathieu’s Devoted, and Kathryn Holmes’s The Distance Between Lost and Found, and my favorite MG in this category was Rebecca Stead’s Goodbye Stranger.

Favorite ARCs I won: Through Twitter/Rafflecopter contests, I won two ARCs: Corey Ann Haydu’s Making Pretty and Marissa Burt’s A Sliver of Stardust. I’m not sure two books could be any more different–unflinching realistic YA and comforting MG fantasy–but I loved both of them, and winning them made me appreciate the writing community I have been building online.

Favorite books I might not have picked on my own: I’m in a YA/MG book club, and we’ve read some historical novels I don’t think I would have read on my own, because I tend to slant contemporary, but I adored The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz.

Favorite reading experience: I really loved reading so many novels by fellow Vermont College of Fine Arts alums this year–especially alums I know well. My very favorite experience was reading an actual, official ARC of Cordelia Jensen’s Skyscraping, a beautiful book I got to read in many different forms over the years, and seeing my name in the acknowledgements.

Favorite author-meeting experience: We’ve done a lot of awesome author events at school over the past year, and they have all been highlights in their own right. But for me personally, a big high point was meeting Sarah Dessen, one of my first favorite authors from when I initially got into reading and writing YA, at Children’s Book World. She was lovely and inspiring, and I love having a signed copy of Saint Anything.

Books I can’t wait for others to read in 2016: I was really impressed with Cori McCarthy’s ambitious You Were Here. It weaves together first-person chapters, third-person chapters, graphic novel chapters, and graffiti chapters. I loved it, and I’ve never read anything quite like it. Another strikingly original forthcoming book is Karen Rivers’s The Girl in the Well Is Me. I’ve been a fan of Rivers’s unique storytelling since reading The Encyclopedia of Me a few years ago, and I found this book compelling, humorous, daring, and heartbreaking.

2015 wasn’t an easy year in many ways, but when it came to reading, it was pretty satisfying. I’m excited for an equally enjoyable reading year in 2016!