Christmas Books!

It’s that time of year again—Christmas has come and gone, and I’ve either received or purchased the books that I wanted to add to my library. Now I need to create a book list for 2017.

In 2016, I surpassed all of my expectations and read all 27 books that were on my list—and by September, no less—and even added 16 more. Here follows the complete list (in the order in which I read them):

1. The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
2. The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
4. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
5. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
7. The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey
8. Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods by Rick Riordan
9. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book I) by Rick Riordan
10. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book II) by Rick Riordan
11. And Another Thing… Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Part Six of Three by Eoin Colfer
12. The Martian by Andy Weir
13. Red Rising by Pierce Brown
14. The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book III) by Rick Riordan
15. Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone
16. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
17. Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen
18. Girls Like Us by Gail Giles
19. The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book IV) by Rick Riordan
20. I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
21. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
22. Golden Son (Red Rising #2) by Pierce Brown
23. The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians V) by Rick Riordan
24. Morning Star (Red Rising #3) by Pierce Brown
25. Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow
26. Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
27. The Revenant by Michael Punke
28. Raven Queen by Pauline Francis
29. Feed by M.T. Anderson
30. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
31. Gooseberry Park by Cynthia Rylant
32. The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #1)
33. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
34. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
35. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
36. Rodrick Rules (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2) by Jeff Kinney
37. Josefina Learns a Lesson: A School Story by Valerie Tripp
38. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
39. How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay by Julia Alvarez
40. Speaker for the Dead (Ender’s Saga #2) by Orson Scott Card
41. Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
42. Xenocide (Ender’s Saga #3) by Orson Scott Card
43. The Last Straw (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #3) by Jeff Kinney

This doesn’t include any of the non-fiction titles I read this year or any shorter-than-novel-length books I read with my own children or at school. What it does include are quite a few titles that I read with my elder son (those would be the Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, plus Gooseberry Park). Since I love sharing novels with my kids, you can expect more of the same on this year’s list.

If you read my post “A Bookworm Without Any Books?” in September, you know that I was worried about what I would come up with to read in 2017 (not to mention the rest of 2016). I am glad to say that that is no longer a problem.

The Ender’s Game universe (what I have yet to read)

With no new books in my personal library, I went into a little-used cabinet where I store books that have been lent to me. Both my dad and my husband have read every book in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game universe, and they’ve been bugging me to read them for a couple years. I tried to explain about the whole book list thing and how it’s hard to interrupt my already-planned reading for an entire series, so poor Ender’s Game collected dust. I finally had the chance to brush it off and read it, and it was a nice surprise to find that I liked the sequel even more. I am currently on the fourth book, Children of the Mind. When I finish the original series, I’ll set Ender aside for a while. As you can see from the picture, I could spend most of my year reading the Ender books alone, but if I finish all the books on my list early again, I can start tackling more of these titles.

Borrowed Teen Fiction

Aside from Ender, I borrowed another pile of teen fiction from my cousin-in-law, who is on the Florida Teens Read committee. The books she lent me last year were such a success that I can’t wait to sink my teeth into these. You may notice that two books on this year’s list, Holding Up the Universe and The Sun Is Also A Star, are written by authors from last year’s list. I love discovering new authors by accident or from friends’ recommendations. Many of the new additions to this year’s list fall in this category.

Some of the following books are ones I’m eager to re-read, plus many much-anticipated new titles (alphabetical by author):

1. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
2. Red Rising by Pierce Brown
3. Golden Son (Red Rising #2) by Pierce Brown
4. Morning Star (Red Rising #3) by Pierce Brown
5. First Meetings in Ender’s Universe (Ender’s Saga #0.5) by Orson Scott Card
6. A War of Gifts: An Ender Story (Ender’s Saga #1.1) by Orson Scott Card
7. Ender in Exile (Ender’s Saga #1.2) by Orson Scott Card
8. Children of the Mind (Ender’s Saga #4) by Orson Scott Card
9. Don’t Get Caught by Kurt Dinan
10. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
11. My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows
12. The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
13. Let It Snow by Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle
14. Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston
15. The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time #1) by Robert Jordan
16. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
17. Dog Days (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #4) by Jeff Kinney
18. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
19. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
20. You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan
21. Starflight by Melissa Landers
22. Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven
23. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Rats of NIMH #1) by Robert C. O’Brien
24. The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard Book II) by Rick Riordan
25. The Hidden Oracle (The Trials of Apollo #1) by Rick Riordan
26. Percy Jackson’s Greek Heroes by Rick Riordan
27. This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1) by Victoria Schwab
28. The Crown’s Game by Evelyn Skye
29. Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
30. The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
31. The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Trilogy Book I) by Jonathan Stroud
32. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
33. The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas
34. The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

The toughest thing about this list is choosing what to read next—my favorite kind of problem to solve.