Several of you have reached out to me over the past few weeks and asked for lists of my favorite titles. This week I’m including a few. In the coming months, I’ll share contemporary fiction, classics and more.

Memoirs

• The Elephant in the Room (Tommy Tomlinson)
• The Glass Castle (Jeanette Walls)
• The Color of Water (James McBride)
• When Breath Becomes Air (Dr. Paul Kalanithi)
• It Was Me All Along (Andie Mitchell)
• Before You Wake (Erick Erickson)
• Infidel (Ayaan Hirsi Ali)
• Hillbilly Elegy (J. D. Vance)
• Rabbit (Patricia Williams)
• Call Me American (Abdi Nor Iftin)
• All the Pretty Things (Edie Wadsworth)
• The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love (Kristin Kimball)
• Together – A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap (Judy Goldman)
• Save Me the Plums – My Gourmet Memoir (Ruth Reichl)
• Inheritance – A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love (Dani Shapiro)

Inspirational Books

“Inspirational” is how I describe books which have been life-changing for me in terms of altering the way I think or behave. (Note: The Bible is not included because it is a collection of 66 individual books which are worthy of a separate blog post.)

• One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are (Ann Voskamp)
• Same Kind of Different As Me (Ron Hall and Denver Moore)
• 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess (Jen Hatmaker)
• Better Than Before (Gretchen Rubin)
• Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Cal Newport)
• Tell Me More (Kelly Corrigan)
• My Reading Life (Pat Conroy)
• The Art of Work (Jeff Goins)
• A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live (Emily P. Freeman)
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)
• Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Greg McKeown)
• The War of Art – Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles (Steven Pressfield)

Young Adult Favorites

• Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls)
• A Wrinkle In Time (Madeline L’Engle)
• The entire Little House series (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
• Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
• Frog and Toad (Arnold Lobel)
• The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
• Ribsy and Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
• The Summer of the Swans (Betsy Byars)
• Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O’Dell)

Historic Fiction

• “The Librarian of Auschwitz” (Antonio Iturbe)
• “All the Light We Cannot See” (Anthony Doerr)
• “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” (Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer)
• “The Book Thief” (Markus Zusak)
• “The Nightingale” (Kristin Hannah)
• “The Alice Network” (Kate Quinn)
• “The Lilac Girls” (Martha Hall Kelly)
• “Becoming Mrs. Lewis (Patti Callahan)
• “Irena’s Children” (Tilar Mazzeo)
• “Secrets of a Charmed Life” (Susan Meissner)
• “Before We Were Yours” (Lisa Wingate)
• “Sarah’s Key” (Tatiana de Rosnay)
• “America’s First Daughter (Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie)
• “The Huntress” (Kate Quinn)
• “The Lost Girls of Paris” (Pam Jenoff)
• “We Were the Lucky Ones” (Georgia Hunter”)
• “The Gown” (Jennifer Robson)

Picture Books

• Blueberries for Sal (Robert McCloskey)
• Time for Bed (Mem Fox)
• Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak)
• Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown)
• Pat the Bunny (Dorothy Kunhardt)
• Oh, the Places You’ll Go (Dr. Seuss)
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle)
• Curious George (H A. Rey)
• The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams)
• Miss Fannie’s Hat (Jan Karon)
• Can You Spot the Spotted Dog (John Rowe)
• Love You Forever (Robert Munsch)
• The Little Engine That Could (Watty Piper)
• The Story of Ping (Marjorie Flack)
• Ernestine’s Milky Way (Kerry Madden-Lunsford)

It’s no surprise this list is constantly changing and being updated. Every day new, wonderful books are published so this is a snapshot of my favorites as of today. In February 2019 I read over 40 picture books, none of which are even on this list and I adored about 35 of them. (Maybe I should have a “Modern Picture Book” list!) Please take a moment to read a picture book the next time you’re in a book store and you’ll see what I mean!

Happy World Book Day! #whoknew?