When I was in middle school, I LOVED to read. This was a trait that followed me through most of my high school years. I was that kid who kept reading during classes (as a teacher now, man, I was annoying!) and would stay home on weekends to read.

When I got to college, my reading slowed down like crazy. Part of it was that I was reading books I wasn’t very interested for my major. I couldn’t stand Charles Dickens (is that bad of me to say as an English major??), and I hated some of the classics I was forced to read — Robinson Crusoe, I’m looking at you. I fell into a huge reading slump and basically stopped reading for fun.

As I progressed through college, my mental health declined, and I still wasn’t finding a joy in reading like I used to. I was rereading old favorites, trying to find that spark again.

In 2019, coincidentally the same year I graduated from college, I finally started to read again, ending the year with 57 books. I thought it would be fun to take a little trip down memory lane and see what books made me interested in reading again!

While I would normally post my Top 10 Tuesday today, I was not inspired by this week’s prompt. So consider this my makeshift Top 10 Tuesday!

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Daisy Jones & The Six

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Published on March 5, 2019
Genres: Contemporary, Historical Fiction
Pages: 355

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.

I was SHOCKED to see this on my 2019 recap. How has five years passed since I first read a Taylor Jenkins Reid book!?? Since reading Daisy Jones & the Six, I have read six more TJR books and I plan on finishing her backlist later this year.

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The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Published on April 30, 2024
Genres: Historical Fiction, War, Young Adult
Pages: 553
Format: Paperback

HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE

1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.
Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.

SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION - THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH

It's a small story, about:
a girl
an accordionist
some fanatical Germans
a Jewish fist fighter
and quite a lot of thievery.

ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW - DEATH WILL VISIT THE BOOK THIEF THREE TIMES

I loved this book so much that I decided to create a unit plan for the book in my undergrad. I now read the book with my sophomore class every few years whenever we have the time in our schedule.

Me Before You

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
Published on April 26, 2016
Genres: Adult, Romance
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover

USA Today's top 100 books to read while stuck at home social distancing

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me.

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?

I’m not entirely sure how I would feel about this book on reread, but I had an obsession over all three books in this series the first time I read them. The last time I read Me Before You was in 2018, so I might be due for a reread very soon.

The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Published on September 6, 2011
Pages: 384

An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss.

In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.

As an English major, I had to read A LOT of classics, and I honestly didn’t really vibe with most of them. I was hesitant to read The Handmaid’s Tale mostly because I had been unsuccessful with the classics I was reading for class, but I wanted to see what all the hype was about (the TV show was blowing up around this time)…spoiler alert, I LOVED it.

Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska by John Green
Published on September 24, 2019
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback

First drink. First prank. First friend. First love.

Last words. Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking for Alaska is a book that I will return to time and time again. I don’t remember the exact time I read this for the first time (sadly didn’t have Goodreads in high school 😥), but I have read it three times since 2016. It was one of the first books I read after I graduated!

This book broke me in so many ways, but it also inspired me. I remember resonating with a lot of the feelings from all of the characters, and every time I think of this book, I remember how much I’ve grown since I first read it. I will probably reread it again soon, because a student wanted to read it at the same time as me.

A Nearly Normal Family

A Nearly Normal Family by M. T. Edvardsson
Published on June 25, 2019
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 400

M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Familyis a gripping legal thriller that forces the reader to consider: How far would you go to protect the ones you love? In this twisted narrative of love and murder, a horrific crime makes a seemingly normal family question everything they thought they knew about their life—and one another.

Eighteen-year-old Stella Sandell stands accused of the brutal murder of a man almost fifteen years her senior. She is an ordinary teenager from an upstanding local family. What reason could she have to know a shady businessman, let alone to kill him?

Stella’s father, a pastor, and mother, a criminal defense attorney, find their moral compasses tested as they defend their daughter, while struggling to understand why she is a suspect. Told in an unusual three-part structure, A Nearly Normal Family asks the questions: How well do you know your own children? How far would you go to protect them?

I honestly don’t remember a lot about this book since I read it in 2019. But, I do remember being obsessed with the story and dedicating all of my free time to reading it. It’s funny to look at reviews and see that many people didn’t really love the story, because I gave it five stars. It was one of the first Crime Thrillers I ever read, which might explain why I was so taken with the plot dynamics, given my limited experience with the genre at the time. A Nearly Normal Family really kickstarted my love of thrillers.

Illuminae

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Published on April 25, 2017
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 624
Format: Paperback

Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she’d ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
 
But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their biggest threat; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady plunges into a web of data hacking to get to the truth, it’s clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: Ezra.
 
Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

I read Illuminae during my final semester of student teaching. I had a student recommend the book to me, and I decided to read the book right away! This book is the reason I love mixed media books so much. I also read the sequel, but I have yet to read book three. I recently reread Illuminae so that I can finally finish the series, but I still haven’t picked it up yet.

The Reading List

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
Published on April 30, 2024
Genres: books about books, Adult, Contemporary, Fiction
Pages: 425
Format: Paperback

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.

Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.

When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list… hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.

This is a more recent read (from 2023) that I just had to include on this list. Even though I read a lot more than I used to, I still have times when I fall into reading slumps or feel burnt out from reading. I remember feeling this way last January, and I actually picked up this book at random. I thought it was a cheesy romance for some reason (I don’t always read blurbs lol), and so imagine my surprise when I am bawling on my three hour drive home one day.

The Reading List has stuck with me ever since, and it made me remember why I love reading so much.

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And that is it for my list! It was so much fun to go down memory lane and look through all of the books I read in the past.

What’s the book that made you re-fall in love with reading? Let me know in the comments below!