Happy Thanksgiving, readers! Today, in honor of this festival of gratitude, I’m sharing ten books I’m thankful to have read this year. This list differs a bit from “favorite” or “best” books of the year, although there may be some overlap. Some of the books I’m thankful for were difficult for me to read, but terribly important for my own learning. Others are the silly, fluffy reads that gave me a break from the heaviness of literature and life. What every book on this list has in common is that it came to me at just the right moment and offered me exactly what I needed.
Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister
For helping me feel like I’m not alone when I rage at this world’s injustices.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
For giving me one of my best cries of the year.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
There, There by Tommy Orange
For showing me my blindspots and inviting me into a perspective I’d never before experienced.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
Nevermoor: the Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend
For reminding me that there’s still untapped magic in storytelling.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
Beloved by Toni Morrison
For offering me something new, unexpected, and brilliant with every reread.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
Bunny by Mona Awad
For taking me in a direction I never in a million years would have expected to go.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
For being the feminist millenial critique of the world, and myself, that I didn’t know I needed.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
For reminding me what it feels like to fall recklessly and irrevocably in love with a story.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams
For making me laugh out loud and for teaching me that it’s (more than) okay to read romance novels.
Purchase from Amazon | Purchase from Bookshop.org
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
For giving me the insights and language to challenge my own thinking and be better for my students.
be the first to chime in.