It’s almost time for the mid-year wrap-up of books I’ve read and liked best so far this year. There’s still plenty of June left, but I’m preparing for a book talk later this month, so it seemed like a good time to go over the past five months of reading in my LibraryThing catalog. This isn’t BuzzFeed so I won’t be doing a “Top [odd number] Books You MUST Read RIGHT THIS SECOND” style of list, but I have separated them by category. As always, these are books I’ve read in this time frame; some are recently published, but others are older.

There are a lot of picture books, because we read a lot of picture books (and, at about 32 pages each, you can read many more of those – even with repetition – in the same amount of time it takes to read an adult book). So we’ll start there, and if you have no interest in picture books, then skip ahead!

Picture Books
Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall
There Might Be Lobsters by Carolyn Crimi (illus. Laurel Molk)
The Way I Feel by Janan Cain
A Different Pond by Bao Phi (illus. Thi Bui)
Toys Meet Snow by Emily Jenkins (illus. Paul O. Zelinsky)
Henry & Leo by Pamela Zagarenski
Sleep Like A Tiger by Mary Logue (illus. Pamela Zagarenski)
Flyaway Katie by Polly Dunbar
The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah by Leslie Kimmelman
88 Instruments by Chris Barton
More More More Said the Baby by Vera B. Williams
Perfect Square by Michael Hall
Miss Brooks Loves Books (And I Don’t) by Barbara Bottner
Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle

Fiction
Interestingly, all of these fall under the umbrella of “speculative fiction.”
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Starlings by Jo Walton
Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories by Kelly Barnhill (esp. the novella “The Unlicensed Magician”).

Nonfiction
Daemon Voices: Essays on Storytelling by Philip Pullman
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
When They Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele

Cookbooks
Dinner by Melissa Clark: lots of good ideas to follow or riff on, all based on the idea of a single dish being a whole meal (though that single dish usually has many components)

Middle Grade & Young Adult
Stella by Starlight and Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper
The Marvels by Brian Selznick
The Boy From Tomorrow by Camille P. DeAngelis
Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson & Emily Carroll (graphic novel)
The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
And this batch of novels, each of which is satisfying if you’re looking for contemporary realistic fiction with some romance and diversity: I Have Lost My Way by Gayle Forman; The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler; When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon; Puddin‘ by Julie Murphy; You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins

Looking ahead to the second half of the year, I’m excited to read new novels by Kate Atkinson (Transcription), Rebecca Makkai (The Great Believers), Angie Thomas (On the Come Up), Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing), and Therese Anne Fowler (A Well-Behaved Woman). Looking back at a to-read list from November 2017, there are still a few titles there I haven’t gotten to, and more coming out all the time….What books are you looking forward to reading?