It is a truth universally acknowledged (uh, maybe), that a book reviewer and/or avid reader will likely never read all the books they had planned to before the year’s end. In any event, I never do! I have my books for review and I’m terrifically fortunate in that I get to review books that I am excited to read. But then I also have a long list of reads that are what I call my ‘own reading’; books that are for my personal reading pleasure. (Sometimes- and I’m very lucky about this- the two overlap and I do indeed get to review books that were from my personal reading list). In the end though, it is a process to balance my reading and I’ve really noticed this year especially that actively carving out time to read for pleasure keeps me sane when reading for review and writing for review feels frantic or overwhelming.

I’m currently reading Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists (which I feel like had a lot of buzz!), and I recently finished Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Claire Fuller’s Our Endless Numbered Days, as well as Shea Ernshaw’s YA debut The Wicked Deep. I’ve got a healthy stack of reads (outside of review titles) that I’d like to get to before the year’s end and thought I’d share them here. In all honesty, that list is about fifty titles long, so I narrowed it down to a more workable fifteen titles that I feel the itch to read. I won’t get to reading them all by the end of the year, but it feels nice to have a bit more focus as December looms! Let me know if you’ve read any and would bump them to the top of the list!

In no particular order:

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient #1) by Helen Hoang

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson

24 Hours in Nowhere by Dusti Bowling

The Vanderbeeker’s and the Hidden Garden (The Vanderbeekers #2) by Karina Yan Glaser

Braced by Alyson Gerber

Front Desk by Kelly Yang

Echo’s Sister by Paul Mosier