As I pull up my Storygraph stats, it’s quite apparent that this was the year of small books: cozy mysteries, manga, and middle grade fiction. It’s how I managed to read 65, soon to be 66, books this year. Without those lighter books, my total would have been much lower, crushed under the the pressure of my new job teaching 6th grade, completing my certification work, and coaching girls’ basketball.
That being said, on to the reviews!
Middle Grade Fiction
Let’s start with middle grade fiction. Seeing as I’m teaching 6th grade English Language Arts, it only makes sense that I’d pick up some middle grade books. I like to see what’s out there, to be able to give book talks to my students, and to be able to share in conversations with my students about the books they are reading. This year I’ve read 12 middle grade books! I’ve also read a couple that were YA, a bit more grown-up than I can have in my classroom, but I’ll go ahead and include them here.
Some standouts here include:
- We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly – This is a great realistic fiction book set in January of 1986. The central event the book revolves around is the Challenger disaster. It follows the lives of three siblings over the course of the month, and how, despite their differences, they learn to rely on each other to get through their struggles.
- Roll for Initiative by Jaime Formato – This is just a great realistic book about being yourself and finding solidarity with a good group of friends. It’s great for any kids who love DnD, but especially middle grade girls.
- The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley – What an amazing piece of historical fiction! The story follows two siblings as they are evacuated from London during WWII. There’s Ada, a girl born with a club foot and who grew up being abused and neglected by her mother, and Jamie, the younger brother she tries to protect. They find an unlikely home with Ms. Smith in a small village in the country. Ada, Jamie, and Ms. Smith are all transformed over the course of the book. The writing is vivid, and I could see this all playing out like a PBS drama as I read. I have two students reading this now, and they both love it. One girl loves it so much that she convinced her mom to buy her other books by the author.
- Wish by Barbara O’Connor – This was a sweet book about a girl whose life gets uprooted because her parents are unable to care for her. She ends up in a poor but happy home with her aunt and uncle in Appalachia. In her interactions with her new friends and family, she begins to appreciate what really matters in life. Barbara O’Connor’s books are always a win for grades 4-6!
- Alone by Megan L. Freeman – I have to admit that I was never a fan of novels in verse, but this book changed my mind. Not only was the premise intriguing (girl left to survive on her own after some sort of unspecified disaster), but the execution was really well-done. Several of my students enjoyed this.
- Posted by John David Anderson – This was my first book by this author, and boy was it a powerful one. This was probably the best depiction of modern middle school I’ve encountered in a book. When phones get banned at school, students resort to messaging with anonymous sticky notes. This, unsurprisingly, leads to some very targeted bullying. It’s a great novel about being yourself, standing up for others, and what it means to be a solid friend. Great for grades 6-8, and it would make for a great classroom read.
- Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate – Another novel in verse, this was a very easy but powerful read. If you’ve seen the movei The Good Lie, it’s quite similar. This is about a young African refugee’s transition to life in America, his making sense of the life he used to live and the world he now finds himself in. It’s hopeful, emotional, and a great read. I’ll be using this as a book club choice in the upcoming year.
Manga
As a mom to a 5th grade boy and a 7th grade boy, and as a wife to a nerd (not a knock, as I’m one too), I’ve been surrounded by anime in various forms. Apart from Studio Ghibli films and a movie called Your Name (absolutely beautiful, emotional, and magical, and one of the best films ever!), I was never a big fan. My oldest son started devouring the Naruto manga this year. I had been under the impression that all manga was basically stuff like that or Dragonball Z.
But one day, when I was perusing the new release shelves at my local library, I came across a manga that was completely different from anything I’d imagined: Cat + Gamer by Wataru Nadatani.
I ended up checking it out, and it was such a pleasant surprise. There are 8 in the series, and I’ve read the first five of them. So has my youngest son. It follows a young woman in Japan who adopts a stray kitten from her workplace. She doesn’t exactly know how to take care of a cat, but she is extremely knowledgeable about video games. As she learns to care for her new cat, she relates it to the skills of her video game characters. This makes for a delightful story for cat lovers and gamers.
Once I realized manga could be more than Naruto and Dragonball Z, I wasn’t put off by it. In fact, though I’m not finished just yet, I’ll be ending the year with one final book read, and that is Delicious in Dungeon vol. 1 by Ryoko Kui. I had no idea it was made into a tv show. I first saw it at the book fair at my school, then several months later at Barnes and Noble. I ended up buying it as part of my annual end of year book spree, and I’m loving it so far. It’s like DnD meets a cooking show!
I think I’ll probably end up getting all of this series next year. It’s also something that my oldest son, who wants to be a chef, might enjoy if he can be convinced to set aside Naruto for a quick minute!
Mysteries
This year I read 15 books in M. C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series. They’re short, funny, and enjoyable quick reads. 200 pages tops.
This is my all-time favorite cozy mystery series, but in all honesty, reading so many of them back to back seemed to lessen my enjoyment. Near the end, they all started running together.
Now, I also read some mysteries that weren’t so cozy. My favorite thriller had to be Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. Great, vivid writing, interesting details, lots of thrilling moments, and a really creeptastic villain. I may get around to reading the second in the series, Finders Keepers, if I feel in the mood this upcoming year.
There were two more fun thriller books I read this year: Relic by Preston and Child, and The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown. Relic was fun, but The Secret of Secrets was probably my “funnest read” of the year. I haven’t read Dan Brown in a long time, but he’s a great go to for those sorts of archaic mystery thrillers where some sort of world-shattering ancient secret must be found and either shared or kept closely guarded.
I plan on reading Origin next year. It’s the only Dan Brown book I haven’t read.
Science Fiction and Fantasy
I am not much of a sci-fi person. I really have to be in a certain mood to read it. This year I was apparently in the mood.
Highlights from these include:
- The Autobiography of Captain Janeway by Una McCormack – This was a phenomenal book! If you enjoy Star Trek at all (I grew up on all the 90s Trek shows, TNG, DS9, Voyager), you’ll enjoy this. It surprised me how well written and enjoyable this was. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook, narrated by Kate Mulgrew, who absolutely brings this to life!
- Aurora by David Koepp – This was a great post-apocalyptic thriller based on a Carrington solar flare event that wipes out electricity across most of the planet. Thrilling, with great characterization, and more emotion and depth than expected.
- The Blighted Stars by Megan O’Keefe – This was the beginning of a great and unique space opera built on an interesting environmental premise. Fantastic writing, and I can’t wait to read the next one.
There were some great fantasy reads as well, though I didn’t read heavily in the genre this year. One that was a complete surpise to me was His Face is the Sun by Michelle Jabes Corpora. I picked it up at Barnes and Noble one day because the book itself was so beautiful, with a gorgeous cover and sprayed edges, and it was only $17! The blurb excited me: an epic fantasy set in an ancient Egyptian-inspired world. I was hesitant, because it seemed like YA, and I tend to find the characters in YA books, particularly those written in first person, too narcissistic and caught up analyzing their own feelings. But this was written in third person and it had multiple points of view. I’m glad I gave it a chance! The writing was great, the story intriguing, and I devoured it! I can’t wait for the sequel, though I’ll need to give this a reread beforehand.
Secondly, and most importantly, was the astounding novel The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of the most beautiful fantasy novels ever.
I was looking for a well-written, deep, character-driven story, and this did not disappoint. For the first half, it seemed to be all about courtly intrigue (think Eddard Stark heading to King’s Landing and the viper’s nest he found himself in), but it was SO MUCH MORE! So many beautiful themes: the power of a truly good man, theological questions about destiny vs. free will and the control the divine has over us or we give to it, etc.
The worldbuilding is astounding. The writing is gorgeous. The characters are so real and I was moved to tears over them. It carries the grittiness of Game of Thrones (without a lot of the unnecessary, darker extras), but has a hopeful rather than nihilistic worldview that permeates the pages. It is BEAUTIFUL!!! My copy is now covered in tabs to mark all the gorgeous language and profound lines.
I will say that the first few chapters are quite slow, but once it gets going, it gets going. This was definitely one of my top reads this year, and one of my top-rated fantasy novels ever.
Nonfiction
I tend to read a lot of nonfiction, mostly on history, theology, travel, and nature. This was primarily a year of fiction, but I did read some really great nonfiction books.
A couple of travel memoirs that I enjoyed were Peter Mayle’s Toujours Provence, the follow up to his original A Year in Provence. It’s light and lovely and full of humor. I also read Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House about his family’s move to a supposedly djinn-infested house in Morocco. It was an interesting read for sure.
The next two books really gave me a lot to think about in terms of today’s world, the nihilism and meaninglessness that pervades it, that feeling of being caught like fish in an ever-tightening net, and the hope that can be found in the reawakening of a spiritual life and a connection to God. Those books are Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age and Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. Both are Orthodox Christians, and their writings about these subjects have left me feeling more hopeful about the future and our place in it.
Lastly, towards the beginning of the year, I read a chonker of a book by Edmund Morris called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. It won the Pulitzer Prize. When you read it, you’ll understand why. The first in a three book series, this chronicle’s Roosevelt’s life up until the moment he became president. The writing is vivid, and the subject is so fascinating that it’s hard to imagine anyone not reading this and falling completely in love with Theodore Roosevelt. He has always been, and still remains, my favorite president.
Classics
Finally, I dove into some classics this year. I started off with Oliver Twist, the first book by Charles Dickens I’ve read in decades. I picked up this book not being overly familiar with it. I think because it was adapted as a 90s cartoon film with animals, and because the only scene the vast majority of people are familiar with is “Please, sir, may I have some more?”, it might seem to be a children’s book of sorts. At least, I’d thought it was. Holy moly. It is gritty. Biting wit and irony is used to call out injustices. There are grizzly crime scenes and quite a lot of focus on trauma, and on how guilt can haunt someone to the end of their days. There’s hope too, no doubt, and a lot of warmth, but it’s certainly a novel full of heavy themes. And it’s really good. A true page turner! I have a newfound respect for Dickens. I didn’t appreciate him enough while reading him in school.
That led me to read another Dickens novel, David Copperfield. Holy smokes did this novel take me by surprise. The Lord of the Rings has sat at the top spot in my favorite books of all time, but when I’d finished David Copperfield, it had knocked LOTR to 2nd place. This book is truly the most phenomenal novel I’ve ever read. The writing is vivid, the characters so rich and varied and colorful, and each scene really comes to life. Despite having been written nearly 200 years ago, it is just as pertinent today. David faces struggles similar to what all young people do. Over the course of the novel, we watch in fascination at the shaping of a human life, in ways good and bad, happy and sad, and hope for a good outcome. It is beautiful and I want to reread it over and over and over.
Lastly, I read my first Dostoyevsky: Demons. It was interesting, insightful, and riveting in parts. There are a lot of similarities between the revolutionary mindsets portrayed in the book then and the revolutionary mindsets, both on the left and right, that we witness today. It’s a great novel, very deep and at times slow. I enjoyed it, and my copy is marked up and filled with tabs for memorable quotes.
To Sum It All Up
I’ve read 66 books (just finished Delicious in Dungeon vol. 1) and have read about 27,500 pages. 32 books were less than 300 pages, 24 were between 300 and 499, and 9 were greater than 500. May was my best reading month with 10 book and 3,364 pages read. November was my weakest month with 1 book completed and 1,000 pages read.
My favorite books of the year were David Copperfield, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, The Curse of Chalion, and Against the Machine.
As always, it was a great year in books. I’ve already got my TBR list for 2026. I picked up several new books over the past few days. I’m excited to dive in. And, more importantly, I’m excited to pick up a pen once more when the school year ends and I finally have some time to sink my teeth back into my writing again. I so desperately miss it!
Have a wonderful 2026!
