Texas Books and ToB 2026

Time to catch up on some recent reading! I think I either started or finished all of these during my recent work trip to Texas.  

For the first time I can remember, I'm slightly nervous about my reading goal for the year - I need to finish 10 more books before the end of the year.  I still think I'll do it but normally I'm done well before December. Anyway, adding eight more books to the list today, and introducing the tag for the 2026 Tournament of Books, since the longlist is out. 

The Complex Art of Being Maisie Clark (by Sabrina Kleckner)

The only YA book on the list, actually! I liked this messy main character, and thought her coming of age story felt realistic and cute. There is some excellent trans rep that was handled subtly but realistically.  I loved that finding her artistic voice was part of her story. Her brother was kind of an asshole to her throughout, though. Overall cute and fine.

The Killer Question (by Janice Hallett) and The Last Devil to Die (by Richard Osman) 

I read these two cozy mysteries back to back and they made an interesting counterpoint to each other.  Killer Question is an epistolary novel set in the world of competitive trivia contests, which I absolutely loved. The twists here are great and genuinely surprising.   The Last Devil to Die is part of the Thursday Murder Club series and has more real emotion and deeper characters, but the mystery wasn't particularly surprising or satisfying. Really, the relationships and emotion carry this one. I enjoyed them both for different reasons. 

In a Glass Grimmly (by Adam Gidwitz) 

Part of a middle grade series that Mina enjoys so this was a read-aloud for us.  Very clever and great dark humor. Kind of what I expected and did not get from Gordon Korman, e.g. a truly funny middle grade book.  I have the third book on our shelf to start on next (and I bought her a new signed Scalzi book for Christmas, since she also enjoyed Agent to the Stars this year.) 

The Shattering Peace (by John Scalzi) 

Did someone say Scalzi?  It's been a minute since I read the Old Man's War series so I was glad of his usual formula, where there's enough context-setting to let the reader catch up.  A solid installment, cleverly written and a fun romp. As usual, my only criticism is that all of his snarky-voiced characters and their banter are interchangeable, but this is easy to look past when all the characters are so fun anyway. 

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany (by Eric Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband) and The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators with the FBI's Original Mindhunter (by John Douglas)

And now for something completely different: nonfiction about dark topics with long subtitles. I'll dispense with the second one first - Douglas is smart but also full of himself, and clearly thrilled to bits there's a TV show about him as he brings it up a lot and even put it in the title. (I still would love a third season though.) Still, he presents some fascinating case studies about interviews with killers and if that's your thing, you'll enjoy it.

What We Knew on the other hand is a scholarly book, an oral history of Germany from 1933-1945, and explores what German Jews and non-Jews knew about the mass murder that started in earnest in 1942.  First there are 40 oral histories and then the authors take a look at large-scale survey data. Absolutely worth a read if this chapter of history is interesting to you. 

Sky Daddy (by Kate Folk) 

My first ToB read, about a woman who is sexually attracted to airplanes and believes her destiny is to marry one by dying in a plane crash.  Audacious and un-put-downable, I hope it makes the shortlist because I'd love to talk about it. (Is the ending a cop out or is it genius? I truly can't decide.)  I haven't read any of the other books on the longlist (although I had a couple on hold already) so I'd better pick the next one fast.  

Flamer (by Mike Curato)

I read this graphic novel for the RHC task "read a banned book and complete a task on Book Riot’s How to Fight Book Bans guides."  I checked out the ALA list of most banned books last year to find the book, then donated to the Freedom to Read foundation for my activity. There are lots of amazing ways to help, especially during Banned Books Week, coming up in October.    

This graphic novel is semi-autobiographical, set in the summer of 1995 when a boy who grew up Catholic but doesn't quite fit in goes to Boy Scout camp, worries about what lies ahead in his first year of high school, and struggles with some confusing feelings for a friend.  A very quick read but very moving and reminded me of what it was like for my (Catholic, effeminate, turned out to be gay) best friend growing up and struggling with these same feelings in this era.  

An important book that deserves to be read. 

Ungifted (by Gordon Korman)

I love Gordon Korman's YA novels, have read them all a dozen times or more, and recently read them out loud to my teenager. She also loves Gordon Korman's new work, and I had the RHC category of "the first book in a completed young adult or middle grade duology" so I figured we'd both enjoy this!

It was... fine. I expected more Gordon Korman magic, I'm so used to being delighted by the ineffable vibe of his books, and that was missing for me.  I didn't like our protagonist very much - he was an obnoxious troublemaker who stayed that way, except suddenly at the end nobody minds anymore? I'm sure it's me - I'm not a middle grade reader, and I've avoided all of Korman's middle grade books for this reason.  

I bought the second book in the duology but I'm hoping we can pick something else for our next readaloud. I think she might be ready for some Scalzi except she doesn't love bad language and John doesn't hesitate to include it.  I think she'd love the humor though, so maybe I'll go dig up my copy of Agent to the Stars and see what she thinks. 

Small Spaces (by Katherine Arden)

Middle grade is not my favorite genre and horror is hit and miss for me, so I really wasn't super exited about this Read Harder category, "read a middle grade horror novel."  But thanks to the recommendations on Goodreads, I decided to check out Small Spaces for this category, and I'm glad I did!

It's age-appropriately creepy (and definitely very creepy) with a wonderful sixth grader, Olivia, who is dealing with grieving the death of her mom and isolating herself emotionally.. until a school field trip goes wrong and the ghostly diary she's been reading seems like it might not just be a ghost story after all.

I read it in a few hours (it's middle grade) but really glad I did.  Another little nudge out of my comfort zone thanks to the RHC. 

Belize Books

I'm almost done with a sixth book, but here are the five books I finished while on my vacation to Belize:

Birding Under the Influence (by Dorian Anderson)

I avidly followed Dorian's blog about the Big Year he did on a bicycle. In this memoir, he tells the story of his journey while interspersed with the love story between him and his now-wife Sonia, and his problems with drinking and drugs and general addict behavior. I thought this memoir was terrific - well written, candid, structured well, and generally one of the better blog-to-book books I've ever read. Highly recommended if you're interested in reading about a Big Year!

Journey Under the Midnight Sun (by by Keigo Higashino) 

Another Japanese Mystery, and I think the third one I've read by Higashino. This one is pretty long (I would say overly long) and you figure out whodunit pretty early, but the whydunit and will-someone-ever-catch-them elements propel you to the end. Definitely a motive I should have, but did not, see coming, which made the ending hit hard. Not my favorite by him purely because of the overlength, but good nonetheless.

The Long Run (by James Acker)

Queer YA, you knew it was making it on this list somehow. I wasn't sure an athlete love story would be my jam as they've been hit or miss for me in the past, but this one has so much depth, the characters and their relationship are actually wonderful and lovely and I cried of course. Recommended!

Noah Frye Gets Crushed (by Maggie Horne)

This was, vis a vis the RHC, "a middle grade book with an LGBTQIA main character." Absolutely adorable, funny and charming. full of terrific characters, although I would have liked to see Jessa developed better. I'm actually not a middle grade fan (Baby-Sitters Club notwithstanding ) but this nails it. Horne has got a sapphic YA debut coming out next month, can't wait for that!

Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet (by Molly Morris) 

Love the premise - every 10 years, someone in this small town gets to come back from the dead - wrapped in a queer YA.  I enjoyed it enough to finish it to the end but was my least favorite of these - I found it to be overly quirkified and aggressively 90s (authors need to stop with this).  I was thrown off at the very beginning by the quirky names. The main characters, Wilson and Ryan, are both girls. Ryan's twin brother is Mark, which makes no sense whatsoever as a sibling set. Wilson calls her mother by her first name, Jody, and Jody's ex, a man, is named Cass.  Wilson is named after Wilson Phillips. I was so confused and also, like, why do all the names have to be quirky.  My biggest issue is that the romance didn't fully work and relationships felt inorganic.  I finished it, I guess, is the best I can say!

White Bird (by R. J. Palacio)

This is a book my daughter read and before she wou,d return it to the library, she insisted I read it as well. White Bird is a graphic novel about a Jewish girl in France during the war, who ends up having to hide from the Nazis. It's also a Wonder spinoff; the opening and closing chapters are the girl, now a grandmother, telling her story over Facetime to Julian, her grandson and a character from Wonder.

This is a well-done and very moving story, and seemed an appropriate way to introduce my daughter to the Holocaust. Growing up I knew bits and pieces. We had survivors in the family, a near-miss when my grandfather was almost conscripted into a "work camp," and losses in the extended family. My great-aunt and great-uncle are on the wall at Yad Vashem for saving the life of a Jewish child by faking a pregnancy themselves. We babysat for a family whose grandmother had the tattoo on her arm, which we didn't fully understand at the time.  So I don't remember how I learned about it, except in bits and pieces.  But this opened up a good dialogue in addition to being a good read; and I'm glad she shared this book with me. 

Planet Earth Is Blue (by Nicole Panteleakos)

Another Read Harder book, this one "a children’s book that centers a disabled character but not their disability." I don't know if I would qualify this one as not centering their disability because our main character, Nova, is nonverbal, and to what extent the adults around her are able to communicate with her is a key plot point. But arguably other plot points take precedence and it is on the official recommended list so I will count it. 

This book is really good. It takes place in the 10 days before the Challenger liftoff. Nova is a sixth grader who loves space. She is in her eleventh foster home; her older sister is missing but has promised to come back to watch the Challenger liftoff. We alternate between letters from Nova to her sister and the story of Nova adjusting to her newest foster home and classroom, and eagerly awaiting the launch of the shuttle.

The end, as you may predict, is heart-wrenching and I definitely did sob my way through it. But it's also as "poignant and lovely" as the recommendation promised.  Nicole Panteleakos is autistic herself and does a great job of portraying how autism (especially what we might call "severe" autism) was understood in the late 1980s.  Her afterword talks about some of her specific choices in this regard.  

For those of you out there who read children's literature, especially fellow 80s kids, I highly recommend this one.

The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (by Nancy Springer)

This is kind of scary for a supposedly "middle grade" book! But checking off the "middle grade mystery" category anyway in the Read Harder Challenge. This is the second book in the Enola Holmes series, aka Sherlock Holmes fanfiction in which both he and Mycroft are wildly out of character, but whatever, it's just an excuse to write about the clever and independent Enola. I enjoyed it.

As I update my list I see I didn't finish a lot of books this month. I read parts of several Tournament books, including Deacon King Kong and Shuggy Bain, without finishing them. I made it through about three quarters of We Ride on Sticks before I got so irritated I gave up. (I wanted to like it as I love first person plural narration and my own beloved Gen X; it's just a bit too long and a bit too cutesy for me.) 

I did end up finishing all four of the Tournament of Books semifinalists, although I go back and forth on my favorite. (The Vanishing Half was my fourth-ranked, though I still enjoyed it; the others are simply more inventive.) My brain says Interior Chinatown and my heart says Piranesi.  But Breasts and Eggs is also my favorite! Augh! Anyway, great tournament, with some outstanding judgments, particularly this one.

The Lightning Thief (by Rick Riordan)

This is the beginning of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, which Mina has been really enjoying and begged me to read. Overall I had fun reading this book; I'm a huge fan of Greek mythology and this take on it is extremely clever. However, the novel is very fatphobic and it bummed me out.  Here are some examples of how three characters, all villains, are described:

“Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift store clothes.” 

“[Clarisse] wore a size XXXL” “She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her…” “Her ugly pig eyes glared” 

“We got shoehorned into the car with this big fat lady… she looked like a blue jean blimp”

I found this blog post, which talks about problems with race in the series too (spoilers at that link) and indeed it is also a very white world. I want to read more of the series because of how much Mina likes it, but now I'm too depressed to do it. 

If someone knows Rick Riordan can you tell him that fat people are not, like, grotesque creatures? And also maybe diversify your world and hire a sensitivity reader next time. Thanks.

The Lacemaker And The Princess (by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley)

Category is: "a middle grade book that doesn’t take place in the U.S. or the UK" and thus I read this middle-grade historical novel about a young lacemaker named Isabelle who encounters Marie Antoinette one day, and becomes a companion to her daughter. This is based on a real story about a commoner who did become a companion to Marie-Therese at Versailles.

This novel shows the French revolution from both sides: on the one hand, Isabelle lives in the palace, where the royal family is kind to her; on the other she lives in relative poverty, and Isabelle's brother George has revolutionary ideas and works for the Marquis de Lafayette (who I definitely did not envision as Daveed Diggs, similarly to how I definitely did not envision Marie Antoinette as Kirsten Dunst).

This was a solid middle-grade offering, which made me want to go back and reread Antonia Fraser's biography of Antoinette and also visit Versailles. It's 2020, so I can do the former, but not the latter. Someday!

George (by Alex Gino)

A book about a girl who at birth was assigned male and named George. She wants nothing more than to play Charlotte in her middle school's production of Charlotte's Web, and to be seen as she truly is: a girl.

This is a deeply moving read. It's impossible not to fall in love with Melissa (Melissa is the main character's preferred name) and sympathize or empathize with her struggles.  The use of the female pronoun throughout really emphasizes Melissa's identity. And the cruelty of some of the children in her class is a microcosm of what trans people face in the world today and how frankly ridiculous it is not to let people just be themselves.

Highly recommended for middle grade readers and beyond!

What The Neighbours Did, And Other Stories (by Philippa Pearce)

Read for my resurrected book club with my friends in Chicago, the League of Unreliable Narrators! This is a middle-grade short story collection full of tiny gems of stories that reminded me strongly of the stories we used to read in Junior Great Books -- like "All Summer in a Day" or "The Veldt."

These ambiguous, Joycean little stories are set in a small British village, focus primarily on boys, and are out of print. They should not be -- they are wonderful. And they were tremendously fun to talk about! I highly recommend "Fresh" and "Return to Air" -- if you can find them.

A Wrinkle in Time (by Madeleine L’Engle)

Read this for the first time at the urging of a colleague, in preparation for the upcoming movie. Also it filled a RHC category: "Children’s classic published before 1980. "

This probably would have worked better for me when I was a child. As it is, everything seemed to happen and be over really fast, and the whole "conquer evil with love" thing... I mean... sure. But again, it was resolved super quickly and with a lot of hand-waving. Like, Calvin is one of them after about five minutes and suddenly he and Meg are like, soulmates? Nothing is actually developed organically.

I gather that this is a part of a larger series, but I wanted this story itself to just be fleshed out more. I can imagine this will make a great movie, though!

Space Case (Moon Base Alpha #1) (by Stuart Gibbs)

I discovered this series when I was looking for a read for this Read Harder Challenge category: "The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle grade series."

This incredibly fun book is "a murder mystery on the moon" starring a 12-year-old boy named Dashiell who is a member of the first moon colony in 2040.  Both his parents are scientists and his whole family is on the moon for three years. When a fellow colonist steps out of an airlock and dies, Dashiell becomes convinced it's murder -- and tries to investigate.

I actually was reading another book set on the moon, Artemis by Andy Weir, and put it down in favor of Space Case.  Then I immediately downloaded Space Case #2, which I'l probably also read before I get back to Artemis. Given how much I enjoy Weir, that's a compliment to Stuart Gibbs! Fun read.

Business Trip Reads

I am halfway through my business trip but have already finished reading quite a few things, and I wanted to post about them before I get hopelessly behind.

Unnaturally Green (by Felicia Ricci) 

None of my theater-loving friends called to tell me this memoir existed and I am not sure I forgive them! This is a memoir of Felicia Ricci's time playing Elphaba as a standby in the San Francisco company of Wicked.  Tons of inside theater (and Wicked-specific) detail, and very well-written and edited. This was self-published but Ricci apparently majored in English at Yale, which may explain why she manages to be a talented actor and singer but also an outstanding, funny, engaging writer. Highly recommended for theater fans. 

The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South (by Bruce Levine) 

I was interested in reading about the Civil War after finishing Kindred, so I picked this one up. There are so many Civil War books, but I liked that this one focused on the disintegration of the antebellum south, specifically about the ending of slavery. It's a perspective on that war that I haven't read before, and I learned a lot from it. It is a bit too editorial for my taste -- Levine quotes some contemporary Civil War diaries from plantation owners and they are often described as "sniffing" or "sneering" their words. I prefer my non-fiction bone dry. But this lens on history was illuminating.  I'm moving on to the Autobiography of Malcolm X next, and fantasizing about teaching a literature class including these three books and The Hate U Give. Oh, the essays I could assign!

Also, this is yet another book I've read this year that makes Lincoln in the Bardo feel toothless.

Finally, two Read Harder Challenge books, an all-ages comic and a superhero comic with a female lead:

Princeless: Save Yourself (by Jeremy Whitley) 

This one was the all-ages comic. I don’t think I really “get” comic books. Graphic novels, I get -- they have a beginning, middle, and end. But comic books have a beginning and that’s it. Plus, I find them unsatisfying because it takes me maybe 15 minutes to read one. Is the idea that you spend some time appreciating the artwork and not just reading the words? Because mostly, comic art doesn’t really do it for me. (I did love the art in Fray, the Buffy spinoff comic.) So, I don’t know. I'm glad this exists and has a great message, and I will definitely save it for Mina. But I'll probably wait until there's a collection and not a single issue.  Such as...


Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal (by G. Willow Wilson)

This is a collection of the first five Ms. Marvel comics. Right away I found this more my speed, as the main character, a Muslim girl named Kamala Khan, has more complexity and and there is more of an overarching narrative. It does leave in a "to be continued" moment though, and it did read extremely quickly even though I tried to spend more time appreciating the artwork. Anyway, I really am glad Ms. Marvel exists, but I probably won't continue with the series until, again, there's a collected volume that actually has a complete story in it.

Wonder (by R. J. Palacio)

Recommended by Ian, who has this in hardcover. This is a multi-point-of-view novel chronicling a school year in the life of Auggie, a kid with a severe cranio-facial abnormality. The book addresses how the other kids relate to him, and how he navigates his first-ever foray into school. It's funny, touching, and very real.

I found this book compelling. The multiple points of view = unreliable narrators which I always love. I definitely fell in love with the characters, and enjoyed the special bonus "villain chapter" that was originally a bonus ebook (though it seemed a little too-dramatic-to-be-true in terms of the plot). I'm not sure whether to call this middle grade because of the age level or YA because it has a lot of sophistication and depth. I went with both! 

Thumbs up!

The Graveyard Book (by Neil Gaiman)

One of the assignments for the Read Harder Challenge this year was to read an audiobook that has won an Audie award. The Graveyard Book won three in 2015 (Distinguished Achievement in Production, Children's Titles Ages 8-12, and Multi-Voiced Performance) and as a bonus, is shorter than Double Down, the last audiobook I read, which was sixteen disks long. (This one was only seven.)

The premise of The Graveyard Book is that a family is murdered in the night for unknown reasons by a very creepy man called Jack; the youngest of the family, the little boy, wanders off by happenstance and ends up in a nearby cemetery, where he is promptly adopted by a cemetery's worth of ghosts and christened Nobody (known as Bod) Owens.

The book is episodic, and the main plotline (why did Jack kill Bod's family? why is he still after Bod?) mostly disappears in favor of a series of vignettes. Bod makes a (living) friend, tries to go to school, makes a (dead, witch) friend, becomes familiar with werewolves and ghouls and other creatures, etc. It's Harry Potter-eseque in that way. The audiobook is narrated by a cast of characters, not just one narrator doing different voices.

(A side note probably only of interest to Sherlock fans: Bod's guardian, a vampire named Silas, is voiced by someone who sounds a little bit like Benedict Cumberbatch. I enjoyed picturing Cumberbatch in the part -- Silas is described as tall, dark-haired, pale, very Cumberbatchy -- so I didn't look at the cast list, just pretended it was him. Turns out it's not him, and I completely missed that the villain of the book is narrated by Andrew Scott, who plays Moriarty.)

The narration is mostly excellent, although I did not love Derek Jacobi as the main narrator. He over-narrates (with added pauses for effect in many, many sentences) and his r's sometimes sound like w's, like Corin Redgrave in Persuasion. Small vocal issues like that can get very irritating over the course of seven disks. I recognize that he actually does do a very good job, I'm just nitpicking.

I did enjoy the story, although the main plotline is extremely thin. (The answer to "why did Jack kill the family" actually [spoilers in white, avert your eyes RSS readers] makes no sense and again is basically stolen from Harry Potter. But if he's trying to kill the boy who is the subject of this prophecy, why would he kill the rest of the family first and give the boy enough time to wander off? Makes no sense.) I also found the ghoul section interminable -- if only I'd had the print version so I could skim. But I did like getting back to Jack, finally -- the finale was really well done.

So: overall, a memorable production of a divertingly entertaining book.