Reading List

Books I’ve kept in my collection.

2025

Hannah’s War – Jan Eliasberg [DNF]
Sea Creatures Prefer Redheads – Brianne Gillen
Mercy of the Vampire King – Rhiannon Futch
Children of Anguish and Anarchy – Tomi Adeyemi
The Survivalists – Kashana Cauley
The High Dive – Chelsea Fagan
The Witch’s Apprentice and Other Stories – Ekta R. Garg
Sunrise on the Reaping – Suzanne Collins
Sky Full of Elephants – Cebo Campbell

2024

Cry, the Beloved Country– Alan Paton (2nd half)
Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
The Lost World – Michael Crichton (audiobook)
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents – Julia Alvarez(2nd half, audiobook)
Some Kind of Animal – Maria Romasco-Moore
The Source of Self-Regard – Toni Morrison
Black Love Letters – Cole Brown and Natalie Johnson
Pleasure Activism – adrienne maree brown
The Request – David Bell
Drawing Near – John Bevere [DNF]
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self – Danielle Evans
Creep – Myriam Gurba
The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary – Catherine Gray
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde – Tia Williams [loved this one!]
Happy & You Know It – Laura Hankin

2023

Holier Than Thou: How God’s Holiness Helps Us Trust Him – Jackie Hill Perry
In Love & Trouble – Alice Walker
How to Say Babylon – Safiya Sinclair
The Date – Louise Jensen

2022

Long Division – Kiese Laymon (second half)
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau – Michael Zapata
Such a Fun Age – Kiley Reid
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie – Ayana Mathis
Luster – Raven Leilani
The Personal Librarian – Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
The Other Black Girl – Zakiya Dalila Harris

2021

Ayiti – Roxane Gay
Everything Inside – Edwidge Danticat
I Almost Forgot About You (also here) – Terry McMillan
Hunger – Roxane Gay
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – Suzanne Collins
Long Division – Kiese Laymon (first half)

2020

Lilith’s Brood – Octavia Butler (re-read)
Black Is the Body – Emily Bernard
Difficult Women – Roxane Gay
Being Mortal – Atul Gawande
The Giver – Lois Lowry
Gathering Blue – Lois Lowry
Messenger – Lois Lowry
Son – Lois Lowry
Seed to Harvest – Octavia Butler (re-read)
The Hypnotist’s Love Story – Liane Moriarty
What Women Fear – Angie Smith
Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler
The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett

2019

If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin
Barracoon – Zora Neale Hurston
An American Marriage – Tayari Jones
Well-Read Black Girl – Glory Edim
Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
Children of Blood and Bone – Tomi Adeyemi
My Sister, the Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite
Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary – Kathleen Collins
Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams
Redeeming Love – Francine Rivers
Octavia’s Brood – Walidah Imarisha & adrienne maree brown
Children of Virtue & Vengeance – Tomi Adeyemi

2018

Please Stop Laughing at Me – Jodee Blanco
Dark Matter – Blake Crouch
The Black Rose – Tananarive Due
Thirst: Quenching Your Deepest Desire – Wesley Knight
Paradise – Toni Morrison
1984 – George Orwell
A Garden to Keep – Jamie Langston Turner

2017

Kingston Noir – Colin Channer (ed.)
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
Haiti Noir – Edwidge Danticat (ed.)
Lightening – Dean Koontz
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

**Below is a list of books I read prior to 2017. I’ve read many more books than are on this list, but I can’t keep up with things I don’t write down somewhere safe.

Advice

Letters to a Young Sister – Hill Harper
Women Have all the Power…Too Bad They Don’t Know It: Secrets Every Man’s Daughter Should Know – Michael J. Lockwood

Anthologies

The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, 7^th Ed. – Ann Charters
The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Lit. – Donnell and Welsh
Best African American Fiction: 2009 – Early and Harris
Norton Anthology of African American Lit., 2^nd Ed. – Gates Jr. and McKay
Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, 2^nd Ed. Gilbert and Gubar
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1, 8^th Ed. – Stephen Greenblatt
The Norton Shakespeare, based on Oxford, 2^nd Ed. – Greenblatt, et. al.
Heath Anthology of Am. Lit. Colonial-1800; Vol. A, 5^th Ed. – Paul Lauter
Heath Anthology of Am. Lit. 1800-1865; Vol. B, 5^th Ed. – Paul Lauter
Anthology of American Literature Vol. 2,  9^th Ed. – McMichael, et. al.
Bedford Introduction to Literature 7^th Ed. – Michael Meyer
Norton Anthology of Latino Literature – Ilan Stavans
The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare , Annotated – Howard Staunton
The Cypress Dome Issue 17, 2006 – UCF Student Government
The Cypress Dome Issue 21, 2010 – UCF Student Government

Crime/Medical Drama

City of Bones – Michael Connelly
Outbreak – Robin Cook
Black Notice – Patricia Cornwell
Holy Terror – Jane Holleman
Havana Twist – Lia Matera
Fatal – Michael Palmer
1^st to Die – James Patterson

Drama

A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
Hell Has No Fury – Keith Lee Johnson
Have you Met Miss Jones? – Tarsha Jones
A Day Late and a Dollar Short – Terry McMillan
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Romeo & Juliet – Simply Shakespeare

Fiction

The Birth of Venus – Sarah Dunant
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
Sula – Toni Morrison
The Help – Kathryn Stockett
Native Son – Richard Wright
Goodbye, Columbus – Phillip Roth (Novella/Short Stories)
For Colored Girls – Ntozake Shange

Folktales

Folk Tales from the Soviet Union – Babloyan and Shumskaya
Red Ridin’ in the Hood – Patricia S. Marcantonio
The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women – Katrin Tchana
Cloaked in Red – Vivian Vande Velde
Lon Po Po – Ed Young

Friendship/Romance

Watercolored Pearls – Stacy Hawkins Adams
Cosmic Rendezvous – Robyn Amos
Miranda and the Warrior – Elain Barbieri
Mistress to a Millionaire – Helen Brooks
Eloquent Silence – Sandra Brown
Crush – Michele Grant, Lutishia Lovely, Cydney Rax
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Joy – Victoria C. Murray
Shooting the Moon – Brenda Novak
Deliver Me – Farrah Rochon
Broken – Dar Tomlinson

Graphic Novels

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – Alison Bechdel
Baby’s in Black – Arne Bellstorf
Anya’s Ghost – Vera Brosgol
Auschwitz – Pascal Croci
The Color of Earth – Kim Dong Hwa
Kumpung Boy – Lat
Batman: The Killing Joke – Allan Moore and Brian Bolland
The Storm in the Barn – Matt Phelan
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood – Marjane Satrapi
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare
Bone: Out from Boneville – Jeff Smith
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale – Art Spiegelman
The Arrival – Shaun Tan
Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush – Luis Alberto Urrea
American Born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang
Level Up – Gene Luen Yang

Latin American/Caribbean

At the Threshold of Memory – Marjorie Agosín
Dear Anne Frank – Marjorie Agosín
My Invented Country – Isabel Allende
In the Name of Salomé – Jula Alvarez
Tales from the Town of Widows – James Cañon
The Latin Deli – Judith Ortiz Cofer
The House on the Lagoon – Rosario Ferré
Fefu and her Friends – Maria Irene Fornes
Lilus Kikus – Elena Poniatowska
General Sun, My Brother – Jacques Stephen Alexis
Anacaona: Golden Flower
Behind the Mountains – Edwidge Danticat
Breath, Eyes, Memory – Edwidge Danticat
Krik? Krak! – Edwidge Danticat
The Dew Breaker – Edwidge Danticat
The Farming of Bones – Edwidge Danticat
Annie John – Jamaica Kinkaid
The History of Mary Prince – Mary Prince
Masters of the Dew – Jacques Roumain

Memoir

The Color of Water – James McBride
Night – Elie Wiesel
Things We Couldn’t Say – Diet Eman

LIS Career

Straight from the Stacks – Laura Townsend Kane
A Day in the Life – Shontz and Murray

Race Relations

The Rodrigo Chronicles – Richard Delgado
Race and Ethnicity in the United States – Richard T. Schaefer

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Kindred – Octavia E. Butler
Lilith’s Brood – Octavia E. Butler
Parable of the Sower – Octavia E. Butler
Parable of the Talents – Octavia E. Butler
Seed to Harvest – Octavia E. Butler
It Must Have Been an Angel – Marjorie Lewis Lloyd
The Aura of Love – Kathy J. Marsh
Illusions – Pamela Leigh Starr
Mission – Pamela Leigh Starr

Writing

Imaginative Writing – Janey Burroway
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life – Anne Lamott
Understanding Comics – Scott McCloud
Writers Inc – Sebranek, Kemper, Meyer
The Elements of Style – Strunk and White

Young Adult

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie
Fever 1793 – Laurie Halse Anderson
No Passengers Beyond this Point – Gennifer Choldenko
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins
Matched – Ally Condie
Crossed – Ally Condie
Reached – Ally Condie
The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 – Christopher Paul Curtis
Dark Life – Kat Falls
Cloaked – Alex Flinn
The Thief Lord – Cornelia Funke
Coraline – Neil Gaiman
The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
Among the Hidden – Margaret P. Haddix
The Darkest Path – Jeff Hirsch
The Eleventh Plague – Jeff Hirsch
The First Part Last – Angela Johnson
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore – Joyce William
Legend – Marie Lu
Cinder – Marissa Meyer
Scarlet – Marissa Meyer
Becoming Naomi León – Pam Muñoz Ryan
Endangered – Eliot Schrefer
Between Shades of Gray – Ruta Sepetys
The Composition – Antonio Skármeta
When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead
The Cay – Theodore Taylor
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit – Nahoko Uehashi
One Crazy Summer – Rita Williams-Garcia
The 5^th Wave – Rick Yancey
The Infinite Sea – Rick Yancey
What’s Left of Me – Kat Zhang

Other

Metro Stop Paris: An Underground History of the City of Light – Dallas Gregor
Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
Better – Atul Gawande
Beyond Good & Evil – Friedrich Nietzsche