I hate the question about the deserted island.
You know the one– “If you were stranded on a deserted island, what one book would you want to have?” This is a question generally posed to lovers of words, and that makes it inherently unfair. I’ve never met a reader or a writer who could answer that question surely and honestly. Instead we all hem and haw and look for loopholes. “Well, if I were going with something survival-themed, I’d chose Lord of the Flies or The Hunger Games, but if I just wanted to spend my last days laughing, I’d choose Me Talk Pretty One Day or I Was Told There’d Be Cake. Wait, do I have access to a computer on the island? If I could get some work done, I’d go with this year’s Writer’s Market…” No one ever names just one book. And if they do, they lay awake the rest of the night worrying they chose the wrong one. Trust me.
So I want to preface everything you see on this page with the following disclaimer: These are not ALL the books, poems, stories, quotes, and words I have ever loved. There are many, many more. Chances are, I am reading something right now that, once I finish, could easily land a place on one of these lists. If I were stranded on a deserted island, I would want all of these books and fifty more and one hundred that I haven’t read yet. Because isn’t that really what we should be doing on the island? Reading new things? We’re always complaining that there are too many books we want to read and not enough time to read them. What are we doing packing our favorite titles for that one-way trip to the tropics when we could finally be checking some things off our Goodreads list? Honestly. With that in mind, here are a FEW of my favorite things.
Not all of them. Not even close.
Poetry
A Few Favorite Poems:
- “The Story, Around the Corner” by Naomi Shihab Nye
- “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins
- “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden
- “A Certain Weariness” by Pablo Neruda
- “The Lesson of the Moth” by Don Marquis
- “Sonrisas” by Pat Mora
- “What’s in My Journal” by William Stafford
- “The Paperweight” by Gjertrud Schnackenberg
- “Unicorn” by Anne Wilkinson
- “Or Death and December” by George Garrett
- “Aubade” by Tria Wood
- “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert Service
Short Stories & Essays
A Few Favorite Short Stories:
- “The Emissary” by Ray Bradbury
- “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl
- “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- “Bums in the Attic” by Sandra Cisneros
- “The Room in the Tower” by E.F. Benson
- “Proving Up” by Karen Russell
- “The Long Rain” by Ray Bradbury
- “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
- “When and How” by Vivian Vande Velde
- “The Quest for Blank Claveringi” by Patricia Highsmith
- “When the Clock Strikes” by Tanith Lee
Young Adult & Middle Grade Fiction
More YA & Middle Grade Fiction:
- The Little Leftover Witch by Florence Laughlin
- Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma
- The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
- The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
- Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick
- Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky
- Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
- Which Witch? by Eva Ibbotson
- The Nest by Kenneth Oppel
- Dorrie and the Blue Witch by Patricia Coombs
- The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger
- All Hallow’s Eve: 13 Stories by Vivian Vande Velde
- Redwood & Ponytail by K.A. Holt
Current Favorite YA Series:
Adult Fiction
More Adult Fiction:
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
- Night Film by Marisha Pessl
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Memoirs & Books on Writing
Carie Juettner 