What My Favorite Books Say About Me

Get a glimpse of some of the books I’ve loved, and what my reading habits say about me. Then share a note about some of your favorite books so we can chat about them!

Sep 02, 2026

September Theme: The Stories We Carry

Big Question: Why do certain stories stay with us?

Week 1: The Books That Changed Us

What I wrote below is based on the following reflective writing prompt included in Saturday’s Writing Prompts About Books That Changed Us post.

Prompt: What Your Favorite Books Say About You

What do your favorite books reveal about you?

Why did I choose it?

I chose this prompt because I find questions like “What’s your favorite book?” or “What book do you recommend most?” nearly impossible to answer. Why? Because I genuinely believe in getting and giving tailored-to-the-person reading recommendations, down to current life stage and mood when possible. I also understand that a book I deemed as a favorite when I was in my teens or early twenties will likely no longer be a favorite (even if it is still a beloved book via nostalgia) when I am in my thirties or eighties, and that a book that doesn’t resonate all that much with me might resonate more deeply with another reader. And so on.

Plus, if I don’t tailor my book recommendations to the reader asking for them, the books I recommend really seem arbitrary sometimes, as such recommendations could then depend on a myriad of unpredictable things like my current mood, what I literally just finished reading, and or what I’m into reading during any given life stage I’m experiencing, or what is relevant to our current socio-economic climate, etc. Essentially, to me, saying a book is a ‘favorite’ is similar to saying that you would recommend it to others. Hence, my conundrum.

Basically, I find it hard not to think about books and who’s reading them without a bit of nuance and layers, as each person is capable of experiencing a book in a different way… which I am also realizing is not exactly the point of today’s question. Because of course there are some books that I like more than others… if that is the point of today’s question?

So, what follows is my attempt to understand what books are my favorite, and maybe a little bit about why…

My Response: What My Favorite Books Say About Me

I haven’t been writing many, or any, book reviews lately, when I used to write two to three per week.

Either way, I think starting with some of my previous book reviews will be a good idea, as they’ll offer me some insight into the books I tend to enjoy, and maybe a little bit more about why I enjoyed them when I first read them.

Going back through some of my book reviews from earlier in 2026, here are some of the books that still stand out to me as books that will stay with me for a long time. Click on the links to see more information about the books, as well as my reading notes or reviews.

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution by Anand Gopal
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
The Age of Calamities by Senaa Ahmad
The Bombshell by Darrow Farr
A Hymn to Life: Shame has to Change Sides by Gisèle Pelicot
My Dear You by Rachel Khong
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Let the Poets Govern by Camonghne Felix
Burn Down Master’s House by Clay Cane
Love is an Algorithm by Laura Brooke Robson
People Like Us by Jason Mott
The Astral Library by Kate Quinn
Alchemised by SenLinYu
The Merge by Grace Walker
The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad
The Capital of Dreams by Heather O’Neill

My top read for 2025 was The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami, and other top reads from that year include:

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
The Favorites by Layne Fargo
My Friends by Fredrik Backman
Mỹ Documents by Kevin Nguyen
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
The Pretender by Jo Harkin
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past by Nate DiMeo
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds by John Fugelsang

You can see the complete list of my top reads from 2025 here.

My top read of 2024 was Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller, and other top reads from that year include:

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Real Americans by Rachel Khong
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult
The Women by Kristin Hannah
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
Swiped by L.M. Chilton
Again and Again by Jonathan Evison
Parable of the Sower Octavia E. Butler
The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner
Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny
Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki

You can see the complete list of my top reads from 2024 here.

According to my Storygraph stats, when weighing the past 167 books I have read and rated over the past year and a half, I mostly enjoy books that are emotional, reflective, dark, informative, mysterious, and tense. And, no joke, I only read one relaxing book. Though at least 27 of the books I read were funny and 24 were adventurous. So, I guess I enjoy a book that will make me feel deeply while also making me think deeply, which sounds about right. Yet I’m not sure I enjoy mysterious books, as I hardly ever read mysteries, so that stat is, um, a mystery to me.

It’s no surprise to find that I mainly read Literary Fiction, with most of my four and five-star reads being in that genre, as well as in the Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Nonfiction categories, though I have stopped rating books with that star rating system recently. My reading stats also indicate that I read mainly books that have been published within the past five years, which is a newer habit of mine, ever since I started a Bookstagram, though that will probably fluctuate again soon, as we continue to read Daily Drafts & Dialogues book club picks together.

Looking back at my ‘top reads’ reading lists, it also seems like I enjoy books about strong women, as well as books about writers, books, and art, which is also not a surprise. And that I enjoy books that touch on dystopia but don’t necessarily feel dystopic in the end. I also seem to enjoy books and stories that explore the concept of justice, especially for traditionally marginalized communities, as well as stories that explore how technology impacts us. And stories about forgotten histories or perspectives in history seem to resonate with me, as well as character-driven stories.

And if we want to go way back, I did write a few posts about books that were influential to me when I was younger.

From my childhood, there were:

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Come Back, Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish and Wallace Tripp
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
The Magic School Bus: On the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen
Curious George by H.A. Rey
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

From my adolescence, there were:

Matilda by Roald Dahl
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
It’s Not the End of the World by Judy Blume
Haunted by R.L. Stine, as well as his other Fear Street books, and the Goosebumps series
The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene, as well as all other Nancy Drew books
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Client by John Grisham
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

From my teenage years, there were:

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
The Odyssey by Homer
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

So, all in all, I would say that the books I tend to gravitate toward the most are the books that have something going on beneath their surface. I like books that give me something to wrestle with, whether I realize that’s what I’m getting into when I pick them up or not. And I seem to have a particular fondness for stories that unsettle me a little, introduce me to people or ideas I wouldn’t otherwise encounter, or leave me looking at something familiar in a different way.

The common thread running through all the books I have remembered, that have stayed with me and maybe even changed me, is that they have done so much more than entertain me. They have moved me, challenged me, surprised me, and many times, allowed me to walk away feeling like I understood something or someone, even myself and the world I live in, a little bit better than I did before I read them. I’m still hesitant to claim them as ‘favorites’ but for the purposes of this post, and this week’s exploration of the books that have changed us, I suppose in many respects they are?

Join the Conversation

What’s your response to the question I answered in today’s post, or any of the other reflective journaling prompts in this week’s Writing Prompts About Books That Changed Us post?

What do you think your favorite books reveal about you?

Leave a comment or join the Drafters Workshop Chat or Dialoguers Chat, where we’ll be discussing the books that changed us for the rest of the week.

Whether you leave a comment or join one of the chats to share your responses, ask questions, or connect with other writers and support their work, I can’t wait to see what you contribute!