Favorite Books By Year
This list is a reflection of my earlier tastes—not necessarily the books I now like best, but the books I once did. I relied on my own memories to excavate all of the selections except the first two, which an old journal of my mother’s helped me to recover. Leaving aside the Daniel Pinkwater novel, which remains one of my favorites to this day, I begin to recognize myself here at age nineteen. — Kevin Brockmeier
Age 1: The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen, illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton
Age 2: The Clumsy Cowboy by Jean Bethell
Age 3: The Real Mother Goose, illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright
Age 4: Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, illustrated by Walt Disney Studios
Age 5: The Saggy Baggy Elephant by Kathryn and Byron Jackson and Gustaf Tenggren
Age 6: Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff
Age 7: The Value of Believing in Yourself: The Story of Louis Pasteur by Spencer Johnson
Age 8: Superfudge by Judy Blume
Age 9: Contest of Champions by Mark Gruenwald and John Romita, Jr.
Age 10: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater
Age 11: Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw!
Age 12: House of Evil and Other Strange Unsolved Mysteries by Margaret Ronan
Age 13: Myth Directions by Robert Asprin
Age 14: Glory Lane by Alan Dean Foster
Age 15: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Age 16: The Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson
Age 17: Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children by Dave Louapre and Dan Sweetman
Age 18: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Age 19: The Fat Man in History: Stories by Peter Carey
Age 20: And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos by John Berger
Age 21: Greetings from Earth: New and Collected Stories by Scott Bradfield
Age 22: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Age 23: The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley
Age 24: All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories by William Maxwell
Age 25: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Age 26: The Sharpshooter Blues by Lewis Nordan
Age 27: The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
Age 28: The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
Age 29: A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
Age 30: The Complete Short Stories by J.G. Ballard
Age 31: The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman
Age 32: My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Age 33: I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
Age 34: Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet
Age 35: The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Age 36: The Torturer’s Wife by Thomas Glave
Age 37: The Neighborhood by Gonçalo M. Tavares
Age 38: Blue Has No South by Alex Epstein
Age 39: The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard
Age 40: Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
Age 41: Under the Skin by Michel Faber
Age 42: Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli
Age 43: Inherited Disorders: Stories, Parables & Problems by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
Age 44: Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers by Ryan O’Neill
Age 45: Fireflies by Luis Sagasti
Age 46: West by Carys Davies
Age 47: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Age 48: Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
Age 49: Yesterday by Juan Emar
Age 50: The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry
Age 51 (so far): After World by Debbie Urbanski