By title

By author

Sam Potts

• Lou Gehrig, Boy of the Sandlots
• Guernsey Van Riper Jr.

• I think this is the first book I ever picked out on my own and read by myself. I’m pretty sure it is. I can tell you this for sure: Lou Gehrig always has been and always will be my favorite baseball player. And I’m from Boston, so that’s saying something about the influence of this book.

• What Do People Do All Day?
• Richard Scarry

• Before there was the Internet, there was What Do People Do All Day? to describe the whole world and everything in it. Still hours of fun to explore every page.

• Stuart Little
• E.B. White

• He wears a sweater and sails a boat and drives a car and gets dumped on a garbage barge. Oh, and he’s a mouse.

• Paddle To The Sea
• Holling C. Holling

• An adventure story starring a carved wooden boat that travels all the way across Canda. A carved wooden boat? you say. That’s right: a carved wooden boat! I wished I could be that boat.

• The Great Brain, Great Brain Series
• John D. Fitzgerald

• This book and the other Great Brain books that followed are a handy how-to guide in the arts of scheming, swindling, cheating, and being a younger brother.

• Tintin Adventures (Series)
• Herge

• We just called them “Tintins.” I’d say, “Do you have any new Tintins?” and my friend Jamie would say, “I just finished The Black Island. You can borrow it but you have to give it back.” YOu always had to give them ack because these books are precious.

• Dubliners
• James Joyce

• Yeah it’s James Joyce, but so what? He ain’t so tough. The beauty of these stories is in their simplicity. You’ll be able to taste the peas with vinegar and pepper in “Two Gallants.” Read this when your friends are reading Catcher in the Rye. (And read that one, too.)

• Ficciones
• Jorge Luis Borges

• A character named Borges comes across an encyclopedia of a fictional land. Pierre Menard rewrites bits of Don Quixote verbatim, by coincidence. Funes remembers everything that happened, ever. Amazing. Worth re-reading about every five years or so.

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Essays and Arguments
• David Foster Wallace

• If you get far enough to read about the toilets in the title essay, you’ll probably go on to read every word Wallace ever wrote. This book also contains the most terrifying description of baton-twirling you could ever read.

• Anatomy of a Typeface
• Anthony Lawson

• For the serious typographer as well as the font enthusiast: histories of all the classic typefaces from the days when fonts weighed about 50 pounds (because they were made out of lead). Simply indispensable.

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• Homeland
• R.A. Salvatore

• "The first fifty pages of the Dark Elf Trilogy have enough swordplay and plot twists to make you gasp."

• The Tin Woodman of Oz
• L. Frank Baum

• "All the Oz books, actually. But I liked the Tin Woodsman the most, so this is the book I'm listing. Let's not psychoanalyze."

• The Belgariad
• David Eddings

• Also, The Mallorean. "When I was the new kid in school, the characters in these books were my buds. Funny, courageous, and there's 1000 pages worth of them."

• The Princess Bride
• William Goldman

• "Funny and clever and full of heart."

• Dragonlance: Chronicles and Legends

• by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. "I started with the computer game and then turned to the books. Lots of gods and glowy magic and giant spiders rearing in pain! Awesome."

Jon Skovron

• The Strange Case of Origami Yoda
• Tom Angleberger

• "It's a mystery with a lot of Star Wars jokes and funny pictures. And at the end of each book, it shows you how to make a different Star Wars character."

• How to Grow Up and Rule the World, by Vordak the Incomprehensible
• Vordak T. Incomprehensible

• "It's about a super villain. And it's funny. There should be more books about funny super villains."

• Bunnicula
• James Howe

• "It's about a vampire rabbit who sucks the juices of vegetables. My dad liked this book when he was a kid. It's still good."

• The Pawn of Prophecy
• David Eddings

• "Swords, sorcery, spies, gods, adventure, and humor. I'm not sure what else you need. This is the first book in The Belgariad series, which hooked me on reading forever."

• White Cat
• Holly Black

• "Mafia gangsters with magic."

• I Hunt Killers
• Barry Lyga

• "The son of a serial killer catches serial killers. Not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach."

Mo Willems

• The Complete Peanuts
• Charles M. Schulz

• The gold standard of comic strips. Fun for everyone; except Charlie Brown, who seems a little down on his luck.

• George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends Collector’s Edition
• James Marshall

• Lessons learned include: just because you've got a best friend doesn't mean you have to pour pea soup in your shoes. I try to re-read this before I start making new book.

• The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
• Bill Watterson

• When Hobbes is wise, Calvin is a stinker. When Hobbes is hungry, Calvin is in trouble.

• Go, Dog, Go!
• Philip D. Eastman

• A dog party in a tree? Wait for me, I’ve got to get my hat!

• Cul De Sac, This Exit

• The best comic strip you've never heard of. Alice and her family walk in the footsteps of Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, only sideways.

• Children at Play, A Cul-de-Sac Collection

Peter Brown

• I can't overemphasize how perfectly James Marshall balances sweetness and absurdity in these stories.

• Everyone Poops

• Everyone Poops is a continuous source of 'inspiration.

• James and the Giant Peach

• Witty dialogue, fantastical adventure and a wonderfully dark sense of humor seem to effortlessly flow from Roald Dahl's pen.

• This series is perhaps the most unique, thoughtful, and provocative fantasy I’ve ever read.

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

• I was mesmerized by the way Verne describes the science and logic of the world in which this story takes place.