So Far from God

Written by: Ana Castillo

First line: La Loca was only three years old when she died.

Why you should read this book: This is a story in the tradition of Spanish magical realism, but set in modern-day New Mexico. Sofi has four daughters and no help from her good-for-nothing ex, but she keeps it together throughout her life, working hard while strange things happen to her family, beginning with the death of her youngest daughter, who proceeds to fly out of her coffin before they carry her into church, and announce that she has visited heaven and hell. Things do not get any simpler or easier for Sophie, but she does her best for her children as long as she is able, and for her community when her children don't need her. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: There's a lot of Spanish in this book and a lot of it seemed to be slang or regional dialect, so the internet couldn't translate everything.

Howl's Moving Castle

Written by: Diana Wynne Jones

First line: In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. 

Why you should read this book: As the eldest of three sisters, Sophie expects to lead a boring and unfulfilling life, until the day she bumps into Wizard Howl, learns that her sisters have swapped identities, and runs afoul of the treacherous Witch of the Waste. Transformed into an old woman (and gradually realizing she's more than a little witchy herself) Sophie takes refuge in Howl's moving castle, a magical hideaway powered by an opinioned fire spirit. While the Miyazaki film based on this book is delightful and one of my favorites, the book is much richer and deeper and will hold many surprises and details that wouldn't fit into the movie.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're a cowardly womanizer.

Maurice

Written by: E. M. Forster 

First Line: Once a term the whole school went for a walk--that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys. 

Why you should read this book: It's the early nineteen hundreds and Maurice Hall appears to be a typical suburban English boy--strong, snobbish, eager to conform--attending public school and then Cambridge, but within himself he recognizes a strange proclivity: Maurice is a homosexual, which, at the time was both a legal crime and an almost unspeakable moral offense. At Cambridge he carries on an emotionally intimate and romantic three-year relationship instigated by his friend Clive Durham, falls deeply in love, is eventually spurned when Durham determines to be "normal" and marries a nice girl. What's remarkable about this book is that, after grieving deeply and for more than a year, Maurice's heart heals and he is able to love again, passionately and without reserve, even knowing what fate may await a man of his desires in that time and place. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It wasn't published for a half century after it was written because you couldn't publish a story about a gay person with a happy ending a hundred years ago; this is a story for people with intellectual sensitivity and without cruel prejudice. 

The Secret School

Written by: Avi

First line: On a cool Monday morning in early April 1925, Ida Bidson, aged fourteen, carefully guided her family's battered Model T Ford along a narrow, twisting dirt road in Elk Valley, Colorado.

Why you should read this book: Ida loves education and dreams of becoming a school teacher, but to do so she has to graduate from the tiny one-room schoolhouse, pass her exit exams, and go to high school in town. Calamity strikes when Mr. Jordan, the head of the school board, who doesn't think girls need education anyway, decides to close the school down two months early. With the democratic support of the other seven students, Ida endeavors to secretly run the school until the end of the term, playing teacher for the other kids while working to maintain her studies and follow her dream.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're one of those people who freaks out about children's stories where clever children disobey and outwit dull and stubborn adults.

My Life as a Fake

Written by: Peter Carey

First line: I have known John Slater all my life. 

Why you should read this book: Inspired by a real life literary hoax, this is a fictional novel about a literary hoax, but in the story, the literary hoax literally grows legs and walks around terrifying its creator in the manner of Frankenstein's monster. It's one of those strange, dreamlike narratives where you get the sense that absolutely every character is lying about almost everything they say, including the first person narrator, and everybody in the story is kind of unlikeable at the core, but the reader is drawn in enough to keep reading just to figure out what's actually going on. Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a prestigious British literary magazine, takes a weird vacation to Kuala Lumpur with John Slater, a famous poet she doesn't like at all, and meets a disgraced Australian writer who once perpetrated a literary hoax that, if he is to be believed, was way too successful. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: I'm not entirely sure it ever explains itself satisfactorily. 

Nana and Kaoru Volume 3

Written by: Ryuta Amazume

First line: It's coming!

Why you should read this book: Nana finally recovers from her illness thanks to a well-placed suppository, after which the real world intrudes for a while, with Nana and Kaoru having a surprising encounter involving theatrical makeup, and another one where a bunch of people burst through Kaoru's door looking for Nana while she's restrained in his bed, and a very long sequence involving Nana and Tachi's year-long track and field rivalry. This results in another threeway breather where Nana and Kaoru both admit to themselves, but not each other, that they really, really, really want to cuddle. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: At this point in the story, it's hard not to get frustrated with how much effort the characters who have been engaging in hot BDSM scenes for thousands of pages are putting into pretending not to love each other. 

Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

Written by: Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, and Beata Ernman

First line: This could have been my story.

Why you should read this book: Svante and Malena, loving and successful Swedish musicians, understood what it was like to be a little different, but when their two daughters, Greta and Beata, both began exhibiting difficulty moving through the world, they had to stretch their understanding to find ways to accommodate neurodiverse kids in an unaccommodating world. While Beata suffered debilitating intolerance to noise, Greta became increasingly despondent over climate change and the fact that the people who should be doing something about it were not. Of course, at the age of fifteen, Greta's "student strike" outside Parliament turns her into one of the most well-known climate activists and inspires countless young people to join her cause. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's very difficult, emotionally speaking: a lot of the book is about how much Greta and Beata suffer before their parents are able to figure out how to keep their sensitive children healthy, and the rest of it is basically about the very dire situation threatening all life on planet Earth right now. 

Telling Tales: A History of Literary Hoaxes

Written by: Melissa Katsoulis

First line: From disgruntled Mormons and fake Native Americans to bored students and lustful aristocrats, the bizarre history of literary hoaxers is every bit as revealing as the orthodox rollcall of Western writers, as is their acute appreciation of what inspires, frightens and resonates with their generation.

Why you should read this book: This is not an exhaustive catalog, but rather a touristy journey highlighting some of the most remarkable and entertaining cases of literary hoaxes, perpetrated for various reasons. Some hoaxers are out for money, others for fame; some are trying to impress their parents, and other are attempting to discredit entire organization. It's interesting to learn their methods and their motivations, and of course, their inevitable unmasking. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're considering perpetrating your own literary hoax and looking for advice on how to get away with it. 

Nana and Kaoru Volume 2

Written by: Ryuta Amazume

First line: The name's Sugimora Kaoru.

Why you should read this book: This sweet, exploratory, completely nonsexual BDSM fantasy story about two Japanese high school students fumbling their way through desire continues with Nana and Kaoru's secret relationship impacting their interactions in their school life, which then flows back into their "breathers." Several chapters comprise Nana's first spanking, and then there's a weird interlude with Tachi strongarming Kaoru into a scene after he and Nana miss their connection on New Year's Eve, and finally there's an absolutely massive storyline about Nana getting sick and needing a lot of help to insert a suppository. Meanwhile, Nana's friends are starting to question her relationship with Kaoru, Tachi is getting really jealous, and Kaoru struggles with his feelings of love, tenderness, and devotion to his sub, none of which seem dominant to him, all of which he's sure Nana would reject. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a funny softcore BDSM fantasy manga about teenagers, so probably a lot of people just aren't going to vibe positively with this content, and they should just step away and go cry about obscenity somewhere else, because this page doesn't believe in literary censorship.

The Last Cuentista

Written by: Donna Barba Higuera

First line: Lita tosses another pinon log on the fire. 

Why you should read this book: Petra and her family are among the lucky few granted a place on the great starships leaving Earth just before Haley's comet smashes into it and destroys everyone and everything, including her beloved storyteller grandmother, and now she will spend hundreds of years in cryo-sleep, having important computer files uploaded to her brain so she can be a scientist when humanity finds its new home. But even as the ship launches and Petra falls into an uneasy stasis, dissidents have taken over the ship, and when Petra finally awakes, it is into a strange, nightmare reality controlled by "The Collective," a group that has evolved into a species she can barely recognize as human, which has eliminated hunger and war by eliminating art, culture, love, feelings, family, and the stories that Petra loves. Alone among the others on the ship, Petra retains her memories of Earth, and armed with her grandmother's stories, she must find a way to save what remains of humanity from The Collective's single-minded focus to destroy it. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It took me way longer than usual to read because this book is frankly terrifying for a children's story; I don't scare easy in print (I think the last time was Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box) but something about this girl forced to pretend to be brainwashed while mourning the loss of her family and the rest of humanity and made to live among the fascist Collective just hit way too close to home.