Here are 100 books that Reading in the Brain fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a reading educator my mission in life is to give the gift of literacy. Inspiration came from my mother, my first-grade teacher who taught me to read. At 90-plus years old and declining, I dedicated one of my 18 books on teaching literacy to her. She sent me the last letter she would ever write and said, “Oh, oh, oh!”—a quote from Dick and Jane, the book she used to teach reading to three generations of first graders—“I always wanted to write a book but never did. I hope a word of mine is on a page or two of yours.” Her inspiration is on every page.
Richard Grant a British journalist and adventure writer traveled the world before moving from New York City with his Brookland girlfriend to transform a dilapidated antebellum mansion in Mississippi into a new home and a new life.
In the process he discovers the real Mississippi—good and bad—as “the most American place on earth.” This book makes the reader laugh, cry, but most important think deeply about jazz, sex, politics, food, America’s class system, racism, democracy, and what it means to be American which is in constant change.
Grant’s writing is addictive and an elixir—you can’t put it down.
Adventure writer Richard Grant takes on "the most American place on Earth" the enigmatic, beautiful, often derided Mississippi Delta. Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. This is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place. Imagine A Year In Provence with alligators and assassins, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with hunting scenes and swamp-to-table dining. On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As a reading educator my mission in life is to give the gift of literacy. Inspiration came from my mother, my first-grade teacher who taught me to read. At 90-plus years old and declining, I dedicated one of my 18 books on teaching literacy to her. She sent me the last letter she would ever write and said, “Oh, oh, oh!”—a quote from Dick and Jane, the book she used to teach reading to three generations of first graders—“I always wanted to write a book but never did. I hope a word of mine is on a page or two of yours.” Her inspiration is on every page.
Cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg writes powerfully about how the way we teach reading is not working and why it cannot continue.
His decades of research reaffirms my own four decades of calling for change in how we teach reading. This powerful and impactful book was a major jumpstart for the science of reading movement—a must read for every teacher and parent of a beginning reader.
According to a leading cognitive scientist, we've been teaching reading wrong. The latest science reveals how we can do it right.
In 2011, when an international survey reported that students in Shanghai dramatically outperformed American students in reading, math, and science, President Obama declared it a "Sputnik moment": a wake-up call about the dismal state of American education. Little has changed, however, since then: over half of our children still read at a basic level and few become highly proficient. Many American children and adults are not functionally literate, with serious consequences. Poor readers are more likely to drop out…
As a reading educator my mission in life is to give the gift of literacy. Inspiration came from my mother, my first-grade teacher who taught me to read. At 90-plus years old and declining, I dedicated one of my 18 books on teaching literacy to her. She sent me the last letter she would ever write and said, “Oh, oh, oh!”—a quote from Dick and Jane, the book she used to teach reading to three generations of first graders—“I always wanted to write a book but never did. I hope a word of mine is on a page or two of yours.” Her inspiration is on every page.
This book changed my life as a scholar who champions change in how we teach reading.
Susman brilliantly charts the path for anyone who wants to open minds, move hearts, and change the world in any movement or endeavor. She chronicles her own career journey which led her to be the renowned head of corporate affairs at Pfizer during the pandemic and beyond and leaves the reader with a path to follow in their own campaigns for change based on compassion and common sense.
Pfizer's trailblazing communications leader, Sally Susman, reveals how we can break through the noise to get our message across and make positive change.
A global pandemic. A roller-coaster economy. Political tensions ready to ignite, and common civility at an all-time low. For leaders, the pressures and the stakes could not be higher. And in such a stormy, often dangerous world, communications can no longer be considered a soft skill. The ability to reach people and drive public conversation is a rock-hard competency.
In this wise and inspiring book, Sally Susman, the renowned head of corporate…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
As a reading educator my mission in life is to give the gift of literacy. Inspiration came from my mother, my first-grade teacher who taught me to read. At 90-plus years old and declining, I dedicated one of my 18 books on teaching literacy to her. She sent me the last letter she would ever write and said, “Oh, oh, oh!”—a quote from Dick and Jane, the book she used to teach reading to three generations of first graders—“I always wanted to write a book but never did. I hope a word of mine is on a page or two of yours.” Her inspiration is on every page.
I am a lifelong survivor of dyslexia who writes about a dyslexia paradox: refereed research now not only refers to dyslexia as the number one reading disability, but also as a gift shared by a wide range of super achievers including architects, athletes, and entrepreneurs.
Is dyslexia a curse or a gift? Kilpatrick’s intervention-oriented book for teachers of struggling readers provides content and practical information in alignment with my own extensive writing including articles, and book chapters on dyslexia.
Practical, effective, evidence-based reading interventions that change students' lives
Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties is a practical, accessible, in-depth guide to reading assessment and intervention. It provides a detailed discussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, which will help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accurately assess why a student is struggling. Readers will learn a framework for organizing testing results from current assessment batteries such as the WJ-IV, KTEA-3, and CTOPP-2. Case studies illustrate each of the concepts covered. A thorough discussion is provided on the assessment of phonics skills, phonological awareness, word recognition,…
I love to read (full stop). And especially, I love to read Plato in English and in Greek, by myself and with others. I studied Plato for my doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (in England) because in his dialogues, one finds all the dimensions of philosophy coming together. Why does thinking about how to live lead not only to ethics and political philosophy, but also epistemology (what we can know), aesthetics (what is beautiful), and metaphysics (what is the nature of reality)? Having read Plato with third graders, graduate students, business leaders, and retirees, I find that people of all kinds respond to his works.
Plato speaks in the Republic of the “old quarrel between poetry and philosophy”–yet he was a writer of imaginative prose himself. This book shows how seriously Plato took poetry: how many of the crucial ideas in the dialogues grow out of Socrates’ commentary on lines of poetry from Homer, Hesiod, or other archaic Greek authors.
Jill Frank reads Plato very differently from me: she thinks that the Republic is signaling its readers to reject the political ideals that the dialogue seems to propose, in favor of the democratic authority of the individual. But while I don’t agree, I always learn so much from her astute insights as a reader of Plato’s writings.
When Plato set his dialogs, written texts were disseminated primarily by performance and recitation. He wrote them, however, when literacy was expanding. Jill Frank argues that there are unique insights to be gained from appreciating Plato's dialogs as written texts to be read and reread. At the center of these insights are two distinct ways of learning to read in the dialogs. One approach that appears in the Statesman, Sophist, and Protagoras, treats learning to read as a top-down affair, in which authoritative teachers lead students to true beliefs. Another, recommended by Socrates, encourages trial and error and the formation…
I’m a British writer but I have lived in Norway for over twenty years. My yearning for history goes back as long as I can remember and I often feel trapped in the wrong time. Writing historical fiction is my way of delving into the past and bringing it back to life. I’ve always been creative and enjoyed arts and crafts and, as well as being a writer, I am also a creativity coach and have my own podcast,The Creatively You Show, which helps writers and artists deal with the emotional challenges of the creative process. My book choices reflect these interests and the broader themes of history and art.
Girl Reading is a highly creative and imaginative book. Superbly written, it takes the reader on a journey through time, and the vehicle for that journey is art. There are seven scenes from seven different time periods, each depicting an artist and a portrait of a girl or woman reading. It is such an original concept and it’s thoroughly absorbing. Given my fascination with history and art, I absolutely devoured it. Girl Readingwent on to play an important role in my own writing life. I was so impressed with it that when it came to sending my own book out to agents, I sent my manuscript to Katie Ward’s agent, who is now my own.
An orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena, and an artist's servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. A woman reading in a Shoreditch bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture, and a Victorian medium holds a book that she barely acknowledges while she waits for the exposure.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Although I’m an academic by training, I secretly struggle with heavy nonfiction tomes (think: massive histories of long-ago countries). I start reading these with the best intentions but quickly get sleepy, bored, or both, setting them aside and instead picking up a novel, which I’ll immediately devour. That’s why I love memoiristic, hybrid work so much: writing that pairs the intimacy of fiction with the information buffet of nonfiction, where you learn without realizing you’re learning. These books feel like a conversation with a close friend who is intelligent, thought-provoking, and passionate about various subjects—what could be better than that?
The conversations I have most often with my friends revolve around books—the intersection between books and society, books and politics, books and change. But these conversations have generally been meandering and, to be honest, often only half-articulated, interrupted by gossip or the need for a tea top-up. So when I picked up Elaine Castillo’s book, it felt like I was suddenly being given the insightful, intelligent, fully-formed version of a topic I’d always been drawn to but never quite managed to excavate properly.
Like the other recommendations on this list, it’s both personal—Castillo talks about her own relationship to reading and culture—and enormous in scope, encompassing history, cultural theory, popular culture, and, of course, literature.
'I cannot say enough about How to Read Now... Check it out' Roxane Gay 'A red-hot grenade... One of my favourite books of the year' Jia Tolentino 'Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny' Andrew Sean Greer 'I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed . . . Phenomenal' R.O. Kwon 'A wake-up call. A broadside. A rich and brilliant war cry' Chris Power
How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words -…
Dinty W. Moore is the author of the writing guides The Story Cure, Crafting the Personal Essay, and The Mindful Writer, among many other books. He has published essays and stories in Harper’s,The New York Times Magazine, The Southern Review, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere, and has taught master classes and workshops across the United States as well as in Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico.
Gaiman is always wonderfully positive on the subjects of experimentation, failure, and persistence, and with advice such as “The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” This inspiring book is made even better by the accompanying four-color artwork from his longtime illustrator, Chris Riddell.
Seize the day in the name of art. This creative call to arms from the mind of Neil Gaiman combines his extraordinary words with deft and striking illustrations by Chris Riddell.
'Like a bedtime story for the rest of your life, this is a book to live by. At its core, it's about freeing ideas, shedding fear of failure, and learning that "things can be different" ' INSTITUTE OF IMAGINATION
Be bold. Be rebellious. Choose art. It matters.
Neil Gaiman once said that 'the world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before'. This little book…
I like Harold and the Purple Crayon as much as the next guy, but what I look for most in a picture book—or really any work of fiction—is whether it touches my heart. I write most often about history, and in those books, I aim to be as rational as possible, but as a reader, I deeply appreciate honest sentimentality—the kind that an author earns through authenticity rather than contrivance. It’s what I struggled to achieve myself when Habitat for Humanity asked me to collaborate with them on a picture book that evoked the spirit of the organization.
I’m a great fan of Patricia Polacco’s work, and so I had a great deal of difficulty deciding which book to include on this list because so many of her books are moving.
This is the story (taken from Polacco’s own life) of a girl who suffers from undiagnosed dyslexia until an astute teacher recognizes the condition and helps her overcome it. What I find most impressive about this story is that Polacco never descends into the maudlin.
This isn’t a “dyslexia” book; rather, it’s a tale of an adult helping a child in need deal with a daunting problem. In the end, young Trisha doesn’t merely achieve her dream of learning to read but goes on to write and illustrate wonderful books of her own.
The real-life classic story of a dyslexic girl and the teacher who would not let her fail. A perfect gift for teachers and for students of any age.
Patricia Polacco is now one of America's most loved children's book creators, but once upon a time she was a little girl named Trisha starting school. Trisha could paint and draw beautifully, but when she looked at words on a page, all she could see was jumble. It took a very special teacher to recognize little Trisha's dyslexia: Mr. Falker, who encouraged her to overcome her reading disability. Patricia Polacco will never…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I've loved books and reading from an early age. My family and I go to the library nearly every week to check out books, do research, or attend library programs like storytime. My interest in libraries led me to read books about libraries and write one of my own. I’m a children’s book author living in North Carolina with my husband and two book-devouring kids. I Want My Book Back is my second book, following my debut, Teach Your Giraffe to Ski. When I’m not reading or writing, I like hanging out with my family, being outdoors, and going on everyday adventures.
My kids and I loved this heartwarming story about a little girl, Madeleine, and Bonnie, the library dog who loves being read to. We were rooting for Madeleine to read to her new kind and patient dog friend! The kids mentioned how much they wanted to meet Bonnie and read to her, and wondered if our local library has events with reading dogs. They also wanted an immediate re-read. (Of course, my family likes books with adorable cuddly dogs in general.)
Madeline Finn does not like to read. Not books. Not magazines. Not even the menu on the ice cream van. Fortunately, Madeline meets Bonnie, a library dog. Reading aloud to Bonnie isn't so bad. When Madeline Finn gets stuck, Bonnie doesn't mind. As it turns out, it's fun to read when you're not afraid of making mistakes. Bonnie teaches Madeline Finn that it's Okay to go slow, to keep trying, and to get support from a friend. A beautiful, reassuring, story for all those struggling to read. Perfect accompaniment for the 'reading dogs' programmes used by many schools and libraries.…
