… or otherwise known as my book bucket list. 🙂
So I got a little behind on my reading. Life must have gotten in the way. Hence, I feel if I put up a list here on my site for everyone and their mother to see, I’ll be more compelled to actually sit and read them. Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing? Plus, we all need things to keep us occupied on long plane, train, and bus rides.
Here’s a list of this year’s hottest books (and a bunch from a few years past – whoops). I mostly base my book-reading decisions on the cover. Tsk, tsk, I know. But by this point, I feel I’m a pretty good judge of character just by looking at the spine, title, and first page. If it doesn’t reel me in right away, I probably won’t finish it.
Call it my own reading bucket list, and find a few to add to yours. If you’ve read any, let me know! Have any you feel I should add to this list? Let me know below in the comments!
UPDATE: I just got a library card yesterday! (!!!) and just purchased a Kindle Paperwhite (on sale for $90 with amazon prime). Get a free 30 day trial of amazon prime here. #nomoreexcuses
Books to Read on your Next Trip
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]The Vacationers | emma straub
Pages: 301 Release Date: May 2014
Summary: An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca.
This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole. Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]Crazy Rich Asians | kevin kwan
Pages: 546 Release Date: June 2013
Summary: Crazy Rich Asians is the outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season.
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China Rich Girlfriend | kevin kwan
Pages: 400 Release Date: June 2015
Summary: Kevin Kwan, bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians, is back with a wickedly funny new novel of social climbing, secret e-mails, art-world scandal, lovesick billionaires, and the outrageous story of what happens when Rachel Chu, engaged to marry Asia’s most eligible bachelor, discovers her birthfather. Read it!
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Big Magic | elizabeth gilbert
Pages: Release Date: September 2015
Summary: From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you’ve dreamed of.
Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.
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Yes Please | amy poehler
Pages: 352 Release Date: September 2015
Summary: Full of the comedic skill that makes us all love Amy, Yes Please is a rich and varied collection of stories, lists, poetry (Plastic Surgery Haiku, to be specific), photographs, mantras and advice. With chapters like “Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend,” “Plain Girl Versus the Demon” and “The Robots Will Kill Us All” Yes Please will make you think as much as it will make you laugh. Honest, personal, real, and righteous, Yes Please is full of words to live by.
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]Bossy Pants | tina fey
Pages: 272 Release Date: January 2013
Summary: At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon — from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.
Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve all suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy. (Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!) Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]Gone Girl | gillian flynn
Pages: 578 Release Date: June 2012
Summary: On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]Me Before You | jojo moyes
Pages: 385 Release Date: December 2012
Summary: A Love Story for this generation, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?
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Big Little Lies | liane moriarty
Pages: 462 Release Date: July 2014
Summary: Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive. Read it!
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Screw Everyone | ophira eisenberg
Pages: 290 Release Date: March 2013
Summary: Screw Everyone is comedian Ophira Eisenberg’s wisecracking account of how she spent most of her life saying “yes” to everything—and everyone—and how that attitude ultimately helped her overcome her phobia of commitment.
From her first kiss to saying “I do,” Screw Everyone is an honest, hilarious chronicle of how one woman discovered herself, conquered her fears, and even found the “real thing”—one promiscuous encounter at a time. Read it!
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#Girlboss | sophia amoruso
Pages: 238 Release Date: May 2014
Summary: The first thing Sophia Amoruso sold online wasn’t fashion—it was a stolen book. She spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and dumpster diving. By twenty-two, she had resigned herself to employment, but was still broke, directionless, and working a mediocre day job she’d taken for the health insurance.
As Sophia writes, “I have three pieces of advice I want you to remember: Don’t ever grow up. Don’t become a bore. Don’t let The Man get to you. OK? Cool. Then let’s do this. Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]After You | jojo moyes
Pages: 353 Release Date:
Summary: How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?
Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started. Read it!
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The Knockoff | lucy sykes
Pages: 354 Release Date: May 2015
Summary: An outrageously stylish, wickedly funny novel of fashion in the digital age, The Knockoff is the story of Imogen Tate, editor in chief of Glossy magazine, who finds her twentysomething former assistant Eve Morton plotting to knock Imogen off her pedestal, take over her job, and reduce the magazine, famous for its lavish 768-page September issue, into an app.
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Truly, Madly, Greekly | mandy baggot
Pages: 384 Release Date: May 2015
Summary: Capable, confident and career-driven, Ellen had her dream job and a marriage proposal from boyfriend Ross. Life was good, her future set. Until it wasn’t and everything fell apart…
Whisked off to the beautiful island of Corfu to plan her sister Lacey’s big, fat, Greek wedding, Ellen is hoping some time out will help clear her head and heal her heart. But letting go of her past is not going to be easy.
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The Fault in Our Stars | john green
Pages: 332 Release Date: January 2012
Summary: Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars brilliantly explores the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love. Read it!
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Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me? | mindy kaling
Pages: 222
Summary: In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.
Release Date: September 2012
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]Why not Me? | mindy kaling
Pages:240
Summary: Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.
BRAND NEW (!!!) Release Date: September 2015
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Seriously… I’m Kidding | ellen deGeneres
Pages: 256 Release Date: September 2015
Summary: “I’ve experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you’ll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I’ve put together for you in this book. I think you’ll find I’ve left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled. What I’m saying is, let us begin, shall we?”
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Where’d You Go, Bernadette? | maria simple
Pages: 335 Release Date: August 2012
Summary: Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle–and people in general–has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]The Next Best Thing | jennifer weiner
Pages: 401 Release Date: July 2012
Summary: Actors aren’t the only ones trying to make it in Hollywood.…At twenty-three, Ruth Saunders left her childhood home in Massachusetts and headed west with her seventy-year-old grandma in tow, hoping to make it as a screenwriter. Six years later, she hits the jackpot when she gets The Call: the sitcom she wrote, The Next Best Thing, has gotten the green light, and Ruthie’s going to be the showrunner. But her dreams of Hollywood happiness are threatened by demanding actors, number-crunching executives, an unrequited crush on her boss, and her grandmother’s impending nuptials. Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]So Pretty it Hurts | kate white
Pages: 467 Release Date: March 2012
Summary: True-crime journalist and sassy amateur sleuth Bailey Weggins has scarcely begun her hard-earned weekend getaway when something comes up: a dead body, belonging to one of the world’s most glamorous supermodels. Now Bailey’s trapped at an upstate New York home amidst the glitterati—and any one of them could be a murderer. She’s determined to find out who’s responsible, but her investigation could provoke the killer into striking again…
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]Where We Belong | emily giffin
Pages: 383 Release Date: July 2012
Summary: The author of five blockbuster novels, Emily Giffin, delivers an unforgettable story of two women, the families that make them who they are, and the longing, loyalty and love that binds them together.
Marian Caldwell is a thirty-six year old television producer, living her dream in New York City. With a fulfilling career and satisfying relationship, she has convinced everyone, including herself, that her life is just as she wants it to be. But one night, Marian answers a knock on the door . . . only to find Kirby Rose, an eighteen-year-old girl with a key to a past that Marian thought she had sealed off forever. From the moment Kirby appears on her doorstep, Marian’s perfectly constructed world–and her very identity–will be shaken to its core, resurrecting ghosts and memories of a passionate young love affair that threaten everything that has come to define her. Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]What the Nanny Saw | fiona neill
Pages: 465 Release Date: August 2012
Summary: It’s the summer of 2008. For the past decade Nick and Bryony Skinner and their four children have ridden high on the economic boom, but their luck is about to run out. Suddenly, the privileged family finds itself at the center of a financial scandal:
their Central London house is besieged by the press, Nick disappears, and Bryony and the children become virtual prisoners in their own home. And Ali, their trusted nanny, watches it all.
The Girl on the Train | paula hawkins
Pages: 326 Release Date: January 2015
Summary: “Nothing is more addicting than The Girl on the Train.”—Vanity Fair
“The Girl on the Train has more fun with unreliable narration than any chiller since Gone Girl. . . . [It] is liable to draw a large, bedazzled readership.”—The New York Times
“Like its train, the story blasts through the stagnation of these lives in suburban London and the reader cannot help but turn pages.”—The Boston Globe
A debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people’s lives. Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]A few “classics” (circa 2008)
Suck it, Wonder Woman | olivia munn
Pages: 288 Release Date: June 2010 (proof that I’m super far behind…)
Summary: In this hilarious collection you’ll find essays like “thought’s About My First Agent’s Girlfriend’s Vagina,” wherein Olivia skewers what it’s like to live in Hollywood. In “Sex: What You Can Do to Help Yourself Have More of It,” she frankly gets down to the business of getting it on, including advice on how to appropriately wrap it and bag it. In “What to Do When the Robots Invade (Yes, When!),” Olivia offers valuable information on . . . what to do when the robots invade! And just when you thought she couldn’t get any more geeky, she can. Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]I Was Told There’d Be Cake | sloane crosley
Pages: 230 Release Date: April 2008
Summary: From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, Crosley can do no right despite the best of intentions — or perhaps because of them. Together, these essays create a startlingly funny and revealing portrait of a complex and utterly recognizable character who aims for the stars but hits the ceiling, and the inimitable city that has helped shape who she is. I Was Told There’d Be Cake introduces a strikingly original voice, chronicling the struggles and unexpected beauty of modern urban life. Read it!
[divider style=”thin” title=”” text_align=””]How Did you Get This Number? | sloane crosley
Pages: 288
Summary: The hilarious New York Times bestselling literary essay collection from Sloane Crosley, the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and The Clasp.
Sloane Crosley, the brilliantly funny “fountain of observations” (Boston Globe), now takes readers from a bear-infested wedding in Alaska to a run-in with clowns in Portugal in a new collection of essays about the messiest and most unexpected dilemmas life has to offer.
Release Date: May 2011 (told you I was far behind!)
Guess I should start getting on with my reading!
Get a hold of some of these chick flicks to read on vacation, get a kindle, and find the comfiest couch to plant yourself for a few hours. 🙂
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Disclaimer: Some of the above links are affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I will earn a small percentage which will help offset the costs of my travels and this site! Thanks for your support! 
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