1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  2. Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
  3. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  4. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
  5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  7. Uniformity With God’s Will By Saint Alphonsus de Liguori
  8. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
  9. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
  10. They Call Me Coach by John Wooden
  11. The Winner Within by Pat Riley
  12. In My Own Words by Mother Teresa
  13. The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers
  14. “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” by Richard P. Feynman
  15. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  16. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
  17. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  18. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson
  19. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
  20. Four Miles to Pinecone by Jon Hassler
  21. Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
  22. Skinnybones by Barbara Park
  23. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
  24. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
  25. At Home by Bill Bryson
  26. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
  27. Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
  28. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  29. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  30. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  31. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
  32. Shane by Jack Schaefer
  33. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
  34. Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman
  35. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Unknown

Skinnybones

 

by Barbara Park

 

I was torn on whether our last Sticky Book for the Children’s Book Month of June would be Superfudge (by Judy Blume) or the lesser known Skinnybones. Both are excellent children’s books. Both are very funny. But in the end, I have memories of Skinnybones filling me with laughter for days. 

I might be misremembering–nostalgia is a hell of a drug–but I recall this being the funniest childhood book I ever read. There are children’s books with more heart or more imagination or more wonderment or more feeling or even more beloved, but my now thirty-something mind doesn’t remember my then 10-year-old mind thinking there was a book that was funnier. 

I could go back and reread it, but that’s both too obvious and wouldn’t prove anything. Even if I don’t think that it is that funny now, that doesn’t mean that 10-year-old Dan didn’t think it was that funny. So let young 10-year-old me introduce this book to you through hyperbole and wistfulness: “It’s the funniest book you will ever read in your entire life. Trust me. I’m ten. I’ve seen some sh*$.”

 

 

 

Sticky Books are those that you just can’t get out of your head. They stick with you long after you have put the book down and have moved on to something else. These are some of my Sticky Books. I don’t enjoy reviewing books myself. I find I am either full of far too much praise for the book because I know how difficult it can be to write a book, or I am far too negative about a book because, well, I guess I was just in a bad mood. So instead of reviews, I have pulled some of my favorite quotes from each Sticky Book.

 

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