Favorite Things

Rocky pier that leads to a lighthouse.

For anyone who enjoys stories of imagination, love, courage, and hope, here are some of my favorite books, podcasts, websites, and online journals/magazines.

Books (just a sampling)

Classics

  • J. R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion
  • Richard Adams’s Watership Down
  • Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park
  • Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Shirley
  • Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  • Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights
  • George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda
  • Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters and North and South
  • L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series and Blue Castle
  • James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Children’s fantasy

  • C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia
  • J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Roverrandom
  • Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series
  • George Macdonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and At the Back of the North Wind
  • Edward Eager’s Half Magic, Magic by the Lake, The Knight’s Castle, and Seven-Day Magic
  • J.K. Rowlings’s Harry Potter series
  • Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy series
  • Patricia Wrede’s Shadow Magic and Dealing with Dragons series
  • Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle series, the Dark Lord of Derkholm series, Chrestomanci series, Dogsbody, and A Tale of Time City
  • Carrie Ryan and John Park Davis’s Map to Everywhere series
  • Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember series
  • Margaret Lovell’s Great and Terrible Quest
  • Kate Milford’s Greenglass House
  • Lynne Reid Banks’s The Farthest-Away Mountain and The Fairy Rebel
  • Jane Langton’s The Diamond in the Window
  • Emily Rodda’s Golden Door series and Deltora Quest series
  • Stefan Bachman’s The Peculiar and The Whatnot
  • Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse
  • Jonathan Rogers’s Wilderking series
  • Jeanne Birdsalls’s The Penderwicks series

YA Fantasy

  • Victoria Hanley’s The Seer and the Sword
  • Jasper Fforde’s The Last Dragonslayer series
  • S.E. Grove’s The Glass Sentence series
  • Brian Farrey and Brett Helquist’s Vengekeep Prophecies series
  • Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl series
  • Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Sherwood Ring and the Perilous Gard
  • Heather Dixon’s Entwined
  • Helen Lowe’s Thornspell
  • Djano Wexler’s The Forbidden Library series
  • Julie Berry’s Secondhand Charm
  • Sherwood Smith’s A Posse of Princesses
  • Eilis O’Neale’s The False Princess
  • Jessica Day George’s Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, and Princess of the Midnight Ball series
  • Patricia McKillip’s The Bell at Sealey Head
  • Rachel Neumeier’s The Keeper of the Mist and The City in the Lake

Science/dystopian fiction

  • Lois Lowry’s Giver quartet
  • Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series and The Young Unicorns
  • C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Plant, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength
  • Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and Catching Fire
  • R.J. Anderon’s Ultraviolet and Quicksilver
  • Jaleigh Johnson’s The Mark of the Dragonfly and The Secrets of Solace
  • Joel N. Ross’s The Fog Diver

Historical fiction

  • Catherine Marshall’s Christy and Julie
  • Hilda van Stockum’s The Borrowed House and The Winged Watchman
  • Mary Stetson Clarke’s The Iron Peacock
  • Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s The Golden Goblet, Master Cornhill, Mara, Daughter of the Nile, and The Moorchild
  • Irene Hunt’s Up a Road Slowly
  • Eva Ibbotson’s The Star of Kazan
  • Kathryn Stockett’s The Help
  • Linda Sue Park’s A Single Shard and When My Name was Keoko
  • Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars
  • Pam Munoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising
  • Richard Peck’s A Year Down Yonder
  • Scott O’Dell’s The King’s Fifth
  • Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth
  • Gloria Whelan’s Listening for Lions

Realistic fiction

  • Stephanie S. Tolan’s Surviving the Applewhites
  • Elizabeth Enright’s Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away
  • Zilpha Keatley Knyder’s The Velvet Room and The Egypt Game
  • Betsy Byars’s The Pinballs
  • Patricia St. John’s Treasures in the Snow, Rainbow Garden, Tanglewood, and Twice Freed

Mysteries

  • Louis Sachar’s Holes
  • Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night, The Nine Tailors, and Murder Must Advertise
  • Agatha Christie’s They Came to Baghdad, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, Sleeping Murder, Tommy and Tuppence series, and The Seven Dials
  • Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game
  • Barbee Oliver Carlton’s The Mystery of the Witches’ Bridge and The Secret of Saturday Cove
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Podcasts

Discussion or lecture podcasts

Rabbit Room podcast network:

  • Rabbit Room Classic
  • Hutchmoot
  • The Habit
  • The Membership
  • The Artist’s Creed

Anselm Society podcast network:

  • Believe to See
  • Redeemed Imagination
  • Speaking with Joy

Marion E. Wade Center Podcast

BiblioFiles: A CenterforLit Podcast

Blogs and Websites

Online Journals and Magazines