Even those of us who read for labor still love the idea of curling up with a couple good books over the weekend-when-we’re-not-supposed-to-be-laboring. I’ve got my pile all set, but in case you’re looking for a few suggestions to chill out with over the holiday, here’s a motley crew of titles I’m excited to recommend. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments below!

YA Fiction

Every Day by David Levithan. In this stunning new title, A., the protagonist, wakes up each day in a different body. But what’s an unmoored soul to do when a fabulous girl suddenly comes into the picture? Yes, romance drives this story, but deeper, more thought-provoking issues of gender and identity lie at its core. Highly, highly recommended.

YA Fantasy

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman. A tenuous peace exists between the human characters in this gorgeous fantasy and the dragons with whom they once warred. But beneath the peace bubbles prejudice—and worse, fear. Main character Seraphina must use her talent for understanding both worlds to keep the two sides in balance. But will her dark secret be her undoing?

YA Realistic Fiction

Since You Left Me by Allen Zadoff. Sanskrit Aaron Zuckerman has more problems than most ordinary teenagers, beginning with his super-wacky mom and ending with…well, his super-wacky mom. After she fails to show up for yet another key meeting at Aaron’s swanky Jewish private school, Aaron offers up a lie that sets his whole world spinning. This book does a great job exploring, then cracking open, the myopia that often characterizes the teenage years. Even better is its deft treatment of faith and spirituality.

Docu-novel

No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Michaeux Nelson. In this mostly-nonfiction story, voices from Lewis Michaux’s colorful life tell the story of Harlem’s first bookseller. A beautiful, life-affirming account of a man who believed in his community enough to risk everything for it—and whose persistence left a powerful legacy.

Middle Grade Fiction

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead. You’ll read this one in a heartbeat, but slow down if you can. This slim little novel is a carefully-woven tapestry of mystery, quirks, and emotional insights. Get my full review here.

Middle Grade Fantasy

Darkbeast by Morgan Keyes. In Keara’s world, every child has a darkbeast—a creature that teaches its child how to be better, even as it takes away its child’s sins. Most children hate their darkbeasts, but not Keara. What will happen when Keara’s twelfth birthday forces the sacrifice of her darkbeast, Caw? The metaphor of the darkbeast could be better developed, but as a meditation on the power of childhood, and what adulthood forces us to leave behind, Darkbeast is an interesting—and enjoyably fanciful—read.

Poetry

Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It by Gail Carson Levine. Borrowing liberally from William Carlos Williams, Levine spins out a book’s-worth of fake apology poems which range from amusing to side-splitting. To add to the humor, classic fairy tale characters, as well as other noteworthy cultural icons make appearances. Well worth a peek—if not a cover to cover read.

Creepy Crawly

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand. Do yourself a favor: Start this book by daylight, will you? In this uber-creepy story, Victoria’s life is perfect, except for her one and only friend, Lawrence. Lawrence, dear readers, is an unfortunate smudge. A stain. A real nuisance, actually—especially when he goes missing. Fans of Neil Gaiman and Roald Dahl will especially enjoy this disturbingly delightful debut.

Oldie but Goodie

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I sort of feel silly including this one, since almost every avid reader I know remembers it as a childhood favorite. But one of the joys of summer is not just new books, but the old ones it allows me to re-read. If you haven’t spent time with Sara Crewe recently, consider this your impetus to do so. LOVE.

For Adults

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. If you enjoy the wit and charm of Jane Austen but don’t want to be bothered by the, um, complications of late 18th-century language, you’ll love this witty, charming modern novel set in a quaint English village. A love story, a social commentary, a meditation on unlikely friendships—this book is, by turns, heartbreaking and heartwarming, and completely wonderful.

I’ve never had a problem with the fact that I’m an avid reader of books for kids and teens. I read plenty of “adult” fiction in college—and have read plenty of classics since then. And though the English major in me still has fun with the grown-up stuff in an obsessive, academic way, I’ll forever be a children’s book junkie at heart.

Recently, though, a spate of books has started me wondering if there are books for “kids” (of all ages) and books just for kids. What I mean is, I’ve encountered a number of titles—especially for the tween set—that I know I would have loved as a child, but which I’m having a hard time loving as an adult. One example was Polly Horvath’s newest, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire. Try as I might to enjoy this book, all the quirk and whimsy and utter nonsense quickly got the best of me. And yet, as I thought back to my nine-year-old self, I could imagine my delight then…and I wondered why I couldn’t feel that same delight now.

So it went with Lizzie K. Foley’s Remarkable as well. Between the pirates, the elusive lake monster, the diabolical Grimlet twins, the over-the-top, uber-remarkable characters, the absurd plot twists, and on and ON, Remarkable was just a little too remarkably ridiculous. Would the Jenny of two decades ago have felt the same way? I doubt it.

All of this isn’t to say that I’m outgrowing children’s fiction. I can think of plenty of other books with their fair share of flights of imaginative fancy—books by authors like Roald Dahl, Richard Peck, Louis Sachar, and even Joan Aiken—that I still read, and love, today.

So what’s the difference?

For me, it comes down to whether a book’s whimsy and quirkiness are just for the sake of whimsy and quirkiness, or whether they serve a larger purpose: as metaphor, to teach a lesson, to help tell the story or develop the main character. That’s not to say that Mr. and Mrs. Bunny and Remarkable are completely meaning-free. But as an older reader, or non-kid, I guess I’m looking for stories in which meaning and message drive the narrative, instead of the bells and whistles.

What makes the best books for kids—of all ages? They’re the stories that manage to drive home a point, but that do it in a way that still makes you believe you’re just reading for fun.

It used to be that I equated reading with recreation. Picking up a book was something I did a lot, but I did it for fun, and I certainly didn’t do it during working hours. With the advent of 60second Recap, though, all that changed. Suddenly, there weren’t enough hours in the day for reading. And I’m not just talking about the classics. Kind publishers bestowed on me piles of tween and YA titles, which I was only too happy to read, and then feature as Picks of the Week. Hundreds of thousands of pages later, I can say that I’ve been fortunate to make my way through a lot of really terrific literature, and the occasional dud.

But part of me has forgotten what it’s like to read for fun.

Oh, sure, I still enjoy the books that I read. But let’s face it: Sometimes all the reading I have to get through can feel like running a marathon over and over. So what’s a girl, who used to read to relax, to do?

That’s where my faintly oxymoronic question comes in: What do you read when you’re not reading? Are you a person who buys trashy magazines and devours them? (Come on, now: Fess up. We’re among friends.) Or maybe you’re an avid blog follower/consumer.

Or maybe you’re like me, and when you’re not reading for work, you’re still reading—because you’ve discovered the joys of reading a cookbook like a novel. I admit that this may be a strange habit, especially since I will happily consume recipe headnotes, ingredient lists, and pages of detailed directions—even if I have no plans to ever make the dish. There aren’t enough hours in the day for reading, and there certainly aren’t enough hours for making braised octopus (not that I would anyway) from the new cookbook, A Girl and Her Pig.

And yet, late at night, when I’m too tired to plow my way through one more Pick of the Week, I eagerly read about Chef April Bloomfield’s recipe techniques, her dinners with famous foodies, and her memories of growing up in the land of trifles and bubble & squeak (otherwise known as England). There are stories in cookbooks, yes there are. And imagination.

And pictures.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s the main reason why I read cookbooks when I’m not reading: To some degree, I get a break from all those words.

Perhaps I should start looking into picture books…

This time of year, comfort is key. Warm and comfy winter clothes. Comfort foods. Hey, what about comfort books? There’s something about the short days and long nights, the fireplaces and down comforters that gets me thinking about childhood classics.

Now, as I’ve already admitted in previous posts, some books may be imbued with special memories, but no longer make the cut. I’ve outgrown them, seen their weaknesses and flaws. I can appreciate what they brought me in childhood, but now they just annoy me. Such is the challenge when I go in search of a comfort book: too often, anticipation quickly turns to disappointment.

Like my Nancy Drew mysteries. As a nine-year-old, I devoured those books. I read every one the moment it came out, and I haunted the bookstore in our South Miami neighborhood for news of the next installment. I was definitely more of a saver than a spender as a kid, but still: Just in case, I had a special cache where I always had enough money squirreled away for a surprise release, or an unexpected Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Super Special.

As for those in-between weeks and months when I was awaiting Nancy’s next delicious adventure? That was when I re-read the hundred or so books I’d already collected. I followed Nancy through a dozen Christmases, too many close calls and near-death experiences to count, and a single relationship with Ned Nickerson that seemed neither to grow nor to falter.

Of course, not all Nancy mysteries were created equal. Though I enjoyed her exploits at a Renaissance fair and skulking around Eastern Europe, my favorite mysteries found her prowling through a haunted Southern estate and holed up at a cursed cooking school.

Which is why, when I returned to my parents’ house over the holidays a few years ago, I immediately sought out number 117: Mystery on the Menu.

(Side note: Doesn’t the chef on the cover oddly resemble John Lithgow?)

I was excited as I hunkered down under the covers with my dog-eared relic. Mystery + cooking: What could be better, right? I felt a flicker of my nine-year-old self as I held my breath and opened to the first page.

Alas, although Nancy has managed not to change in the 15+ years since I last read her, I’ve apparently changed a lot. Too quickly I was disgusted with the one-dimensional characters and obvious plotting. As for that “mystery” I’d remembered as a total nail-biter? Let’s just say that these books weren’t exactly written for adults.

So Nancy Drew failed me, but really, I should have known better. Books that endure are generally not ghost-written potboiler mysteries. The kind of books that are genuine comfort books are books that endure not just over the decade and a half between my childhood and my adulthood, but over the decades, period. They communicate some kind of universal truth. And their characters live on, long after you read the final page.

I thought about that this year as the days began to darken early and the cold made going outside less appealing. And though a number of books on my shelf do fit that criteria, my eyes lit on one that I’ve read many times since childhood, and which has never let me down.

That’s pretty much what the cover of my copy of Farmer Boy looks like—though probably a bit more tattered. And to this day, I find the story of nine-year-old Almanzo, who lived on his family’s farm in upstate New York in the mid-1800s, to be one of the most enjoyable, cozy, and yes, comforting, of all the books on my shelf. There’s the warmth of Almanzo’s close-knit family, yes. There are the mouth-watering descriptions of food, and the picturesque setting of the farm in all stages of growth, and harvest, bounty.

But mostly why I love this book, and mostly why it will forever comfort me, is its testament to the power of hard work and self-reliance. Almanzo and his family lived a difficult but beautiful life with only their work ethic and persistence to get them through. They had no safety net and no excuses. They had each other and their faith, yes. But mostly their life revolved around a kind of perseverance-in-all-circumstances that many of us can’t begin imagine.

For anyone forging his or her own path in this world, there’s nothing more reassuring—make that, comforting—than seeing these real-life characters succeed. Sorry, Nancy, but it beats your mystery-solving by a mile.