National Book Lover’s Day is celebrated on August 9 every year. Readers around the world find their favorite reading spot, a good book, and enjoy their reading time. Here are a few ways to observe National Book Lover’s Day:

  1. Spend time at your public library picking out a new book to read.
  2. Visit your local book store, pick out a new book, and read while you’re there.
  3. Read to your children your favorite children’s book.
  4. Randomly give a book to someone. It could totally make their day!

To help you find a book you love on this National Book Lover’s Day in 2022, I have compiled a list of my favorite reads in 2022. So without further ado, here we go:

Picture Books:

Grace and Box by Kim Howard

  • Grace and Box have become fast friends. Box delivered a refrigerator earlier in the week, and by the end of it, Grace and Box had already been to space, gone camping, and explored the depths of the sea together. But on Sunday, Grace notices something’s wrong with her buddy. Box has some rips and crumples that Band-Aids, ice packs, and rest on the couch can’t seem to heal. Grace certainly doesn’t want these adventures to end, so she is determined to fix Box so that they can continue their play together.

Find Fergus by Mike Boldt

  • Fergus the bear wants to play hide and seek with the reader, but will need help–and practice–to hide well. This book also won the Indiana Early Literacy Firefly Award for 2022!

One-osaurus, Two-osaurus by Kim Norman

  • Look there, in a child’s bedroom, where some prehistoric pals are gathered in a counting game. Nine dinosaurs are playing a sing-song rendition of hide-and-seek but something isn’t adding up. Where is number 10?

Chester Van Chime Forgot How to Rhyme by Avery Monsen

  • Rhyming has always come easily to Chester van Chime. But one day he loses his gift and struggles to find the right words.

Middle Grade:

Those Kids from Fawn Creek by Erin Entrada Kelly

  • The twelve kids in the seventh grade at Fawn Creek K-12 have been together all their lives so when graceful Orchid Mason arrives, with exotic clothes and glorious hair, the other seventh graders don’t know what to think.

My Own Lightning by Lauren Wolk

  • Several months after the tragic events set in motion by bully Betty Glengarry, Annabelle McBride is struck by lightning during a powerful summer storm, leaving her with heightened senses that give her a new understanding of animals and help her learn about compassion and forgiveness.

Omar Rising by Aisha Saeed

  • Seventh-grader Omar must contend with being treated like a second-class citizen when he gets a scholarship to an elite boarding school in Pakistan.

Louisa June and the Nazis in the Waves by Laura Elliott

  • Determined to help her Mama and aching to combat Nazis herself, Louisa June turns to her quirky friend Emmett and the indomitable Cousin Belle, who has her own war stories–and a herd of cats–to share. In the end, after a perilous sail, Louisa June learns the greatest lifeline is love.

Young Adult:

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

  • Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer–they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one wonderful and terrible summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.
  • This book has been made into a television series that is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Heartstopper Vol. 1-4 by Alice Oseman

  • Shy and softhearted Charlie Spring sits next to rugby player Nick Nelson in class one morning. A warm and intimate friendship follows, and that soon develops into something more for Charlie, who doesn’t think he has a chance. But Nick is struggling with feelings of his own, and as the two grow closer and take on the ups and downs of high school, they come to understand the surprising and delightful ways in which love works.
  • These graphic novels have been made into a television series that is now streaming on Netflix.

Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin

  • A smash up of art and text that viscerally captures what it means to not be able to breathe, and how the people and things you love most are actually the oxygen you most need.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

  • When Lily realizes she has feelings for a girl in her math class, it threatens Lily’s oldest friendships and even her father’s citizenship status and eventually, Lily must decide if owning her truth is worth everything she has ever known.

Adult:

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

  • Determined to leave a mark on the world even though they are in the hospital and their days are dwindling, unlikely friends, seventeen-year-old Lenni and eighty-three-year-old Margot, devise a plan to create one hundred paintings showcasing the stories of the century they have lived.

Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan

  • Megs Devonshire sets out to fulfill her younger brother George’s last wish by uncovering the truth behind his favorite story. The answer provides hope and healing and a magical journey for anyone whose life has ever been changed by a book.

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

  • When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman’s carefully calculated theories on love into chaos. As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships–but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor–and not very likeable. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding…six-pack abs. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

  • Nora Stephens life is books-she’s read them all-and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby. Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away-with visions of a small town transformation for Nora who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute. If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again-in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow-what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves

Non-fiction:

Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes

  • From the detective who found The Golden State Killer, a memoir of investigating America’s toughest cold cases and the rewards–and toll–of a life solving crime.

I Didn’t Do the Thing Today by Madeleine Dore

  • Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. There’s the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don’t want to do, and the thing we’ve been putting off, despite it being the most important thing. Even on days when we get a lot done, the thing left undone can leave us feeling guilty, anxious, or disappointed. After five years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn’t one. Instead, we’re being set up to fail. I Didn’t Do the Thing Today is the inspiring call to take productivity off its pedestal–by dismantling our comparison to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day, we can finally embrace the joyful messiness and unpredictability of life. For anyone who has ever felt the pressure to do more, be more, achieve more, this antidote to our doing-obsession is the permission slip we all need to find our own way.

Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver

  • When Oliver began work as a school librarian she felt qualified for the job. What she learned was that librarians are expected to serve as mediators and mental-health-crisis-support professionals, customer service reps and administrators of overdose treatment, fierce loyalists to institutionalized mythology and enforced silence, and arms of state surveillance. Here she highlights the national problems that have existed in library since they were founded: racism, segregation, and economic oppression. Libraries may not save us, but Oliver helps us imagine what might be possible if we stop expecting them to.

I hope this list of books helps you celebrate National Book Lovers Day with us!

Happy Reading!