Bruce Hale

• Percy Jackson and The Olympians

• Exciting, funny, and occasionally gross. What more could you want?

• The Hunger Games

• Intense stuff — reality TV taken to the extreme — but I couldn't put it down.

• The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian

• Funny, touching, and fascinating — plus it has excellent cartoons.

• Out from Boneville, Boneville Series, #1

• Love the drawings, love the characters, love the stories.

• Whales On Stilts

• Straight-out wacky, hilarious stuff.

Sam Potts

• Lou Gehrig, Boy of the Sandlots
• Guernsey Van Riper Jr.

• I think this is the first book I ever picked out on my own and read by myself. I'm pretty sure it is. I can tell you this for sure: Lou Gehrig always has been and always will be my favorite baseball player. And I'm from Boston, so that's saying something about the influence of this book.

• What Do People Do All Day?
• Richard Scarry

• Before there was the Internet, there was What Do People Do All Day? to describe the whole world and everything in it. Still hours of fun to explore every page.

• Stuart Little
• E.B. White

• He wears a sweater and sails a boat and drives a car and gets dumped on a garbage barge. Oh, and he's a mouse.

• Paddle To The Sea
• Holling C. Holling

• An adventure story starring a carved wooden boat that travels all the way across Canda. A carved wooden boat? you say. That's right: a carved wooden boat! I wished I could be that boat.

• The Great Brain, Great Brain Series
• John D. Fitzgerald

• This book and the other Great Brain books that followed are a handy how-to guide in the arts of scheming, swindling, cheating, and being a younger brother.

• Tintin
• Herge

• We just called them "Tintins." I'd say, "Do you have any new Tintins?" and my friend Jamie would say, "I just finished The Black Island. You can borrow it but you have to give it back." YOu always had to give them ack because these books are precious.

• Dubliners
• James Joyce

• Yeah it's James Joyce, but so what? He ain't so tough. The beauty of these stories is in their simplicity. You'll be able to taste the peas with vinegar and pepper in "Two Gallants." Read this when your friends are reading Catcher in the Rye. (And read that one, too.)

• Ficciones
• Jorge Luis Borges

• A character named Borges comes across an encyclopedia of a fictional land. Pierre Menard rewrites bits of Don Quixote verbatim, by coincidence. Funes remembers everything that happened, ever. Amazing. Worth re-reading about every five years or so.

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Essays and Arguments
• David Foster Wallace

• If you get far enough to read about the toilets in the title essay, you'll probably go on to read every word Wallace ever wrote. This book also contains the most terrifying description of baton-twirling you could ever read.

• Anatomy of a Typeface
• Anthony Lawson

• For the serious typographer as well as the font enthusiast: histories of all the classic typefaces from the days when fonts weighed about 50 pounds (because they were made out of lead). Simply indispensable.

Patrick Jones

• Becoming the Natural, My Life In and Out of the Cage

• There are many UFC biographies out, so it's who you like. I'm an old guy; I like the old guy.

• Headlock

• A novel about a teen breaking into wrestling while wrestling with some problems of his own. The author is a Ric Flair fan (whooo!).

• Lion’s Tale, Around the World in Spandex

• There's a lot of wrestling biographies out there, but Y2J's is probably best of the newer ones probably because he takes himself the least serious of all the squared circle scribes.

• Mondo Lucha A Go-Go, The Bizarre and Honorable World of Wild Mexican Wrestling

• Filled with photos of these masked Mexican wrestlers, this is a must to understand the history and scope of pro wrestling.

• Octagon

• Nothing but photos of UFC fighters through all stages of their careers. From the founders like Ken Shamrock to the modern kings of eight-sided cage, a wonderful way to browse the history of UFC.

• Title Shot, Into the Shark Tank of Mixed Martial Arts

• The book follows the author's journey to become a MMA fighter. He thought training for the Army was hard work. Welcome to the cage.

• Warrior Angel

• The 4th novel of a series that started in the 1960s still punches hard with hard punches and harder choices.

• Whole Sky Full of Stars

• A quick little read about a young man trying to earn money, and respect, by winning a boxing tournament.

• Why I Fight, A Novel

• The gritty covers lets you know the story inside is a tough one about a young man searching for himself, one fight at a time.

• WWE Encyclopedia

• You get photos, lists, more photos, and more lists. As JR would say, "Business is about to pick up."

Mo Willems

• The Complete Peanuts
• Charles M. Schulz

• The gold standard of comic strips. Fun for everyone; except Charlie Brown, who seems a little down on his luck.

• The Complete George and Martha
• James Marshall

• Lessons learned include: just because you've got a best friend doesn't mean you have to pour pea soup in your shoes. I try to re-read this before I start making new book.

• The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
• Bill Watterson

• When Hobbes is wise, Calvin is a stinker. When Hobbes is hungry, Calvin is in trouble.

• Go, Dog, Go!
• Philip D. Eastman

• A dog party in a tree? Wait for me, I’ve got to get my hat!

• Cul De Sac, This Exit

• The best comic strip you've never heard of. Alice and her family walk in the footsteps of Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, only sideways.

• Children at Play, A Cul-de-Sac Collection

Peter Brown

• George and Martha, George and Martha

• I can't overemphasize how perfectly James Marshall balances sweetness and absurdity in these stories.

• Everyone Poops

• Everyone Poops is a continuous source of 'inspiration.

• James and the Giant Peach

• Witty dialogue, fantastical adventure and a wonderfully dark sense of humor seem to effortlessly flow from Roald Dahl's pen.

• His Dark Materials

• This series is perhaps the most unique, thoughtful, and provocative fantasy I’ve ever read.

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

• I was mesmerized by the way Verne describes the science and logic of the world in which this story takes place.