Kim Culbertson

Sourcebooks Fire published Kim Culbertson’s award winning first YA novel Songs for a Teenage Nomad (2010, originally Hip Pocket Press, 2007) and her second YA novel Instructions for a Broken Heart (2011) which was named a Booklist 2011 Top Ten Romance Title for Youth and won the 2012 Northern California Book Award for YA Fiction.

Culbertson latest novel is Catch a Falling Star.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass

I first fell in love with Julia Glass when I read Three Junes. Her characters have such depth and she writes with clear-eyed compassion about the complexity of family and love. When I finished Three Junes, she left me longing to spend more time with those characters and then (yay!!) she offers up And the Dark Sacred Night in which several of the characters from Three Junes emerge again alongside a rich mix of new ones. What a gift.

A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy

I’ve always enjoyed a Maeve Binchy novel; she’s like curling up with a familiar friend near a warm fire while the rain falls outside. Because this book was her final one, completed days before she died, it held a special brand of love in it – an author’s farewell.

Shotgun Lovesongs by Nicholas Butler

This is a gorgeous, big-hearted novel from an author I can’t wait to read more of – a ballad not only to friendship and small towns, but also to love in all its gritty forms.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

This is currently our family read and, as we just finished all the Harry Potter books, it had some tough shoes to fill. Greek gods in a modern retelling and the antics of Percy and his crew are proving quite capable of capturing our hearts.

Two young adult novels I adored in hardback are recently out in paperback: Golden by Jessi Kirby and Criminal by Terra Elan McVoy. Both novels should be on teens’ reading lists this summer for their interesting, flawed main characters and the complex journeys we get to take with them.

Visit Kim Culbertson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kim Culbertson and Maya.

The Page 69 Test: Catch a Falling Star.

--Marshal Zeringue