If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know that I just graduated from high school this last June. I’ve been accepted to the one college I wanted to go to for quite a few months before, but now it’s actually happening.

Holy shit. It’s actually happening.

So, here are some books that I’m taking with me!

For a more personal update, and for the benefit of this post, here’s some more information:

My college is about an hour from where I live with my mum and her boyfriend. My mum’s BF likes to make things out of wood, so when his mom was moving away, she gave back some old shelves he had made. He proceeded to give one to me, as it was small enough to fit in a dorm, but big enough that I could take more books with me than I was expecting. I thought I’d manage ~15 books. Turns out, I’ll manage much much more than that, and that’s not even filling up the full bookshelf. There are three shelves to the bookshelf, and I’m only planning on filling up two, so I can have more storage.

I’ll be brief in saying what I’m bringing with me, but here’s a rundown of what they’ll all be: except for two, these books are all ones that I’ve been itching to read. All of the books included in this post are high on my TBR, or highly recommended by friends. I also own all of these books, hence why I’m taking them with me.

Without further ado, here are the books that will save my sanity during my first year at college 🙂

** – These are the only two books I’m bringing with me that I’ve read. I’m assuming you all expected this of me.

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Fantasy/Science Fiction

**Mask of Shadows & Ruin of Stars – Linsey Miller
Trail of Lightning – Rebecca Roanhorse
Witchmark – CL Polk
Nyxia – Scott Reintgen
The Infernal City & Lord of Souls – Greg Keyes
Beasts Made of Night – Tochi Onyebuchi
Viscera – Gabriel Squailia
The Emperor’s Riddle – Kat Zhang
Captive Prince – CS Pacat
The Book of Ester – Emily Barton
Amberlough – Lara Elena Donnelly
The Thief & The Queen of Attolia – Meghan Whalen Turner
An Accident of Stars – Foz Meadows
Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, & Ship of Destiny – Robin Hobb
Children of Blood and Bone – Tomi Adeyemi
Plastic Wings – CT Callahan
The Hatching – Ezekiel Boone
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns – Julia C Dao
Girls Made of Snow and Glass – Melissa Barshardoust
Strange the Dreamer – Laini Tayor
The Reader – Traci Chee
Wintersong – S. Jae-Jones
The Belles – Dhionelle Clayton
Of Fire and Stars – Audrey Coulthurst
Runebinder – Alex R. Kahler

Contemporary

Guapa – Saleem Haddad
Darius the Great is Not Okay – Adib Khorram
Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
Anger is a Gift – Mark Oshiro
A Study in Charlotte – Brittany Cavallaro
Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
When Dimple Met Rishi – Sandhya Menon
Like Water – Rebecca Podos
More Happy Than Not – Adam Silvera
Last Seen Leaving & White Rabbit – Caleb Roehrig
Let’s Talk About Love – Claire Kann

Anthologies

Transcendent: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 1 & 2 – KM Szpara & Bogi Takacs
So You Want to Be a Robot? – A Merc Rustad
An Alphabet of Embers – Rose Lemberg
Defying Doomsday – Tsana Dolichva

True Crime

Devil in the White City – Erik Larrson
The Midnight Assassin – Skip Hollandsworth
The Most Dangerous Animal of All – Gary L Stewart

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So, as you can see, I can take with me more books than I ever thought I’d be able to. This makes me feel so much better, especially because my mum and her BF also proposed a kind of “book exchange”. Whenever I come home or they come to visit, I can give them the books I’ve finished, and they’ll give me books from my collection that I requested beforehand.

The only constants though, will be Mask of Shadows & Ruin of Stars, of course.

Of course.

What do y’all think? For my friends who are the same age as me, what will you be bringing? For those of you who have gone to college what books did you bring with you? Let me know in the comments!