Must-Reads From the 2012 Mass Book Awards

Thanks to the hustle and bustle of the school year and our busy work weeks, we don't always have time to pick up a book and read.

But now that summer is here and in full swing, we have some extra time and we're taking advantage! 

As part of our Watertown Patch summer reading guide, we look at the Massachusetts Book Awards Lists for 2012, as determined by the Mass Center for the Book.

Must-Read Fiction

• Alice Bliss: A Novel—Laura Harrington
• All Cry Chaos—Leonard Rosen
• Binocular Vision—Edith Pearlman
• Broken Irish: A Novel—Edward J. Delaney
• Caleb's Crossing—Geraldine Brooks
• The Grief of Others: A Novel—Leah Hager Cohen
• The Language of the Sea—James MacManus
• The Leftovers—Tom Perrotta
• Light from a Distant Star—Mary McGarry Morris
• The Night Circus—Erin Morgenstern
• The Red Garden—Alice Hoffman
• The Talk-Funny Girl—Roland Merullo

Must-Read Nonfiction

• 1493—Charles C. Mann
• American Anthrax—Jeanne Guillemin
• Cabin—Lou Ureneck
• Fenway 1912—Glenn Stout
• The Forgotten Founding Father—Joshua Kendall
• The Greater Journey—David McCullough
• In Search of Motif No. 1—L.M. Vincent
• Killer Stuff and Tons of Money—Maureen Stanton
• Lost in Shangri-La—Mitchell Zuckoff
• Season to Taste—Molly Birnbaum
• Sex on the Moon—Ben Mezrich
• Why Read Moby Dick?—Nathaniel Philbrick

Must-Read Poetry

• Aromatics—Robert B. Shaw
• Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me—Mark Leidner
• Ghost in a Red Hat—Rosanna Warren
• The Hunger Moon—Marge Piercy
• Kentucky Derby—Andrea Cohen
• Mid Drift—Kate Hanson Foster
• Nightly, at the Institute of the Possible—D.M. Gordon
• Old Ladies in the Locker Room and Pool—Zane Kotker
• Skating on Bones—J. Lorraine Brown
• Things to Say to a Dead Man—Jane Yolen
• Touch—Henri Cole
• The Trouble Ball—Martin Espada

Must-Read Children's or Young Adult Literature

• A Call for a New Alphabet—Jef Czekaj
• Chasing the Nightbird—Krista Russell
• Dead End in Norvelt—Jack Gantos
• The Deadlies: Spiders on the Case—Kathryn Lasky
• Dear Hot Dog—Mordicai Gerstein
• Everything I Was—Corrine Demas
• Exposed—Kimberly Marcus
• Hooray for Amanda & Her Alligator—Mo Willems
• Music Was It—Susan Goldman Rubin
• The Mysteries of Angkor Wat—Richard Sobol
• Neville—Norton Juster
• Phantoms in the Snow—Kathleen Benner Duble