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 in full swing, we have some extra time and we're taking advantage! 

Westwood Patch is taking a 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