Here are my favorites, listed in random order.
Top 10 Fiction:
"The Great Alone" by Kristin Hannah
"The Leavers" by Lisa Ko
"Everything I Never Told You" by Celeste Ng
"Behold the Dreamers" by Imbolo Imbue
"Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mendell
"The Power" by Naomi Alderman (this is one you will either love or hate, but it is unforgettable)
"There There" by Tommy Orange
"Beartown" by Fredrik Backman
"The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas
"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles
Top 5 Memoirs:
"Educated" by Tara Westover
"The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tale of Life on the Road" by Finn Murphy
"Hunger" by Roxanne Gay
"Everything Happens for a Reason" by Kate Bowler
"Calypso" by David Sedaris
Top 5 Other Non-fiction:
Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life" by Tish Harrison Warren
"Morning and Evening" by Charles Spurgeon
"The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson"
"Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Marie Rilke
"The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brain" by Nicholas Carr
**Every year, there's books right on the cusp that I'm sad didn't quite make the top, so I want to add the disclaimer that I quit books quickly if I don't like them, so (most) any book that I finish is a book that I would recommend.**
Besides favorites, I'm going to give a (non-sponsored) pitch for any of you who have made it this far to join Goodreads. Goodreads is a social media site where you can track and share your reading life, and I think you will find that it improves the quality of your reading life without taking up much time or effort. Here's the Top 10 reasons why you should join:
1. It helps you keep track of your own reading life. Each year, you can look back on the books you read and reminisce (this is how I create this post each year). It also gives you a place to list books you are currently reading.
2. You can set annual goals for how many books you would like to read, and if you have any kind of competitive or performative streak, this will motivate you to read more.
3. It's a good place to keep a running list of books you would like to read in the future.
4. It's a great place to get recommendations by seeing what your friends read.
5. Relatedly, it's a fun way to start real life conversations by seeing what your friends read. (Shout out to Naomi, my sister, and my mom!)
6. It's a handy place to refer to when someone asks you for a book recommendation and you want to be able to review books you've read recently, or when you're looking for a literary gift for someone.
7. It's a good place to read reviews for a book. I find this particularly helpful when I'm on the fence about a book - if you suspect that you won't like it despite good reviews, you can scan through the 1-star reviews and see if those reviewers agree with your (potential) objections; conversely, if you suspect that you will like it despite mediocre reviews, you can scan through 5-star reviews and see if it's exactly your kind of quirky.
8. Many of the books are on lists (such as "special needs parenting", "best fiction of 2018", etc.) - so if you find one book you like, you can sometimes find similar others by using Goodreads lists.
9. You can write reviews to let others know about books that make your heart sing, or warn others about books that are the worst.
10. Because who couldn't use more social media time in their life? I joke. The final good thing about Goodreads is that it's very manageable time wise. I log on about twice a month, for 5-10 minutes at a time, and get all of the benefits listed above, and I would guess that's a very average usage. It's not addictive and it's not a time suck.
My favorite part of doing this blog post every year is getting all of your recommendations! You all always help me come up with some of my favorite reads for the upcoming year. This year, I would especially like recommendations on your favorite non-fiction social justice-themed books, but I would also love to hear about books you loved of any genre. Happy reading!
