2018 in books

Twenty eighteen was a big year for me, perhaps mostly because I rediscovered the PUBLIC LIBRARY (support your libraries, friends!). And while I just couldn't appreciate Rand's The Fountainhead - I won't even link to it - I did fall asleep while reading in my childhood bed a whole lot.

I truly was lucky to be able to read a lot this year - being unemployed lends itself to that - and thought I'd share which books I enjoyed the most. If you're an avid reader, I am a huge fan of the book tracking app Goodreads because it allows you to not only set reading goals for yourself, but also easily recollect your favorites when someone asks you for a recommendation.

So, of the 26 I've read so far, here are my 5 standouts as well as 1 sentence explaining why:

• Black Box Thinking (Matthew Syed) - This was a recommendation from the hubs I've gifted to others a few times that makes embracing your failures not only a safe, but necessary, thing to do.

• Educated: A Memoir (Tara Westover) - I generally prefer memoirs to fiction, and Westover's upbringing was so vastly (frustratingly) different than mine that I was hooked.

• Family Matters (Rohinton Mistry) - A friend bought me Mistry's "A Fine Balance" from a small bookshop next to our house in Santorini, and I loved it so much I'll read anything he writes.

• Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life (Gretchen Rubin) - Churchill was half American but identified as 100% (colonial) English, so it actually made me think about how my future half-Brit, half-American children will think of their nationality.

• The Witch Elm (Tana French) - The resolution of this book was surprising and satisfying (so often they feel lazy), and I couldn't tell whether I should cheer for or hate the main character. 

I have 4 more checked out and on deck to potentially wrap up this year:

• There There: A novel (Tommy Orange)
• Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng)
• An American Marriage (Tayari Jones)
• The Great Alone (Kristin Hannah)

This is where I should probably ask "What were your 2018 favorites?" but I'm so aware that blog commenting is too much work.