This is a list of the books, I read in 2018 that I found to be okay to fabulous. However after participating in writing critique groups for the last 25 years or so and book clubs for the past 45 years, I appreciate an author’s effort and recognize that different people have different tastes. Therefore the books I found entirely dull or horrible are simply excluded from the list and there is no ranking system among titles. If you choose to read books off my list you will have to make your own decision about what you like.
You will see I like to read in series and a body of work by a singular author. I often do this to try to have a better understanding of the writer and their form of storytelling to figure out what I can learn from their efforts. As you will see from the assembled lis, I don’t just read “fine literature.” I read children’s books, non-fiction, fantasy, science fiction, novels, memoir self help books, romance and history. I read for escape, enjoyment, sometimes for a world where magic or good people can set the world to rights within a few hundred pages. This feels especially important when the real world around me becomes harsh and people act in ways that are unrecognizable to me.
I share this list because I am so often asked for recommendations. I hope you discover something new that delights you among these many authors and their efforts. If you are seeking to purchase some of these titles may I suggest supporting your local independent bookseller as my family owned my hometown bookstore for years. If you don’t have one nearby, I’d like to recommend a few favorites of mine: Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH; Belmont Books in Belmont, MA; The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, NY; An Unlikely Story in Plainview, MA; Books and Books in Key West, FL; Oblong Books in Rheinbeck, NY; Still North Books and Bar in Hannover, NH; Longfellow Books in Portland, ME; Print, A Bookstore in Portland, ME and Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN. I’ve found the booksellers in each shop knowledgable and they all seem to have good fulfillment when ordering from them on line.
The 2018 List
Title | Author |
The Reckoning | John Grisham |
Redemption | David Baldacci |
A House Among the Trees | Julia Glass |
Origin | Dan Brown |
Truly Madly Guilty | Liane Moriarty |
The Heart of a Woman | Maya Angelou |
We Are All Made of Molecules | Susin Nielsen |
The Best Man | Richard Peck |
The Banker’s Wife | Cristina Alger |
The River | Peter Heller |
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel | Alexander Chee |
Sharp Objects | Gillian Flynn |
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing | Hank Green |
My Life on the Road | Gloria Steinem |
Deliver Us from Evil | David Baldacci |
The Light We Lost | Jill Santopolo |
Dad Is Fat | Jim Gaffigan |
The Binding | Bridget Collins |
The Target | David Baldacci |
The Whole Truth | David Baldacci |
The Hit | David Baldacci |
Every Breath | Nicholas Sparks |
The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho |
Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari |
The Hate U Give | Angie Thomas |
Crazy Rich Asians | Kevin Kwan |
The Finisher | David Baldacci |
On Canaan’s Side | Sebastian Barry |
The Fallen | David Baldacci |
The Fix | David Baldacci |
The Devil in the White City | Erik Larson |
The Last Mile | David Baldacci |
When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi |
Memory Man | David Baldacci |
Becoming | Michelle Obama |
Days without End | Sebastian Barry |
Where the Crawdads Sing | Delia Owens |
The Great Alone | Kristin Hannah |
In Pieces | Sally Field |
The Secret Scripture | Sebastian Barry |
Standard Deviation | Katherine Heiny |
A Study in Death | Anna Lee Huber |
Small Fry | Lisa Brennan-Jobs |
A Brush With Shadows | Anna Lee Huber |
As Death Draws Near | Anna Lee Huber |
How to Fall in Love with a Man Who Lives in a Bush | Emmy Abrahamson |
Wild | Cheryl Strayed |
The Underground Railroad | Colson Whitehead |
The Pillars of the Earth | Ken Follett |
A Torch Against the Night | Sabaa Tahir |
An Ember in the Ashes | Sabaa Tahir |
Himself | Jess Kidd |
Girl, Wash Your Face | Rachel Hollis |
Calico Joe | John Grisham |
Small Great Things | Jodi Picoult |
Educated | Tara Westover |
The Rooster Bar | John Grisham |
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle | Barbara Kingsolver |
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine | Gail Honeyman |
Origin | Dan Brown |
Iron Kissed | Patricia Briggs |
Frost Burned | Patricia Briggs |
The Banker’s Wife | Cristina Alger |
The President Is Missing | Bill Clinton, James Patterson |
Split Second | David Baldacci |
Three Wishes | Liane Moriarty |
Rogue Lawyer | John Grisham |
The Width of the World | David Baldacci |
The Innocent | David Baldacci |
The Keeper | David Baldacci |
The Wife Between Us | Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen |
Where’d You Go, Bernadette | Maria Semple |
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up | Marie Kondo |
Whiskey in a Teacup | Reese Witherspoon |
There There | Tommy Orange |
The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho |
The Last Black Unicorn | Tiffany Haddish |
As Death Draws Near | Anna Lee Huber |
Some Luck | Jane Smiley |
In the Unlikely Event | Judy Blume |
This Side of Murder | Anna Lee Huber |
Gray Mountain | John Grisham |
Clock Dance | Anne Tyler |
Animal Farm | George Orwell |
Pachinko | Min Jin Lee |
The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm | Christopher Paolini |
See Me | Nicholas Sparks |
The Husband’s Secret | Liane Moriarty |
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo | Amy Schumer |
In Such Good Company | Carol Burnett |
Surprise Me | Sophie Kinsella |
An Artless Demine | Anna Lee Huber |
A Grave Matter | Anna Lee Huber |
Mortal Arts | Anna Lee Huber |
A Reaper at the Gates: An Ember in the Ashes | Sabaa Tahir |
Heavy | Kieses Laymon *** loved this |
Growing Up | Russell Baker |
A Court of Wings and Ruin | Sarah J Maas |
A Court of Mist and Fury | Sarah J Maas |
Black Powder War | Naomi Novik |
Throne of Jade | Naomi Novik |
Educated: A Memoir | Tara Westover |
Love Beyond Time | Bethany Claire |
Out of My Mind | Alan Arkin |
Wild Seed | Octavia E. Butler |
A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J Maas |
A Court of Frost and Starlight | Sarah J Maas |
One Mind: How Our Individual Mind is Part of the Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters | Larry Dossey |
The Handmaid’s Tail | Margaret Atwood |
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher | Lewis Thomas |
The Kiss Quotient | Helen Hoang |
Unbroken: An Olympian’s Journey From Airman to Castaway to Captive | Laura Hillenbrand |
City of Theives | David Benioff |
Lord of Chaos: Book 6 of the Wheel of Time | Robert Jordan |
Truman | David McCullough |
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World | Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrams |
I Give You My Body: How I Write Sex Scenes | Diana Gabaldon |
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English | Natasha Solmons |
Telling the Bees | Peggy Hesketh |
Kingdom of the Blind | Louise Penny |
The Compound Effect | Darren HArdy |
The Great Hunt | Robert Jordan |
Hello Darkness | Sandra Brown |
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America | Barbara Ehrenreich |
Grief is a Thing with Feathers | Max Porter |
A Storied Life of A. J. Fikry | Gabrielle Zevin |
Captain’s Fury: Codex Alera | Jim Butcher |
The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work and Confidence with Everyday Courage | Mel Robbins |
The Orphan’s Tale | Pam Jenoff |
A Gentleman in Moscow | Amor Towles |
Three Feet From Gold : Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities | Sharon Lechter, Greg S. Reid |
The Miracle Morning: The Not-So -Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life- Before 8 AM | Hal Elrod |
Go for No!: Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There | Richard Fenton, Andrea Waltz |
The One: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results | Gary Keller |
King’s Cage | Victoria Aveyard |
Glass Sword | Victoria Aveyard |
The Slow Regard of Silent Things | Patrick Rothfuss |
Rather Be The Devil | Ian Rankin |
Autumn in Oxford | Alex Rosenberg |
The Nest | Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney |
Seven Stones to Stand or Fall | Diana Gabaldon |
The Firebird | Susanna Kearsley |
The Name of the Wind | Patrick Rothfuss |
The Wise Man’s Fear | Patrick Rothfuss |
A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara |
A Man Called Ove | Fredrick Backman |
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate- Discoveries from a Secret World | Peter Wohllenben |
Ballerina | Edward Stewart |
We Are All Welcome Here | Elizabeth Berg |
Even Dogs in the Wild | Ian Rankin |
Maresi | Maria Turtschaninoff |
Caraval | Stephanie Garber |
2 Bodies for the Price of 1 | Stephanie Bond |
The New Rules of Marriage | Terrence Real |
Finding Fraser | KC Dyer |
Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story | Jewel |
Secrets of a Charmed Life | Susan Meissner |
Flat Out Love | Jessica Park |
Call the Midwife | Jennifer Worth |
White Night: Dresden Files | Jim Butcher |
Proven Guilty | Jim Butcher |
Dead Beat: Dresden Files | Jim Butcher |
The Night Circus | Erin Morgenstern |
Hillbilly Elegy | J. D. Vance |
The Fires of Heaven | Robert Jordan |