2018 has felt like such a long year. When I was looking through all of the books of my "favorites" shelf on Goodreads, I was surprised by some of the ones were from this year. I had honestly thought I had read a couple of these in 2017. It's been that long of a year.
Even though this year has felt like an eternity, I did read a number of really good books. I had added 11 favorites this year but I'm only going to list the top ten here. The eleventh one is one I'm actually debating on removing from my favorites shelf now that I've had several months between when I read it and now. I'm finding that I don't think of it as much as I did when I first read it.
I had set the goal of reading 40 books at the beginning of the year. I completed that challenge and then some. I ended up completing 141 books this year, which is probably my best reading year ever. Per the Goodreads stats page, it says that those books amount to 48,363 pages. Holy. Smokes. It also shows that the shortest book I read was Go the F*** to Sleep by Adam Mansbach and the longest was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.
I think the biggest reason why I had gotten so many books read this year was getting a library card the beginning of August. Which gave me access to not only to their physical books but also access to OverDrive. A friend had recommended The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck at that point. I didn't have a copy and wasn't so sure I had wanted to buy one. Which initiated my going to the library with a different friend. We both got cards that day and I've fallen in love with the library all over again.
The following is my list of favorite books from this year. They aren't in any particular order and will be linked, as always:
Obisidio by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman
Shadowsong by S. Jae-Jones
Lifel1k3 (Likelike) by Jay Kristoff
Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns Julie C Dao
Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming
Robin by Dave Itzkoff
The Seven Husband's of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Red Sister by Mark Lawrence
Two of these books, Robin and Not My Father's Son, aren't what I normally lean towards for reading. But they involve two of my absolute favorite people to watch in movies, Robin Williams and Alan Cumming.
Robin is a biography about Robin Williams. This book made me cry at the end for a good 45 minutes to an hour. I had borrowed it as an audio book from the library. If I had physically read this book, there would have been tears all over the last few pages. I didn't realize how close I was to the end when I went to the gym one evening and turned on this book to listen to it as I worked out. Got about halfway through my workout, realized roughly in his life I was, and left. I spent the rest of the book sitting in my vehicle crying as I listened to the end of this book. I grew up watching his movies from Hook to Flubber to Mrs. Doubtfire, just to name a few. This man will always have a place in my heart. Which is why, when I got to the part where he died, I started crying. It was as if he had just died again.
Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming is an audio book I had bought on a whim earlier this year. I grew up with some of his movies as well, so I was willing to hear about more of his life. And to make it even better, Alan Cumming narrates the audio book himself. I could listen to him speak for hours, to be honest, and never get tired of his voice. This one goes back and forth in time, so you can see some of his childhood and some of the events that were more recent. The more recent events involved Alan having been approached about doing a celebrity genealogy show. I thought it was interesting to learn a bit about his childhood and how it related to what he had currently been doing.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was one that took me by surprise. I don't normally read books that are more contemporary but I had seen a lot of buzz online about it, so I borrowed it from the library as an ebook. Mostly because I wanted to find out why this woman had had seven different husbands. And fell in love. It's definitely worth checking out, even if a celebrity tell all isn't your kind of thing. I loved it so much that I had to buy a physical copy of it for myself.
I can't really say too much about Obsidio without possibly going into spoiler territory but this was definitely a fantastic ending to the Illuminae Files. I had pre ordered the physical book and have since bought the audio as well. The audio books for all three books in the series are all full cast of narrators and are very much worth the listen if you like audio books. If not, the physical books are all formatted in the way of emails, IMs, emails. If you like spaceships and explosions, this is an amazing series to go with.
Shadowsong is a sequel as well. So I can't really say too much about it. But it does pick up not too much longer after Wintersong. I will say that I was hoping for a touch more Goblin King, though.
I had pre ordered Lifel1k3 and the day it arrived in the mail, I read almost the whole thing in one sitting. And would have finished it, too, if the power hadn't gone out at 10 or 11PM. Pretty much everything Jay Kristoff writes is bound to be a favorite of mine. I loved Eve, Lemon Fresh, and Cricket so much. And it took me maybe half the book to realize that there were similarities to a point in history about 100 years ago. I'm so glad I picked up on that little correlation. It just made the book just that much better.
Muse of Nightmares is a sequel as well. So many sequels on this list, it feels like.This one picks up pretty much right after where Strange the Dreamer ends.
I was so excited when I found out that Forest of a Thousand Lanterns was a east Asian inspired retelling of the Evil Queen from Snow White. And it lived up to my expectation and exceeded them. The sequel, Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix, just came out in November. I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet but will as soon as I get the chance to do so.
The last two favorites, Red Sister and The Lies of Locke Lamora, are books I just read this month. And because of these books, I'm glad that I wait until I've finished my last book of the year before doing any kind of final favorites lists of the year. Red Sister I had heard described as a book about assassin nuns being trained at a convent. That was all I honestly needed to know. I can't wait to pick up the second book here soon. I had borrowed Red Sister from the library but they don't have book two. With The Lies of Locke Lamora, I knew even less about the book. All I knew about it was that it was the start of the Gentleman Bastard series. And once I got into it, I read this 700+ page book in two days. This was also a borrowed book from the library. Luckily, they have books two and three,. Which are both currently on hold.
Let me know if you want to hear about least favorite books of 2018. I have a couple of those. Or any other content that you would ant to see from me.
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