A Year of Reading: 2018

1. Lab Girl by Hope Jahrens
2. The Jewel by Amy Ewing
3. Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson
4. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor
5. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
6. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
7. Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris
8. Nomadland by Jessica Bruder
9. The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
10. Tempest by Beverly Jenkins
11. Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
12. Fetch by Nicole Georges
13. Longbourn by Jo Baker
14. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
15. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
16. Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
17. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez
18. Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
19. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
20. Wrong To Need You by Alisha Rai
21. So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
22. The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley
23. My Real Children by Jo Walton
24. Sourdough by Robin Sloan
25. Alexander Hamilton: Revolutionary by Martha Brockenbrough
26. All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson
27. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
28. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
29. Pro by Katha Pollitt
30. The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory
31. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
32. The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines (re-read, original review is here.)
33. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
34. Made For Love by Alissa Nutting
35. Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
36. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
37. The Girl is Trouble by Kathryn Miller Haines
38. Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
39. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
40. The Outsider by Stephen King
41. Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
42. The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls by Jessica Spotswood
43. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
44. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
45. A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole
46. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
47. The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
48. Good Luck With That by Kristan Higgins
49. Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson
50. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
51. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
52. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
53. Dating You / Hating You by Christina Lauren
54. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
55. From Here To Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
56. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
57. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
58. Journal Me Organized by Rebecca Spooner
59. The Psychopath Test by Ron Jonson
60. The Radical Element edited by Jessica Spotswood
61. The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight by Gina Ochsner
62. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
63. One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus
64. The Arrangement by Mary Balogh
65. Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie
66. Slade House by David Mitchell
67. Can't Nothing Bring Me Down by Ida Keeling
68. The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
69. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
70. Mercies in Disguise by Gina Kolata
71. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
72. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
73. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
74. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
75. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin
76. Hurts to Love You by Alisha Rai
77. The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee
78. Working Stiff by Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell
79. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
80. Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
81. Are U Ok? by Kati Morton
82. A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson
83. Your Best Year Yet! by Jinny Ditzler
84. Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore
85. The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory

This is the least number of books I've read in several years, which is interesting. I think it's because I didn't listen to a ton of audiobooks (so many great podcasts out there now!) and also I read a few books that were quite long. Catherine the Great, for instance, took me something like 3 weeks to read (and I don't regret a moment of it!) A Little Life also took me longer than most books. I think there were a few other lengthy tomes in there as well, and I'm glad I finally buckled down and read them, since I had previously been daunted by their length.

Checking my Goodreads shelves, it looks like my 5-star reads for the year were:

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Huh. I've really been talking up An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin, and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh but managed to give them each only 4 stars. The more I look at this list, the more I see some really great books that got fewer than 5 stars. But I've always been stingy with 5-star ratings, and they usually go to books that I'm blown away by in the moment rather than those that I'm thinking about months later after I've given them the rating. Which is all just to say that the star ratings aren't everything.

In 2019 I'm participating in the TBR Pile Challenge again, which always means discovering wonderful books that I've put off reading for far too long. I'm looking forward to finding some new favorites this year!