Bad Blood about Theranos was very well-written as in couldn’t put it down. Also found Spilling Silver and Uprooted interesting—very different from books I usually read.
I can count on one hand the number of books I’ve started but not finished. Sometimes a Great Notion was one. Manhattan Beach was another. Disappointing.
I’ve enjoyed the slow horses series by Mick Herron. The slow horses are the denizens of Slough House where spies who have messed up are sent. Fast moving and funny.
I read 51 books last year–one short of my goal of 52. My favorites are below.
Fiction:
Min Jin Lee–Pachinko
Celeste Ng–Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You (I actually liked this one better than Little Fires–the story really resonated with me.)
Meg Woltzer–The Female Persuasion
James Wood–Upstate
Curtis Sittenfeld–You Think It, I’ll Say It (short stories)
Kathleen Flynn–The Jane Austen Project
Non-Fiction:
Matthew Walker–Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (It convinced me to stop my night owl tendencies and go to bed early.)
Tara Westover–Educated
Maxwell King–The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers (I probably wouldn’t have read this, except for the fact that I saw a documentary about Fred Rogers–Won’t You Be My Neighbor–which got me interested in learning more about him.)
Plus–I read a bunch of thrillers and mysteries that aren’t literary fiction and are sheer escape for me. I was disappointed in some of the authors this year. However, the last book I read in this genre in 2018 was James Patterson’s Target. It’s part of his Alex Cross series (the only ones of his I read) and it was eerie–paid assassins and a national crisis that leads to martial law in the US.
@Bromfield2
We have quite some books overlap, I changed my sleeping pattern after reading “why we sleep” and I bought several copies of the book for some of my friends. I think it should be a required reading for every hs students :))
PS, really enjoyed Pachinko, read it in 2017, I read her “free food for millionaires” in 2018, it is a lot less serious and more soapy, an escape book imo.
Late to the party on this one but I just finished Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, really enjoyed this well-written and unique book. Pachinko is waiting for me on my den coffee table as a friend gave it to me several months ago. Next on my list.
Just finished Beartown by Fredrik Backman, and what an astonishing book. Can’t wait to read the next in the series.
One thing of note is the sensitivity with which he writes about sexual assault from the victim’s point of view, and the aftermath.
Unfortunately, I read the sequel without realizing it was one before I was well into it. So now I should read Beartown but it’s difficult because I know how everything ends.
Finally got around to The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, which won the Hugo award (as did the next two books in the trilogy it kicks off). I’d read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by her, which I found a bit “meh”. Glad I still read The Fifth Season, because I thought it was terrific. A bit of a slow start, but by page 50 I just wanted to skip work to read. 
Now impatiently waiting for the sequel from the library.
@intparent maybe I need to give “the fifth season” another try? I couldn’t finish it the first time around.
@garland I read “us against you” without realizing that it is “beartown”’ sequel. Didn’t like it that much. I didn’t enjoy reading his “a man called Ove” either. I am surprised at how high both books have been rated on goodreads. Too predictable storylines, rather stereotypical characters, sometimes “too cute” for their own goodness (such as Ove). I won’t read anymore of Backman’s books.
@makemesmart I almost quit around page 25. Just saying if you didn’t get very far, it is worth another try. If you got 100 pages in and weren’t interested, then I’d say it is not for you.
@makemesmart–I actually do like Backman overall. there is a level of cuteness but I get sucked in anyway, in a way I wouldn’t with most authors. So kudos to Backman for getting me there. I loved Ove.
@intparent and @makemesmart , I read the Broken Earth Trilogy, at least most of it, even through I didn’t really like it. By the time I got to the last volume I was pretty much done with it, and ended up skimming to find out how it ended. Then I realized that I still really didn’t know how it ended and I didn’t care. I disliked the protagonist, and grew really tired of her laborious yet curiously difficult to visualize, categorization of characters using descriptions of physical traits of the regional types. Actually, “laborious” would be the term I would find most apt to describe the trilogy, especially as it progressed. Certainly her world-building is strong, but it’s not a world a wanted to spend time in.
Hmm, I’ll see how I feel after book 2 (waiting at the library). I just finished Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. It is a fantasy novella about a boarding school for kids who’ve gone to a magical world (think Narnia or Alice in Wonderland) and come back. I wasn’t too taken with the surface plot as it built around some incidents at the school, but I found the premise and some of the the characters quite charming, if that makes sense. They are part of a series; I’m going to try the next one, although it doesn’t follow my favorite characters from the first book. I hear there is a book downstream that goes to Goblin Market, which is a poem I love.
D1 tried it and didn’t like, D2 liked it a lot. D2 suspects that this might be because D1 wouldn’t have gone through the door or the wardrobe if she found it (she’d have called an adult). D2 or I would have disappeared into the other world in a heartbeat.
@intparent, I was really taken by Every Heart a Doorway, too, despite similar misgivings about the plot.
I just finished Andrew Sean Greer’s Less. It’s wonderful - deeply sweet without being saccharine in the slightest, and wonderfully book/writer nerdy, too.
I liked Less, too!
I enjoyed Less a lot and thought it was often laugh out loud funny. My book club generally gave it a thumbs up, with some dissenters.
I am working my way through the pile of new books I got for Christmas. One that I would recommend for any booklover is I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel. It is a collection of essays about books and readers. Absolutely delightful!
Another recent favorite is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This is a beautifully written book, described on the dustjacket as “an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder.” Owens has that amazing ability to make you see the story as you read. A film adaptation is coming via Reese Witherspoon’s production company.
If any of you enjoy autobiographies, I would highly recommend In Pieces, by Sally Field. I am listening to it-Sally narrates it herself-and it is fascinating. Talk about the reality of a life being so different from public perception! It’s also beautifully written, particularly from a non writer. She had no help from a ghost writer.
I’ve heard Sally Field interviewed where she talks about her book. It does sound like a fascinating book.
I haven’t been on CC for ages! Missed this thread so I thought I would pop in for some new suggestions. Thank you for giving me some good suggestions! My favorite read for 2018 was The Weight of Ink. Lovely writing and the history was new to me. My book club loved it!