Five Favorite Fiction Reads 2018

If you care to list yours, five is a number which gives us a guideline, but feel free to stray a bit if you need to. Lucky you if you have more than five!

Here are mine:
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (I think this was a SantaThing gift last year) 5 stars
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (I think I bought this at a pub gathering in the Bay Area) 5 stars
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (purchased at The Strand in NYC, I loved this, but loved it different than the Gentleman book) 4 stars
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine (found in used bookstore) 4 stars
Turtles all the Way Down by John Green (purchased on recommendation of Costco magazine) 4 stars

The Hush: a Novel
The Neighborhood
The Cat's Table
Defending Jacob
An American Marriage

5. Daughter of Hounds by Caitlín R. Kiernan
4. Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire)
3. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
2. The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
1. The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan

My 2018 reads (minus comics)
All 2018 reads (including comics)

Neopolitan novels by Elena Ferrante (I'm counting them as one, they are.)
A Gentleman in Moscow
Sing, Unburied, Sing
The Song of Achilles
The Count of Monte Cristo

A great reading year!!

>3 saltmanz: Those two North books were on the top of my list last year!

First two are a tie because they really go together.

Circe

Song of Achilles

The 6:41 to Paris

A Gentleman in Moscow

Mary B (a fascinating take on the third Bennett sister. Some folk too attached to the characters were upset by how this author wrote them, but I found it very realistic)

Short story collection Overneath

I’m going to do what I usually do and treat series books as single entries. If I listed individual books, Robin Hobb would be the only author on my list. :)

These are listed in the order I read them; it would be too difficult for me to try to rank them.

• The Wheel of Time which I started last year. I read the last 8 books plus the prequel early this year and really enjoyed the series. The writing style has its quirks, but I enjoyed the story and the characters and had fun trying to keep up with all the intricate plot threads and minor-but-important-to-the-plot characters. I also really enjoyed the discussions with people who were following my reviews, so thank you! :)
  
  
• The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin, starting with The Fifth Season.
  
  
• Touch by Claire North. This was my first experience with the author and I was impressed. I have one of her other books slotted to read early next year.
  
  
• Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. This is the first book in an epic fantasy trilogy. It isn’t a particularly unique example of epic fantasy, but I really loved the first book. The second and third books were good, but they sometimes got a little tedious and didn’t grab me strongly enough to earn a spot on this list.
  
  
• Robin Hobb’s Realms of the Elderlings series, starting with Assassin’s Apprentice. I’ve read 13 out of the 16 books this year plus a few related short stories and novellas, and I'm currently reading the 14th. I had read the first 9 books several years back, and they were some of my all-time favorites. They have been as good as I remembered, and I think there are some things I appreciated even more during the re-read. I've also really been enjoying the new-to-me books.

>3 saltmanz: I have both of those Claire North books on my Kindle as a result of enjoying Touch this year. I'm glad to see you enjoyed both of them so much! The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is the one I'm tentatively planning for earlyish next year.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Purge by Sofi Oksanen
American Ghoul by Walt Morton
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

And on the short story front The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

>4 littlegeek: & >5 cindydavid4: It's always fun to see some of my favorites on other people's lists. :) >4 littlegeek: I love The Count of Monte Cristo too, although I didn't read it this year.

The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham
The Shades of Magic Trilogy - by V. E. Schwab
Sleeping Giants - by Sylvain Neuvel
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. - Neal Stephenson
The Jade City - by Fonda Lee

But I had a bunch of books that I really liked so it was hard to list only 5!

>7 Jarandel: I really enjoyed Anathem. Neal Stephenson can be simultaneously very good and very bad; I often have the feeling that he's probably a d*** who won't allow any editors or good advice, even, to influence his writing. Anathem is all good, though.

My five are three, and not in any particular order -

Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells. I know, I know - four books, but it really is one story, and only 600 pages ;_)
The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

I've read some other good books this year, but these are the best. I enjoyed Ann Leckie's Provenance, but would not recommend it over her other work - likewise with Yoon Ha Lee's Revenant Gun which is a good enough ending to the Machineries of Empire trilogy but not as good as the first book was. IMHO.
They almost made it to my list, but more for what came before than for the individual works per se. Thus - honourable mention only.

Let's see. This will be a mix of series and individual books.

Fool's Assassin - First in a trilogy (or #14 of 17 depending on your point of view) that I'll be finishing in 2019. I love Robin Hobb and especially her stories about Fitz.
The Land You Never Leave - The continuation of a series I have in progress. It's definitely not for everyone but it's such a bizarrely wonderful, quirky, humorous and violent book.
Thief of Time - Can never go wrong with Discworld. Also my new favorite Death book.
The Hidden Legacy trilogy starting with Burn for Me - I have a new UF love. Hopefully the continuation with new characters will be just as good next year.
14 - My new favorite scifi/thriller writer.

>10 Busifer: I haven't gotten yet to any of his "author's now too big for editing" moments, as beside Anathem I only read the much earlier Snow Crash and Diamond Age, quite a while back.

>12 Jarandel: Ah. If you ever try Cryptonomicon you’ll understand. I have read and reread it, but there are passages - tens of pages, actually - that do absolutely nothing for the story, or for character development, or much about anything, actually.
Parts of the Baroque Cycle - which is a 3000 page companion piece to Cryptonomicon - has doses of it as well. Reamde, too, could had benefited from some editing.
Even so I recommend them all. It’s just that some author indulgence is required ;-)

The first three books in the Murderbot diaries by Martha Wells
The Jacobs Ladder trilogy by Elizabeth Bear - Dust, Chill, Grail
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood - funny fact, I read her The edible woman and Cats eye back in the early ‘90s, as a teenager, and until I read in Oryx and Crake that they were published in the ‘60s, I thought of them as wellwritten, but hardly revolutionary (somehow I had gotten the impreeion that they were written in the ‘80s).
Pieces of her by Karin Slaughter, or, in a similar vein, The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor

Best First-time FICTION Reads of 2018

I can only offer two because there are too many reads to choose from to pad my list to five:


Counting With Barefoot Critters (Early Reviewer book)


Why I Believe the King James Bible is the Word of God

And because it was so very good, I am including
Best First-time NONFICTION Read of 2018

John Muir's Wild America

My entire list of and up reads is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/282509#6670494

Rawblood - Catroina Ward
Deeply atmospheric, creepy and slightly disjointed in presentation, this is a novel where everything connects. If you love rabbit holes that delve into darkness, madness, haunting and the unexplained; this is the book for you. It is not for the squeamish however. The story is presented in multiple timelines all centering around the Rawblood estate - once owned by an English family and lost, rescued by Italian, Don Villarca. Is it cursed, haunted or is there just madness in the family? It culminates in one woman; Iris. A girl raised in isolation and fear.

The Outsider - Stephen King
It has all the hallmarks of the King stories we love - a terrific marriage, good friends, strange shit happening, suspense and a wicked boogeyman. Oh please stick the landing! Don’t pull a Revival on me. And he didn’t. The blend of police procedural and supernatural thriller was perfect and done with the usual licks of humor throughout. It was delicious waiting for the hard left turn you know the story will take.

Reservoir 13 - Jon McGregor
if you love the deliberation of craft and effective, precise writing, you’ll fall into the love it camp. If you need lots of plot, action and things tied up with a bow, you’ll fall in with the haters. The thing that is most satisfying and impressive about this book is its style and approach. I’ve read two other McGregor novels and let me tell you - he varies his language and story-telling technique to serve the story itself. In this case his sentences and phrases are repeated often as the tale goes forward. You will recognize the themes and situations, but they are ever so slightly altered in each year so that there is progress made or a new aspect shown.

The Round house - Louise Erdrich
No idea why I didn’t write a review for this novel. I loved the story and the way it unfolded. The mystery at the core of the novel is nicely buffered by descriptions of characters lives and social dynamics. Beautiful use of language. I wish Joe had been older though, some of his criminal empathy was not believable in a person so young.

The Locals - Jonathan Dee
my first impression of this book was one of comfort - that I was in the hands of a writer with skill. The prose just lit up my brain somehow. While not a perfect book, it has some great character portraits and insight. There are a lot of character perspectives, but the transitions from one to another are smooth and logical. If you like Richard Russo’s books this one will appeal.

Murder on the Orient Express
Thief's Magic and others in this series
Gods Behaving Badly
Thief of Time and a couple of other Discworld novels
Sword of Tears and others in this series

Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb It took willpower and a box of tissues to finish the beloved final book in this series. Good luck to YouKneek and Narilka on your own journeys :)
Beauty in Thorns by Kate Forsyth The lives of the women who influenced the Pre-Raphaelite artists.
City of Lies by Sam Hawke The first book in a character driven new fantasy trilogy.
Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak The author bared his soul for this one.
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith The most complex storyline in this series so far.

>18 KimarieBee: Thank you! I’m glad to see you enjoyed the last book enough to consider it a top 5 for the year. I’m pretty nervous about what torture is remaining for these characters, and especially about how everything will turn out in the end.

Along with >18 KimarieBee: There is no contest for best series and book of the year for me - the Fitz and the Fool trilogy wins with Assassin's Fate as the best of them. Yes, I absolutely bawled but it was cathartic weeping. YouKneek and Narilka - you have such a great time ahead of you.

Other goodies of the year were:
Spinning Silver
Smoke and Iron
The Fifth Season
Strange the Dreamer

It was a really good year in general - not too many disappointing reads.

>18 KimarieBee: & >20 infjsarah: I'm already a wreck from all the tension and anxiety book two is giving me by waiting :) I'm going to have to lock myself in a room for book 3 aren't I.

>20 infjsarah: Note to self: Buy more tissues. ;)

Here are my top 5 fiction reads for the year ... it was hard to pick the last one as there were 4 that stood ahead of all the rest and then several close contenders for the final spot.

To the bright edge of the world - excellent historical novel about Alaska
The wind's twelve quarters & The compass rose - cheating, perhaps, but my edition contain both these short story collections by UKL
Wolf children lovely manga about family and growing up
The home-maker - classic novel about the restrictiveness of conventional gender roles early in the C20th.
Red clocks - feminist dystopian fiction, disturbingly plausible.

>11 Narilka: Theif of Time is one of my fav Discworld book! Might be time to read those latter ones again

>20 infjsarah: Ok you guys have my attention - do you have to read the books in order?

Trying to pick five was a bit of a problem - I didn't have any five star books this year but there were plenty of 4 and 4 1/2. Here we go though with my attempt to identify five of them.

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Obernewtyn and The Farseekers by Isobelle Carmody
Force of Nature and The Lost Man by Jane Harper (these two aren't actually in the same series, but are releases by same author)
I finished The Lord of the Rings trilogy but had actually read the bulk of this in the year before
Uprooted by Naomi Novak

>25 cindydavid4: I think they really are best in order. The series is made up of five subseries. I know people who read some of the subseries out of order and still enjoyed them, but there are small and not-so-small connections between them that build up into a bigger picture. I think you would get the most out of it by reading them in order.

The first, third, and fifth subseries all feature the same main characters and should definitely be read in order. The second and fourth subseries each feature different sets of main characters and these are the ones some people read out of order, but they still have ties to the other books and their events have wider repercussions in the world that impact later subseries.

This is the recommended order:
Farseer Trilogy
1. Assassin’s Apprentice
2. Royal Assassin
3. Assassin’s Quest

Liveship Traders
1. Ship of Magic
2. Mad Ship
3. Ship of Destiny

Tawny Man
1. Fool’s Errand
2. Golden Fool
3. Fool’s Fate

Rain Wild Chronicles
1. Dragon Keeper
2. Dragon Haven
3. City of Dragons
4. Blood of Dragons

Fitz and the Fool
1. Fool’s Assassin
2. Fool’s Quest
3. Assassin’s Fate

This series page lists the books in the correct order, but it also includes the novellas and short stories. Those aren’t critical, although I did enjoy them. However, I definitely would not read the ones it has at the top of the list until you’ve read more of the main books.

>25 cindydavid4: I concur with >27 YouKneeK: It just wouldn't be the same out of order.
I started 20 years ago with the first book and have spent 20 years on and off back in the world. I just love the characters. Knowing that the final trilogy was on its way, about 2 years ago I started a reread both in print and audio and was reminded why I also cried at the end of the Tawny Man trilogy too.
>21 Narilka: and >22 YouKneeK: Yes, make tissue manufacturers happy ;-)

Looking back at 2018 I did not have a great reading year but I did have some great reads. If I were forced to confine my list to five books then they would be:

The Leopard
Dune
Nicholas Nickleby
Oliver Twist
Dubliners

Other excellent reads of 2018 include:

Melmoth the Wanderer
The Haunting of Hill House
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Confusion
Altered Carbon
The Quiet American
The Maltese Falcon

The Green Man's Heir was a pleasant surprise and an enjoyable read.

This was the fiction that I rated 4.5 stars last year. I treated series books as a single "read".

City of Stairs, City of Blades, City of Miracles

This series started out strong and just kept on going. I rated them all at 4.5 stars.

Three Parts Dead

This was another highly imaginative series but I only rated the following two books that I've read so far as 4 stars. Not that 4 stars ain't bad.

Steelheart, Firefight

I really enjoyed this start to this series but I was very disappointed that the final book didn't really explain anything.

A gathering of shadows

The girl with ghost eyes

>12 Jarandel: re Cryptonomicon: I actually read about 7/8 of the book and walked away and did not regret. One of these days I'll read Snow Crash, tho, it's on my Kindle.

>31 littlegeek: Cryptonomicon was the first was the first Neal Stephenson book I read and I read it on strong recommendations from two friends. I enjoyed the book a lot, but it was the book where I learned that Stephenson has difficulties with the ending of stories. I think by reading 7/8ths of the book you have read the best parts and there is no need to read the last 8th. I was disappointed that the end of the book turned into a simple treasure hunt after all the great communications and cryptography bits earlier. I was also irritated by his inventing a race of people who came from islands of the west coast of Scotland. That was totally unnecessary and I found it an irritation when reading the book.

REAMDE is the only Stephenson book, and I have read most of them, I have read that I believe has a satisfactory ending. I have enjoyed all the books I read except Seveneves. All but "Seveneves" had good ideas and concepts in them but were generally lacking a good ending. "Seveneves" was full of technology that anyone interested in space exploration would find as basic, except for the fantasy nanotechnology bits. The canonisation of Elon Musk was creepy and cheap. The whole second part of the book was unnecessary and cringeworthy. The coincidences were telegraphed and, I thought, rather pathetic. I was very disappointed with "Seveneves", as you might guess from my comments.