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1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. As
a bookseller for 30 years, I had many people recommend "The Storied
Life Of AJ Fikry" to me. I read it and was disappointed with how much
of a soap opera it was. It was OK, but not my cup of tea. After
reading so many good reviews of Tomorrow..., I decided to give it a
try. I am so glad I did, this is a magical story of real friendship
and love. The main characters love each other, but it is a platonic
love & friendship based on shared passions. One of the things I
really enjoyed about it was how much I learned about video game
design and especially about the use of music in games. I am not a
gamer anymore, haven’t really been since physical arcades fizzled
out long ago, but I absolutely adored this book and highly recommend it.
2. The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer. I
loved this book! There isn’t any other book on this list that made
me smile as much as this one did. It's a kind of literary Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory. Heck, it's even dedicated to Charlie. A
reclusive author reveals that the winner of a competition among his
fans will win the only copy of the manuscript of the final book in
his immensely popular series of young adult books. It's a simple
book, but it is filled with love for reading and for those around you.
3. The Wager by David Grann. The
Wager is a thrilling story of British sailors, shipwrecks, mutiny,
and amazing returns to England, all well before the HMS Bounty. Grann
recounts the story of a 1700s English warship that sank along the
coast of Patagonia. The survivors end up splitting up and taking
different routes in trying to get home. Much like the media coverage
of the Bounty mutiny, those that returned to England first got their
stories heard most loudly by the public.
4. The Fourth Wing – by Rebecca Yarros. Man,
I loved this book. The closest thing to the feeling I got reading the
Harry Potter books and I'm very much looking forward to the next
book. It’s the story of a young woman sent to a dragon-riding
military academy. Yarros borrows from Harry Potter, The Hunger Games,
and Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books, but it all worked for me (and
evidently most of the book buyers in the US). Be aware that it does
have a couple of very adult scenes in it and a few too many longing
looks.
5. The Ferryman – Justin Cronin. I'm
a huge fan of Cronin’s The Passage trilogy, some of the most
literary vampire fiction you’ll ever read (Ok, technically not
vampires). I was curious what he would come up with next. Having
finished it, I’m still not certain what it was, only that I
couldn’t put it down. There were lots of “What the Hell?” type
expletives uttered. The basic story has been done before, a utopia
hiding a dark secret. Of course, nothing is as it seems and you never
quite know what is going on, but I loved it.
6. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store – James McBride. This
was a little bit of an odd one for me, in that I was almost halfway
through the book thinking that I was still in background info for the
main story. Then I realized the author had been telling the main
story all along, and I was totally OK with that. It's the story of
the Jewish and African
American families around a
grocery store in a small town in Pennsylvania. I enjoyed it very
much..
7. Empire of the Summer Moon – S. C. Gwynne. Yep!
I finally
got around to reading this excellent history of Quannah Parker, first
published in 2011. I was about to head to East Texas for Ame's family
reunion and I remembered that some of Quannah's story took place in
that area. Quannah was a fascinating man raised in a culture
totally alien to ours. He did horrible things to the settlers trying
to take his tribe's lands but was also an excellent strategist. A
fascinating read.
8. Now Is Not the Time to Panic – Kevin Wilson. Wilson
continues to amaze me with his writing. I think everything he has
written since “The Family Fang” has made one of my Top 10 lists.
This one features a prank by 2 teens in a small town that goes viral
(well before that is really a thing) and ends up spreading across the
nation. Twenty years later as they get closer to being revealed as
the originators, their lives may change. “The
edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and
the law is skinny with hunger for us.“
9. The Last Devil To Die – Richard Osman. The
fourth and last, at least for a few years, of The Thursday Murder Club books
is probably the best since the first book. I love Osman's characters
and the fact that a villain in one book can end up helping the gang
in another one. The adventure is set up by the murder of a minor
character from a previous book. It is one of those books that made me
laugh and cry. Please check out this series if you haven't already..
10. Waco – Jeff Guinn. Jeff
Guinn does it again with another history book that is both gripping
and informative. I thought I knew quite a bit about David Koresh and
the Waco firefight, but I learned a lot from reading this. I highly
recommend any and all of his history books, but I think “Go Down
Together”, about Bonnie and Clyde is my favorite
.
Here are a few honorable mentions for the year: Mickey 7 & Antimatter Blues both by Edward Ashton, Prisoners of the Castle - Ben MacIntyre, Things in the Basement - Ben Hatke, Razzmatazz - Christopher Moore, Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson, and Holly - Stephen King. And the worst book I read this year was Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, a collection of short stories, many of which featured cannibalism. Odd thing is, Murata wrote Convience Store Woman, which was my number 1 book of 2018.
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1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. As
a bookseller for 30 years, I had many people recommend "The Storied
Life Of AJ Fikry" to me. I read it and was disappointed with how much
of a soap opera it was. It was OK, but not my cup of tea. After
reading so many good reviews of Tomorrow..., I decided to give it a
try. I am so glad I did, this is a magical story of real friendship
and love. The main characters love each other, but it is a platonic
love & friendship based on shared passions. One of the things I
really enjoyed about it was how much I learned about video game
design and especially about the use of music in games. I am not a
gamer anymore, haven’t really been since physical arcades fizzled
out long ago, but I absolutely adored this book and highly recommend it.
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