Reading this year has been so many things for me. An escape. A way to educate myself. A way to see my own struggles in a different way through another’s story. A way to understand the struggles of others. A way to better understand where I came from. This year I think I’ve read more than I had in any other year since college. I read 16 of the 22 books I’d hoped to read this year, which feels like an accomplishment. Books with asterisks are ones that I didn’t (because I couldn’t get into them) or have not yet read in full (as is the case of the books by Nguyen, Clinton, and Clements). I struggled this year to think of what my favorite book was, but The Underground Railroad, Little Fires Everywhere, The Hate U Give, and Bad Feminist were definitely highlights.

This year, I also listed the children’s books I’ve either read with Reed or on my own. Reed is part of an Oregon Battle of the Books team this year and I’m their coach, so I’ve been slowly reading the 8 books he was assigned to read so I can help quiz him. He’s finally gotten into reading, which I could not be more thrilled about. I remember having the same experience the summer before I started third grade: one moment, I hated reading; the next, I was in love.

Adult and Young Adult Fiction

  • Willful Disregard: A Novel About Love by Lena Andersson
  • All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
  • The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes*
  • The Idiot by Elif Batuman
  • The Sellout by Paul Beatty
  • Outline by Rachel Cusk*
  • The Arrangement by Sarah Dunn
  • Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens
  • Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
  • Since we Fell by Dennis Lehane*
  • It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
  • The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
  • Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
  • Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller
  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
  • Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
  • The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen*
  • Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
  • Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • Chemistry by Weike Wang
  • The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
  • The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Non-Fiction

  • Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich
  • My Name is Freida Sima:The American-Jewish Women’s Immigrant Experience Through the Eyes of a Young Girl from the Bukovina by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz (which is actually about my relatives!)
  • What Happened by Hillary Clinton*
  • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
  • Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle*
  • Abandon Me: Memoirs by Melissa Febos*
  • Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
  • The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria by Janine di Giovanni
  • Lab Girl by Hope Jahren*
  • I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
  • Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
  • The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports by Jeff Passan
  • Becoming Habsburg: The Jews of Habsburg Bukovina, 1774-1918 by David Rechter*
  • Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
  • The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit

Children’s Fiction

  • Alien in My Pocket by Nate Ball
  • The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett
  • Wild Life by Cynthia deFelice
  • The Terrible Two by Mac Barnett and Jory John
  • The Terrible Two Get Worse by Mac Barnett and Jory John
  • Keepers of the School Book 1: We the Children by Andrew Clements
  • Keepers of the School Book 2: Fear Itself by Andrew Clements*
  • The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
  • Holes by Louis Sachar
  • I Survived the Eruption of Mount St. Helens, 1980 by Lauren Tarshis

Here are some of the books I hope to read in 2018, though as always, I know that serendipity and the vagaries of Overdrive hold lists will impact my decision-making. If any of you have thoughts on these or alternative suggestions, let me know!

  • Beartown by Fredrik Backman
  • We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta Nahesi Coates
  • Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto by Jessa Crispin
  • Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
  • Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
  • Difficult Women by Roxanne Gay
  • Class Mom by Laurie Gelman
  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
  • Exist West by Moshin Hamid
  • Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks
  • Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
  • This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jenkins
  • Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
  • Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
  • Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh
  • Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding
  • So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
  • The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs
  • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
  • Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
  • The Best Kind of People: A Novel by Zoe Whittall