Best Books of 2018

I decided not to rank these since several would tie for first and second place. Here they are, in the order I read them. There are twenty-nine books in all, skimmed from what I've been reading all year. Keep reading, and I hope you find at least one to interest you!

1) Call The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times  by Jennifer Worth
Also in the series: Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End
I was introduced to these by the TV series and quite enjoyed listening to the audiobooks read by Nichola Barber. Jennifer Worth was a midwife and a nurse. Her stories in these memoirs have to do not only with mothers and families, but also with several of her elderly patients and their histories –  more so than the TV series, which focuses on midwifery.

2) See You When I See You by Rose Lagercrantz and Eva Eriksson, translated by Julia Marshall
Earlier in the series: My Happy Life, My Heart is Laughing, When I Am Happiest, and Life According to Dani
These children's books were originally written in Swedish. They are a sensitive and funny portrayal of elementary school life written at a first or second grade reading level. The illustrations are just as essential as the text. They are perfect beginning chapter books that parents can enjoy reading along with their kids!

Sweet and clever!

3) Invisible Links by Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach

I really should have read this in Swedish, but I happened upon the English edition at the university library. It's a classic book of short stories by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf. I recommend especially the stories "Mamsell Fredrika" (about author Fredrika Bremer), "A Christmas Guest," and "Among The Climbing Roses." I also highly recommend her Löwensköld trilogy: Löwensköldska ringen (The General's Ring  in English), Charlotte Löwensköld, and Anna Svärd.

Tea time with Invisible Links

4) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, translated by Hilda Rosner

It took me forever to find this for some reason, and then I found three copies. The one I read from was highly underlined and annotated. This book supposedly inspired the Yes album Close to the Edge. (Truthfully, that's why I wanted to read it). A couple quotes I took note of:

 'Time is not real, Govinda. I have realised this repeatedly. And if time is not real, then the dividing line that seems to lie between good and evil, is also an illusion...every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people – eternal life.'

'...words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.'

5) Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

I did not get a chance to read this whole book, but the parts I did read were well-written and enlightening. This is a very good biography for anyone interested in Wilder, her daughter, and the Little House books.

I'm going to be revisiting this one

6) While on the topic of Wilder and her daughter, I'll mention the book Old Home Town by Rose Wilder Lane. Each chapter – funny or tragic – is a portrait of life in a frontier town. For something written so long ago, Lane's words are incredibly relevant in the present:

'As we traveled along those roads we read bits of the autobiographies of squirrels, rabbits, birds, lizards, snakes, written with claw and scale on the dusty wheel-tracks.'

'I was meditatively stirring the cooling dishwater round and round in the pan while through some vaguely blissful dream I watched voluptuously the patterns formed by the congealing grease, when thunder and whirlwind came upon me.'

7) The Art of the Common-Place: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

Where environmentalism and Christianity intersect! I particularly recommend "The Body and The Earth" and "Christianity and the Survival of Creation." Here's a quote to consider from the latter essay:  

'My mind, like most people's, has been deeply influenced by dualism, and I can see how dualistic minds deal with this verse. They conclude that the formula for man-making is man=body+soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Genesis 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula given in Genesis 2:7 is not man=body+soul; the formula there is soul=dust+breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man out of dust; then, by breathing His breath into it, He made the dust live. The dust formed as man and made to live did not embody a soul; it became a soul.'

8) The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M. Valente – MUST READ!

Every lover of the Brontës should read this book. For those who have read The Young Brontës by Mary Louise Jarden, The Glass Town Game is not really very similar to that. It is instead an entirely fantastical adventure based on the world and characters Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne created in their childhood games.

A sweet, imaginative episode in the childhood of the Brontë siblings

9) The Lost Words: A Spell Book poems by Robert Macfarlane, illustrations by Jackie Morris

The premise of this beautiful book is to bring back into usage (by children) nature words that are becoming obsolete in daily usage. These include, surprisingly, the words acorn, weasel, otter, and lark. I was hesitant about the caption A Spell Book, but I found that it doesn't really have to do with the occult or anything. The poem about dandelions is my favourite. 

10) Modern Love & Other Myths by Joyce Sutphen

This year I reread this collection of poems by my English professor to get inspiration for my own poetry. One that especially sticks with me is called "Annunciation."

Suppose the angel never comes.

Suppose you spend days waiting

in the empty room, staring at dust

in the ordinary beams of sunlight

falling from the high windows.

Suppose you scan the horizon and see

blue everywhere, suppose no one appears

in the doorway, no one descends in 

a lightning flash saying the thing that 

angels always say: "Fear not!"

and all of your hopes wilt on the stem,

the lily that was your emblem fades,

and you are not after all required

to bow your head to the impossible.

What then?

You leave the room. You marry

and have children who are not divine.

Your heart breaks in other ways.

11) Norah Gaughan's Knitted Cable Sourcebook

The perfect gift for any witty little knitter! I should invest in my own copy since I have it out from the library for months at a time. The author provides the written out instructions as well as charts for both types of knitters. The patterns are beautiful, the pictures are beautiful, and the projects are amazing!! Some cables are reversible (right side vs. wrong side – pretty either way) Directions are given for substituting different cable panels on certain projects. I could look at this book for hours.

For witty knitters

12) Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly: winner of the Newbery Medal this year. This is a tightly woven story with a satisfying ending and vivid characters. I will definitely read this book again.

Newbery winner!

13) I Love You, Michael Collins by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

It was hard to put this book down. Mamie, the narrator, has such a captivating voice as she writes letters to the least popular of the Apollo 11 astronauts about her life in 1969. Her friendship with Buster is sweet to read about – even if slightly unbelievable (in a too-good-to-be-true sort of way).

14) Linda McCartney's Sixties! The book includes her commentary on these photoshoots. Here are just a few famous pictures that Linda took. I want my own copy of this book!

Jimi Hendrix

The Beatles

Keith Moon

15) Gaining Ground by Forrest Pritchard

A farmer's memoir of his experiences with organic farming – yes, the cover looks boring, but the stories are really funny.

Not as boring as it looks

16) The Boggart by Susan Cooper

Also in the series: The Boggart and the Monster, The Boggart Fights Back

The premise sounds corny: Canadian kids visit a family castle in Scotland and accidentally bring home the ancient boggart, which they have to send back through a video game (with a budding romance thrown in, by the way). But don't be too dismissive, Susan Cooper does a really nice job with the text and characters in this series. The last book came out this year.

17) House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery by Liz Rosenberg

Everyone interested in Anne of Green Gables (and the rest of the Anne books) should read this captivating history. I was surprised to learn of Montgomery's troubled childhood. 

18) She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) by Anne Hood

This story is centred around the leader of the Robert E. Quinn Junior High Beatles Fan Club (original Rhode Island chapter), Trudy Mixer (and 'fan' is an understatement). I really enjoyed all the Beatles factoids. Many parts had me laughing! Even the ending was handled exceptionally well. 

Beatle lovers rejoice!

19) The Diary of Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Velma Swanston Howard

Every time I read this extraordinary book, I'm amazed by how novel-like Selma's life is – at least the way she tells it. There is a mystery, a love interest, and excellent characterisation of the figures in her life at age fourteen. I've yet to read it in the original Swedish. Kom igen, Litteraturbanken!

'Fancy! I had expected God to punish me because I did not confess my faith in Him on Easter Eve. As if God could be so small! No; that kind of fear of God vanished the moment I set foot in the cathedral.'

20) Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through The World's Strangest Brains by Helen Thomson

I listened to the author read this on audiobook and I loved hearing her tell me about the interesting people she met and interviewed. There are people who never forget a single day of their lives, there are people who have to cope with feeling lost in the most familiar of places (because their brains cannot create a mental map), there are people who have mirror-touch synesthesia and literally feel others' sensations when they see them (like a touch on the arm or a punch in the face). I highly recommend this book: it will blow your mind!

This book will blow your mind!

21) Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford (this cover is from the American edition; why they feel the need to change spellings, I'll never know)

Speaking of mind-blowing books, I sat in my chair for about twenty minutes after I read this one, just digesting how it all fits together. The working theory is one of parallel universes or time streams. Al gets a posthumous letter from his dad on his twelfth birthday explaining how he is to use the time machine his dad created to prevent him from dying. Obviously, this will not be as straightforward as it sounds (well, does it even sound straightforward in the first place?!). Al accidentally alters events so that his dad dies as a boy and...sorry! You want to read this, so I'll say no more.

You want to read this book!

22) My Antonia by Willa Cather
I finally got around to reading this for the first time this year with my book club. I immediately appreciated the frame story; it works really well in this case to distance the real author from the story-teller (but you're thinking it, I know you are. A woman writing as a man about a woman...etc.) I've been thinking about framing my own stories to effect that distance from the author's voice to a character speaking. I guess I still don't understand the story's main message, but there's much to think deeply about.
This book is the origin of that great, famous quote: '...that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.' 

Another exquisite passage is:

'The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself. When the smokey clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: "This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth." It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.'

Does anyone completely understand this book?

23) Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol

This is an entertaining graphic novel based on the author's own experiences. The details of Vera's summer at Russian camp are engrossing, with skilful illustration to tell the story. I also enjoyed her children's picture book Leave Me Alone! about a grandma who needs to get her knitting done with no distractions.

Russian camp?

24) Word Nerd by Susan Nielsen
Many of my choices this year are first-person narratives. I am particularly drawn in by this style of writing, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. Twelve-year-old Ambrose tells in his own words how he becomes a competitive Scrabble champion and makes friends with his next door neighbour – a former convict.

The world of competitive Scrabble

25) The Song of Seven by Tonke Dragt, translated by Laura Watkinson

Here's a classic Dutch children's story that was recently translated into English, along with a couple of Dragt's other works, The Letter for the King  and The Secrets of the Wild Wood. I loved the main character, a school teacher named Frans. He sort of reminds me of Danny Kaye in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty as he's unsuspectingly roped into a centuries-old hunt for treasure. He likes to tell made-up adventures to his students which involve him (or his alter ego) as the main hero, but then a real conspiracy comes along! He's just a cool character and I wish I could meet him. The format of the story is neat as well. Each part has an increasing number of chapters, all the way up to – you guessed it – seven.

I love you, Frans.

26) The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm

This story is hilarious and well-executed. Main character Ellie's grandfather, a scientist with two PHDs named Melvin Sagarski, finds a way to turn himself young again. Unfortunately, he's a little too young, and no-one would believe him if he tried to explain (besides his daughter (Ellie's mom), Ellie, and her best friend Raj), so he has to attend middle school with Ellie! I really hope there will be more of these –  so far there are two and they are fast reads. 

Also in the series: The Third Mushroom

27) Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story by Roger Daltrey

'I started twirling my microphone not because of my ego, but because I didn't know what to do with my hands during the solos.'

There you go, you can quote him on that now. This is a fun, personalised narrative that seems to roll right along with good stories, but not too many unnecessary intimate details (if you know what I mean). Again with the first person point of view, I know – but it really sounds like he's talking to you! I loved that. Other fun facts you can read about are how he still sews his own jeans and getting pooped on by all sorts during the filming of the sarcophagus scene in Tommy.

Too cool for school

28) Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, adapted by Ari Folman and David Polonsky

Graphic, in this case means in pictures. Though I'm not so much into graphic novels, this is another new one that I liked. I read part of the diary a long time ago, but I think I didn't make it all the way through. This version is one that I didn't want to put down. 

Revisit the classic

29) Father's Arcane Daughter by E.L. Konigsburg
The book opens with two people in conversation. One of them begins to reminisce about his childhood and their conversation recurs throughout the book at the beginning of each chapter. I was kept guessing until near the end as to who these people were, but I really enjoyed the gradual reveal of getting to piece them into the story.

Not what you expect!