The 7 Best Books I Read in 2018
It’s hard to keep up with new book releases so these seven books are just the best ones I read during the year from any time period. At the beginning of the year, I set my reading challenge at thirty books on Goodreads without anticipating that I would have little to no free time during the first, oh, say, seven months of the year. I had to kick things into high gear while leaning on The Hunger Games trilogy, books for my English classes, and comic books, but I managed. And like a big, dumb dog, my challenge for next year? Thirty books, baby!
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Thanks to my best friend, Naomi, I was turned onto this series in the fall of 2018. I’ve never been averse to the big name book series. After all, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are comprised of some of my favorite stories of all-time. While I don’t think The Hunger Games quite reaches the heights of those two series, it was still a very compelling, engaging read with characters for whom I had no trouble rooting. The conclusion, Mockingjay, ended well, but was a bit of a slog to begin and Catching Fire might have been the rare book that actually prompted me to enjoy the movie more. This first novel, though, was excellent. It did a great deal of world building and had a lot of powerful moments. The series, as a whole, is great, but this installment was its best.
On Mysticism by Jorge Luis Borges
Who knows if this book would have ever found itself on my radar if I did not take a course in college about literature in a global context? Thankfully, my life now has this collections of essays and short stories in it. Filled with stories like “The Aleph,” “The Library of Babel,” and “Funes, the Memorious,” On Mysticism is a testament to the brilliant mind of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the great Argentine writers to ever pen a story, and his ruminations on life, memory, and finding meaning in the meaningless. A collection like this pushed my own methods of critical thinking and, for that, it’s undoubtedly worthy of a spot on this list.
The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic by Jason Surrell
From the second I saw this book at the Art of Disney store at Disney Springs, I knew I would love it. And it made for the perfect October read! The Haunted Mansion is one of my all-time favorite attractions at Walt Disney World and one of the best reasons for this is because how much story went into it. With a ride like The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, there is not much of a story beyond the fact that you’re riding a magic carpet. But The Haunted Mansion has back stories and continuity and myths and legends and character development and unique storytelling techniques. It’s all here! And this book goes deep on all of it and also shows off some pretty killer artwork and behind the scenes photographs. It also provided readers with a wonderful look at the way the ride has manifested at Disney parks around the world. It’s a must for theme park nerds like me.
The Modern Prometheus by Nicole Mello
Admittedly, I’m a little bit biased with this selection because the author is my sister, but hey, I included Venus last year, didn’t I? Anyway, this one is, as the title says, a modern take on the story of Frankenstein, told in a similar format as the original Mary Shelley tale. There’s a lot to parse here so it’s probably worth multiple reads, at that!
Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
Okay, so this one is maybe technically not actually a book. Maybe it’s a four hundred year old play. But still, it’s one of the best things I’ve read all year! As soon as I finished, it skyrocketed up my list of favorite Shakespeare plays because it’s just so jam packed with literary goodness and some of my favorite tonal shifts of all-time. The balance is just struck so perfectly; it’s irresistible.
David Bowie: A Life by Dylan Jones
Much like the movie, Bohemian Rhapsody, proved this year, it can be hard to tell stories about our culture’s most iconic musicians in fresh and interesting ways. Biographies and autobiographies about pop and rock icons from the 1950s through to the late 1980s are very tired and seem to follow a similar formula. But Dylan Jones did an excellent job of shaking up this tired pattern by having Bowie’s story told by those closest to him and, sometimes, by Bowie himself. A traditional biographic structure that is comprised of oral history vignettes, Bowie just feels so alive in the pages of this book. Core tenets of philosophy and theology are embraced by the very fact that so many people have stories to share.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
You ever just get in a mood to read some Twain? That’s how I felt this year and since I’d already read Tom Sawyer years ago, I decided it was probably time to engage in some Huckleberry Finn. And as I expected, you can never go wrong with Twain. Problematic elements that are better left to debate for people much smarter than I am aside, it’s just such a classic tale. One of the towering works of American literature. It’s so worth having in your cultural psyche if you’ve ever been skeptical about engaging with a story like this from an author like Twain. Of course the book is over 125 years old, so I’m probably just saying things that have been said thousands of times. But yeah, Mark Twain. Not bad at writing.
