Related Post:
The Best of the Bunch: Bookish’s Favorite Books from 2018
THE 2018 OSCARS, BUT FOR BOOKS
The Oscars (but less white and for books) is in its second year here at Book Riot, and we’re honoring the best of the best 2018 releases in Hollywood fashion!
Fiction Faves: Novels and Stories to Read Over the Holidays
From Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN, USA.
The Best Books of the Year
This list from Barnes & Noble includes these categories:
- fiction
- young adult
- young reader
- thrillers & suspense
- best books (apparently an inclusive category that contains both fiction and nonfiction)
World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2018
Best books of 2018: Young Adult
From BookPage:
The year’s best young adult books aren’t just for teen readers. Read on for our favorite immersive historicals, sweeping fantasies, stories that tackle some of today’s most headline-grabbing social issues and more.
Best Books of 2018: Children’s Books
Also from BookPage:
Although the year has been a challenging one, the effervescent world of children’s literature has been filled with diverse voices, messages of hope and plenty of silliness. Here are our editors’ picks for the 30 best children’s books of 2018.
The Best Historical Fiction Books of 2018
From BookBub
BOOK RIOT’S BEST OF THE BACKLIST 2018
Most “best books of the year” lists prepared by the publishing profession include only books published during the year in question. But this list uses the same approach I use every year for my own list of “best books read”: It includes the best books people read during the year, no matter when the books were published.
And this list earns bonus points for including one of my Top 5 Novels of All Time.
The Best Backlist Books We Read in 2018
Here’s another list like the one above.
Readers’ Regrets: The Books We Wish We Read in 2018
It’s comforting to know that even professional reviewers can’t keep up with the staggering number of new books published every year.
Four Books That Deserved More Attention in 2018
Here’s another variant on the “best books of the year” round-up.
Editors’ Picks: Highlights From a Year in Reading
Cal Flyn—writer, journalist and the deputy editor of _Five Books_—lists the 10 best books she read this year.
Goodreads Staffers’ Top Three Books of the Year
We’ve already looked at the Goodreads Readers’ Choice Awards. Here, several Goodreads staff members each share the top three books they read this year.
The Best Science Books Of 2018
From the folks at Science Friday.
The Best Food Books of 2018
From The New Yorker.
Marilyn Stasio Plays Bad Santa in This Holiday Crime Column
Because I like mystery/thriller/crime novels, I can’t resist offering you this list by Marilyn Stasio, mystery reviewer for The New York Times:
Ho-Ho-Ho, kiddies. Here comes Bad Santa with another gift sack filled with mysteries, crime stories and body parts. Ugh, what’s that gooey red stuff dripping out of Santa’s bag? Not to worry, just some melted candy canes. Now, on to this year’s rundown of the best Good Books for Bad Grown-Ups.
See who wins her awards in categories like “most original murder method” and “most unprintable dialogue.”
CRIME FICTION SUPERLATIVES: THE BEST AND MOST OF 2018
Here’s another list similar to Marilyn Stasio’s. The categories here also vary widely: “best title,” “most studious,” “best conspiracy,” “best use of new media,” “Rotary Club Award for new small business owners.”
Favorite Books of 2018
A beautiful list from the inimitable Maria Popova of Brain Pickings.
Best Thrillers and Crime Fiction 2018: The Critics’ Picks
Again, because I like crime fiction, here’s a list from Books in the Media:
Our team have collated the best of the year selections from the following publications: The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times, Evening Standard, The Spectator, Daily Mail, Financial Times and Slate.
There are some titles here that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
The Best Thrillers Of 2018, According To One Of The Best Crime Writers
The Real Lolita author Sarah Weinman on the crime writing that burrowed deep into her psyche and stayed there for a long, long time
THE BEST NOIR FICTION OF 2018
From CrimeReads:
Trends in this year’s noir releases include a revival of PI stories and classic hard-boiled tales of the “starts bad, gets worse” type; rural noir continued to make a strong showing, while procedurals featured a wide variety of protagonists, arrayed along a vast scale of crooked to incorruptible. Noir tends to be the crime world’s voice of conscience, fully on display in many of the works below, and the prominent presence of 1970s settings harkens back to the last great era of conspiracy fiction. To make our selection process more reader-friendly, we divided our selections into three categories: Private Eyes, Police / Procedural, and that most ineffable, expansive, and existential of labels: straight-up Noir.
Criminal Element’s Best Books of 2018
The staff of Criminal Element choose their favorites.
THE BEST PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS OF 2018
It was a banner year for psychological thrillers, with Trump-induced anxieties and #metoo stories entering into prominence in a genre already concerned with dangers at home. It’s no surprise that two years after the election, a mess of crime novels newly focused on the psychology of betrayal and the effects of toxic masculinity, but it did come as a bit of a surprise to see several novels that fit in perfectly with the #metoo era, and we’re sure to see many more over the coming years. As has been the trend for the past few years, psychological thrillers have shifted towards exploring relationships between women as much, if not more, than the domestic interactions that were once the subgenre’s bread and butter (so much so that for a few years, the crime world was inundated by the aptly named sub-sub-genre of domestic suspense).
Editors’ Picks: Favourite Nonfiction of 2018
There are many interesting entries on this list by journalist and Five Books editor Sophie Roell.
More Books We Loved in 2018
More from The New Yorker.
The Best Books of 2018 (So Far)
From Town & Country magazine.
Readers’ Choice: The Top 25 Most Shelved Books of the Year!
Off the Shelf is a web site that allows users to set up their own shelves on which to place books they want to read. This list includes the books that readers most often placed on their shelves.
Crime fiction: The best mysteries and thrillers of 2018, part 1
Adam Woog, crime and mystery fiction reviewer for The Seattle Times, lists some of his favorites of 2018. He promises part 2 of his list in his first column of 2019, which should show up on the second Sunday of January.
From me, Woog gets bonus points for describing Tana French, author of the recent hit The Witch Elm, as “ a ridiculously talented Irish writer.” That she is.
10 Poets On Their Favorite Poetry Collections Of 2018
From BuzzFeed News.
Year in review: The best books of 2018
This extensive list from John McMurtrie, book editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, contains both fiction and nonfiction.
The Best of 2018: The Top 10 Book Lists of the Year
To feed the need for a meta fix, Off the Shelf lists its lists from 2018 that drew the most reader responses.
34 of This Year’s Highest Rated Books on BookBub
To mark the end of the year, we’re looking back at the books that BookBub members enjoyed the most in 2018. With an average of over 4.5 stars each, these books are tried and true reader favorites across all genres.
26 of the Best Debut Novels of 2018
I was a bit surprised to see that a lot of these debut novels are also on a lot of “best of 2018” lists.
The Observer: Best books of 2018
Includes graphic novels, music, politics & history, art, poetry, fiction, society, cookbooks, tech, theatre, architecture, thrillers, photography, and science.
BEST EPIGRAPHS OF 2018
OK, this is not a list of the year’s best books, but it may lead you to some new books from this year. Epigraphs are those little quotations from earlier writers that are often featured on one of the opening pages of a newer work. Epigraphs are easy to overlook, but they often lead to new insights about the work. And they’re often more meaningful if we look back at them after we’ve finished the book. Imagine the possibilities.
And finally, let’s look forward:
The 10 Most Anticipated Books Of 2019, According To Independent Bookstores
Including Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.
LIT HUB’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019
here are Literary Hub’s most anticipated books of 2019 (so far)—look out for another installment this summer. NB: All dates listed subject to change at the whims of the publishers in question.
Books 2019: Which top fiction picks will you choose?
8 brilliant book series to start your 2019 off right
The titles here aren’t newly published books, but rather first-in-a-series books to get you started reading in 2019.
© 2018 by Mary Daniels Brown
