#read2018: My year in books

In each of the last three years, my goal has been to read 50 books. This blog post summarises aspects of my 2018 reading year. I also tweeted short reviews using the hashtag #read2018.

An assortment of statistics

Out of the 93 books:

  • 37 books with Australian authors
  • 60 books by women
  • 39 fiction books
  • 14(?) non-fiction books about political/current events
  • 8 ‘Little Books on Big Ideas
  • 4 books about teaching or maths (or teaching maths)
  • 4 authors, multiple books (Terry Pratchett: 2, Veronica Roth: 4, Jessica Townsend: 2, Laura Ingalls Wilder: 3)
  • 2 cookbooks
  • 6 re-reads
  • 3 books aloud (‘Roar’ (Samantha Lane), ‘Minefields’ (Hugh Riminton), ‘Dark Emu’ (Bruce Pascoe), and two substantially underway.)

Books I couldn’t put down (in chronological order)

It’s not a ‘Best Of’ list, but twelve books that I couldn’t put down. (There are probably more in this category on the long list.)

  • Nevermoor (and also Wundersmith), Jessica Townsend
  • The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
  • The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
  • Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi
  • Anna and the Swallow Man, Gabriel Savit
  • Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
  • Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell
  • Teacher, Gabbie Stroud
  • Any Ordinary Day, Leigh Sales
  • Chemistry, Weike Wang
  • Becoming, Michelle Obama
  • The Life to Come, Michelle de Kretser

Books I couldn’t stop thinking about (in chronological order)

I could not stop thinking about these books for the impact they made on me. Most of these also belong on the previous list.

  • Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie
  • Lampedusa, Pietro Bartolo, Lidia Tilotta, Chenxin Jiang
  • The Trauma Cleaner, Sarah Krasnostein
  • The 57 Bus, Dashka Slater
  • Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, Anita Heiss (Editor)
  • Between Us, Clare Atkins
  • One Hundred Years of Dirt, Rick Morton
  • Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe
  • On Patriotism, Paul Daley
  • No Friend but the Mountain, Behrouz Boochani
  • Terra Nullius, Claire Coleman
  • Staying, Jessie Cole

A book with a real ‘wow’ moment

  • Terra Nullius, Claire Coleman

More and more ‘tells’ were revealed, until ‘BAM!’.

The books (in reverse chronological order)

The short reviews are archived at this link: #read2018.

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