According to my Goodreads 2018 challenge, I read 46 books in 2018. I’ve always wanted to hit 52 books in a year and I thought 2018 would be my best bet before having my first baby; seeing that it is almost March and I haven’t finished one book, I think I was right 🙂 . However, I always love book recommendations from people, and similarly, I’d love to share what were my favorite and best reads from 2018!
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MY BEST READS FROM 2018
The Anne of Green Gables series
I began this book at the beginning of last year and continued it while I was in my sickest parts of pregnancy. I absolutely love Anne Shirley and her gaggle of friends. I loved feeling like I was growing up with her and I found a true “soul sister” in her ever curious personality. I ended up writing down half of the quotes I found from LM Montgomery because they meant so much to me!
The Lunar Chronicles
I loved this series! I love retold fairy tales and each book in this series in based off of a different one. I read this series ridiculously fast and loved the science fiction and romance tie ins. These books are very family friendly, but it doesn’t compromise plot or action. I’ll definitely re-read these again in a few years.
The Princess and the Goblin
I love fairy tales and this one may be a favorite now! While there are some questions I have about some of the elements of the book that were never explained, this story is so unique and interesting! I easily become bored of books and I found myself kind of sighing when I realized I was already halfway through. I’m so excited to start reading the second book in the series!
The Gift of Fear
This book is super interesting! The author is a crime specialist who gives advice on how to understand violence, patterns in crime, and then how to listen to your most valuable tool when you are in a situation: intuition. I feel like this book has helped me alleviate a lot of anxiety I have had because of past experiences from being robbed to having predatory coworkers; I found the advice that the author gives on spotting predatory behavior in the beginning chapters are invaluable (even if you don’t read the rest of the book).
How to Solve Your People Problems
I don’t say this lightly, but this is one of the best self-help books I have ever read. Dr. Godwin describes good conflict as well as bad conflict in the first few chapters and then moves on to something a little more complex. The author then goes to divide people into two categories: reasonable and unreasonable people. I ended up making over 70 notes in this book. I highly recommended this to anyone, but especially if you’re struggling to understand some dynamics with people.
Educated
This is a memoir written by Tara Westover about growing up in a survivalist Mormon family with extremely mentally ill family members. I found Westover’s story compelling, thoughtful, and painful to read. It was incredibly sad to see the spiritual abuse she suffered at the hands of family members and I can totally understand why she ended up leaving the church that I call home after this. I think this book is a good reminder for people to see that there is often more than meets the eye, but I was annoyed at people’s comments and reviews criticizing her for going back to family etc. Her family is extremely abusive which may be very triggering, but I think people need to be mindful too that our most primitive instincts tell us that our family has our best intentions in mind.
Hillbilly Elegy
This is a memoir written by J. D. Vance about his family’s often tumultuous past and present and how he managed to find stability for himself growing up. This book was recommended to me because I grew up in Kentucky and I was discussing how people can’t understand a lot of blue collar or traditions rooted in poverty until that is the landscape they have grown up with. I found myself nodding along a lot to Vance’s description of family loyalty, honor, and dysfunction. I found Vance’s memoir readable without being pretentious. He ended up receiving a law degree from Yale and he discusses a lot of the fatigue that comes from being a trail blazer in his family without academic supports.
The Modern Enneagram: Discover Who You Are and Who You Can Be
I love the enneagram test! The short of it is that the enneagram is a way of helping people measure their underlying motives and how they perceive the world. For me, it has provided me a lot of grace in identifying how people are different than I am and why they are; it can be very paradigm shifting! This book was free on Kindle Unlimited and I wanted to check it out to see if I learned anything new. I didn’t learn anything new, but I highly recommend this to beginner’s trying to figure out the test and people confused by how the results line up/ what they mean. The test has become really popular recently, but I can see a lot of people don’t understand it, and I think this would be a good place to begin.
Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin
I really enjoyed this retold fairy tale! There are very few fairy tales that focus on male characters and I can tell that I will pick up other books from this author. The author also seemed to set up the book to put in background information for other books in the future which I loved.