MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2018
Sometimes earlier this year, I made a personal commitment to reading more. Like many of us, as a child I absolutely loved to read. I spent money saved up from my red envelopes (cue Chinese ancestry) on Scholastic book fairs and browsed through the catalogs in great detail in anticipation of each upcoming fair. For me, the Scholastic catalogs were the Vogues of my childhood. I loved books so much I spent 4 hours a week volunteering at the neighborhood library in high school, and would frequently go back to volunteer on occasion during my breaks at home in college.
So came my next question - Where does one find books? I ended up scouring the internet for suggestions, finding novels to read from New York Times, Amazon, Oprah & Reese Witherspoon’s book clubs, Goodreads, and friends. Coincidentally, I ended up joining a book club with some colleagues from work. In all honesty, I couldn’t believe I was joining a book club. I’ve always thought they were so cliché and structured, but it was actually a boatload of fun.
When it comes to genre, I didn’t have an affinity for anything in particular. My answer was always if it keeps me engaged, I’ll love it. However, I will admit having a love / hate relationship with nonfiction books. More often than not, I find myself not being able to hold interest when reading a nonfiction book. It usually starts this way: herein lies a topic of which I will enlighten you, followed by an infinite amount of examples, all slightly different in presentation with subtle changes in minutiae. Usually by the halfway point, I’m exhausted by the mind-boggling examples I’ve read up to that point and I start to lose interest. Fictions, on the other hand, keep twisting and turning while developing new story-lines.
Below you’ll find my favorite books of 2018, along with others that I’ve read. Everyone has their own reading preferences, but hopefully you might find something you can enjoy. Happy reading!
