Year-End Lists

Shelf Awareness: Best Books of 2018

[see also 2023 • 2017]

Fiction

• Asymmetry
  Lisa Halliday
• Convenience Store Woman
  Sayaka Murata
• Everything Under
  Daisy Johnson
• Freshwater
  Akwaeke Emezi
• Girls Burn Brighter
  Shobha Rao
• The Mars Room
  Rachel Kushner
• My Ex-Life
  Stephen McCauley
• There There
  Tommy Orange
• Your Duck Is My Duck
  Deborah Eisenberg

Nonfiction

• All You Can Ever Know
  Nicole Chung
• Beautiful Country Burn Again

  Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
  Ben Fountain
• Educated
  Tara Westover
• Fly Girls

  How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History
  Keith O’Brien
• Heartland

  A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
  Sarah Smarsh
• How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
  Alexander Chee
• The Recovering

  Intoxication and Its Aftermath
  Leslie Jamison
• The Tangled Tree

  A Radical New History of Life
  David Quammen
• Tinderbox

  The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
  Robert W. Fieseler
• So You Want to Talk About Race
  Ijeoma Oluo

Paste Magazine: Best Books of 2018, Novels and Nonfiction

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2010s • 2017]

Novels

1. Circe
   Madeline Miller
2. The Incendiaries
   R.O. Kwon
3. The Poppy War
   R.F. Kuang
4. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
   Hank Green
5. Warlight
   Michael Ondaatje
6. Crudo
   Olivia Laing
7. All the Ever Afters

   The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother
   Danielle Teller
8. Girls Burn Brighter
   Shobha Rao
9. The Friend
   Sigrid Nunez
10. Melmoth
    Sarah Perry
11. Southernmost
    Silas House
12. The Calculating Stars
    Mary Robinette Kowal

Nonfiction

1. Educated
   Tara Westover
2. Into the Raging Sea

   Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro
   Rachel Slade
3. Fisherman's Blues

   A West African Community at Sea
   Anna Badkhen
4. So You Want to Talk About Race
   Ijeoma Oluo
5. Beastie Boys Book
   Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz
6. Feel Free
   Zadie Smith
7. All You Can Ever Know
   Nicole Chung
8. When They Go Low, We Go High

   Speeches That Shape the World - and Why We Need Them
   Philip Collins
9. The Death of Truth

   Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
   Michiko Kakutani
10. Bad Blood

    Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
    John Carreyrou
11. Barracoon

    The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”
    Zora Neale Hurston
12. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
    Alexander Chee
13. Not That Bad

    Dispatches from Rape Culture
    Roxane Gay (editor)
14. Born to Be Posthumous

    The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
    Mark Dery
15. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

    One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
    Michelle McNamara
16. How Democracies Die
    Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Literary Hub: Favorite Books of 2018

[see also Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022 • Our 48 Favorite Books of 2021 • Our 65 Favorite Books of 2020 • The 20 Best Novels of the 2010s • The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the 2010s]

• Asymmetry
  Lisa Halliday
• Awayland
  Ramona Ausubel
• Baby Teeth
  Zoje Stage
• Bearskin
  James A. McLaughlin
• Beautiful Country Burn Again

  Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
  Ben Fountain
• Be With
  Forrest Gander
• Call Me Zebra
  Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
• Cape Verdean Blues
  Shauna Barbosa
• The Carrying
  Ada Limón
• Cherry
  Nico Walker
• The Colonial Conquest
  Alessandro Spina
• Convenience Store Woman
  Sayaka Murata
• Essential Essays

  Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry
  Adrienne Rich
• Evening in Paradise
  Lucia Berlin
• Everything Under
  Daisy Johnson
• Eye Level
  Jenny Xie
• The Females
  Wolfgang Hilbig
• Fire Sermon
  Jamie Quatro
• Flights
  Olga Tokarczuk
• Florida
  Lauren Groff
• Frederick Douglass

  Prophet of Freedom
  David W. Blight
• Freshwater
  Akwaeke Emezi
• Friday Black
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• The Friend
  Sigrid Nunez
• Girls Burn Brighter
  Shobha Rao
• Good and Mad

  The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger
  Rebecca Traister
• The Good Son
  You-Jeong Jeong
• If You Leave Me
  Crystal Hana Kim
• The Immortalists
  Chloe Benjamin
• The Incendiaries
  R.O. Kwon
• Indian Horse
  Richard Wagamese
• The Kiss Quotient
  Helen Hoang
• Laura & Emma
  Kate Greathead
• The Mars Room
  Rachel Kushner
• Mine
  Sarah Viren
• Mirror, Shoulder, Signal
  Dorthe Nors
• Motherhood
  Sheila Heti
• My Sister, the Serial Killer
  Oyinkan Braithwaite
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• The Naked Woman
  Armonía Somers
• Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump

  An Intervention
  David Shields
• OK, Mr. Field
  Katharine Kilalea
• The Order of the Day
  Eric Vuillard
• The Overstory
  Richard Powers
• The Perfect Nanny
  Leila Slimani
• Ponti
  Sharlene Teo
• The Real Lolita

  The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World
  Sarah Weinman
• Restless Souls
  Dan Sheehan
• The Sky Is Yours
  Chandler Klang Smith
• The Tangled Tree

  A Radical New History of Life
  David Quammen
• The Third Hotel
  Laura van den Berg
• This Little Art
  Kate Briggs
• This Radical Land

  A Natural History of American Dissent
  Daegan Miller
• Transparent City
  Ondjaki
• Trick
  Domenico Starnone
• Wild Milk
  Sabrina Mark
• Welcome Home

  A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters
  Lucia Berlin
• The Witch Elm
  Tana French
• You Think It, I'll Say It
  Curtis Sittenfeld

Laura Miller: 10 Best Books of 2018, as published by Slate

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2017]

• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

  One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
  Michelle McNamara
• Washington Black
  Esi Edugyan
• Milkman
  Anna Burns
• The Mars Room
  Rachel Kushner
• The Witch Elm
  Tana French
• Transcription
  Kate Atkinson
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• How to Change Your Mind

  What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
  Michael Pollan
• The Sparsholt Affair
  Alan Hollinghurst
• Daemon Voices

  On Stories and Storytelling
  Philip Pullman

Autostraddle: 50 of the Best Feminist Books of 2018, with the poetry list filed separately here

Fiction

• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• The Mars Room
  Rachel Kushner
• Those Who Knew
  Idra Novey
• Insurrecto
  Gina Apostol
• The Mere Wife
  Maria Dahvana Headley
• Vox
  Christina Dalcher
• Before She Sleeps
  Bina Shah
• Circe
  Madeline Miller
• Red Clocks
  Leni Zumas
• She Would Be King
  Wayétu Moore

Nonfiction

• 90s Bitch

  Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality
  Allison Yarrow
• The Real Lolita

  The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World
  Sarah Weinman
• Stealing the Show

  How Women Are Revolutionizing Television
  Joy Press
• Betraying Big Brother

  The Feminist Awakening in China
  Leta Hong Fincher
• Text Me When You Get Home

  The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship
  Kayleen Schaefer
• Bad with Money

  The Imperfect Art of Getting Your Financial Sh*t Together
  Gaby Dunn

Cultural Criticism

• Against Memoir

  Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms
  Michelle Tea
• Eloquent Rage

  A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
  Brittney C. Cooper
• Revolting Prostitutes

  The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights
  Juno Mac & Molly Smith
• Good and Mad

  The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger
  Rebecca Traister
• Rage Becomes Her

  The Power of Women's Anger
  Soraya Chemaly
• So You Want to Talk About Race
  Ijeoma Oluo
• Girls Resist!

  A Guide to Activism, Leadership, and Starting a Revolution
  KaeLyn Rich
• Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

  And Other Arguments for Economic Independence
  Kristen R. Ghodsee

Essay Collections

• Meaty
  Samantha Irby
• The Reckonings
  Lacy M. Johnson
• This Will Be My Undoing

  Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America
  Morgan Jerkins
• Tonight I'm Someone Else
  Chelsea Hodson
• Dead Girls

  Essays on Surviving an American Obsession
  Alice Bolin
• The Art of Feminism

  Images that Shaped the Fight for Equality, 1857-2017
  Helena Reckitt (editor)

Anthologies

• Well-Read Black Girl

  Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
  Glory Edim (editor)
• Can We All Be Feminists?

  New Writing from Brit Bennett, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and 15 Others on Intersectionality, Identity, and the Way Forward for Feminism
  June Eric-Udorie
• Our Stories, Our Voices

  21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America
  Amy Reed (editor)
• Not That Bad

  Dispatches from Rape Culture
  Roxane Gay (editor)
• Becoming Dangerous

  Witchy femmes, queer conjurers, and magical rebels on summoning the power to resist
  Katie West & Jasmine Elliott (editors)
• Generation F

  The Girls Write Now 2018 Anthology

Memoir/Biography

• I'm Afraid of Men
  Vivek Shraya
• The Trauma Cleaner

  One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster
  Sarah Krasnostein
• The Recovering

  Intoxication and Its Aftermath
  Leslie Jamison
• Sick
  Porochista Khakpour
• How to Be Alone

  If You Want To, and Even If You Don't
  Lane Moore
• When They Call You a Terrorist

  A Black Lives Matter Memoir
  Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele
• And Now We Have Everything

  On Motherhood Before I Was Ready
  Meaghan O'Connell
• Becoming
  Michelle Obama

Boston.com: 20 Best Books of 2018, selected by staff members from four Boston book shops

[see also 2019]

Fiction

• The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
  Denis Johnson
• Speak No Evil
  Uzodinma Iweala
• The Overstory
  Richard Powers
• Florida
  Lauren Groff
• The Great Believers
  Rebecca Makkai
• There There
  Tommy Orange
• The Incendiaries
  R.O. Kwon
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• Gone So Long
  Andre Dubus III
• Friday Black
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Poetry

• The Final Voicemails
  Max Ritvo

Nonfiction

• So You Want to Talk About Race
  Ijeoma Oluo
• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

  One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
  Michelle McNamara
• Educated
  Tara Westover
• How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
  Alexander Chee
• The Traveling Feast

  On the Road and at the Table with My Heroes
  Rick Bass
• Call Me American
  Abdi Nor Iftin
• Heartland

  A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
  Sarah Smarsh
• The Library Book
  Susan Orlean
• Becoming
  Michelle Obama

Dennis Cooper: Favorite Fiction and Nonfiction of 2018

[see also 2019 • 2016 • 2012]

Fiction

• Destroy All Monsters

  The Last Rock Novel
  Jeff Jackson
• Dusty Pink
  Jean-Jacques Schuhl
• Ruination
  Katie Jean Shinkle
• Temporal
  Troy James Weaver
• Sprawl
  Danielle Dutton
• The Garbage Times/White Ibis
  Sam Pink
• Men and Apparitions
  Lynne Tillman
• Not Heaven, Somewhere Else
  Rebecca Brown
• Bosun
  New Juche
• Stupid Baby
  New Juche
• The Artifact
  Germán Sierra
• Mercury's Choice

  A Fable of New York CIty
  Kyler James
• Yeezus In Furs
  Shane Jesse Christmass
• Wild Milk
  Sabrina Mark
• The Fat Kid
  Jamie Iredell
• Small Talk at the Clinic
  Thomas Moore & Steven Purtill
• On Hell
  Johanna Hedva
• Bhopal Dance
  Jennifer Natalya Fink
• The Solitary Twin
  Harry Mathews
• Three Nails, Four Wounds
  Hector Meinhof
• Experts Are Puzzled
  Laura Riding
• Evening in Paradise
  Lucia Berlin
• My Pet Serial Killer
  Michael J. Seidlinger
• Clog
  Grant Maierhofer
• The Unmapped Country

  Stories and Fragments
  Ann Quin
• In the Desert of Mute Squares
  M. Kitchell
• LIVEBLOG
  Megan Boyle

Nonfiction

• Twentieth-Century Boy

  Notebooks of the Seventies
  Duncan Hannah
• Fascination
  Kevin Killian
• A Handbook of Disappointed Fate
  Anne Boyer
• Ingratitude
  Peter Sotos
• The Yuck ‘n Yum Compendium
• Since When
  Bill Berkson
• Solvent Form

  Art and destruction
  Jared Pappas-Kelley
• Sleep preceded by Saying Poetry
  Jacques Roubaud
• Vile Days

  The Village Voice Art Columns, 1985-1988
  Gary Indiana
• Six Monologues 1990-2007
  Jeff McMahon
• Artaud 1937 Apocalypse

  Letters from Ireland
  Antonin Artaud
• Acid West
  Joshua Wheeler
• The Assassination of Kathy Acker
  Matias Viegener
• Trip

  Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change
  Tao Lin
• Fat and Other Stories

  Some Writing About Sex
  Ishmael Houston-Jones
• K-punk

  The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher
  Mark Fisher

Entropy: Best Books of 2018, Non-Fiction and Fiction, "in no particular order" but numbered as follows.

[see also 2017]

Non-Fiction

1. Sick
   Porochista Khakpour
2. Heart Berries
   Terese Marie Mailhot
3. Carceral Capitalism
   Jackie Wang
4. All You Can Ever Know
   Nicole Chung
5. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
   Alexander Chee
6. Betwixt-and-Between

   Essays on the Writing Life
   Jenny Boully
7. Heavy

   An American Memoir
   Kiese Laymon
8. Litany for the Long Moment
   Mary-Kim Arnold
9. A Handbook of Disappointed Fate
   Anne Boyer
10. When They Call You a Terrorist

    A Black Lives Matter Memoir
    Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele
11. This Will Be My Undoing

    Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America
    Morgan Jerkins
12. Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

    Bookmarked
    Brian Evenson
13. Tonight I'm Someone Else
    Chelsea Hodson
14. Beyond Measure
    Rachel Z. Arndt
15. Not That Bad

    Dispatches from Rape Culture
    Roxane Gay (editor)
16. Feel Free
    Zadie Smith
17. When I Spoke in Tongues

    A Story of Faith and Its Loss
    Jessica Wilbanks
18. Silver Road

    Maps, Essays and Calligraphies
    Kazim Ali
19. Idiophone
    Amy Fusselman
20. Ladies Lazarus
    Piper J. Daniels
21. Migrant Brothers

    A Poet’s Declaration of Human Dignity
    Patrick Chamoiseau
22. Light Magic for Dark Times

    More than 100 Spells, Rituals, and Practices for Coping in a Crisis
    Lisa Marie Basile
23. Mother Winter
    Sophia Shalmiyev
24. Old In Art School

    A Memoir of Starting Over
    Nell Painter
25. California Calling

    A Self-Interrogation
    Natalie Singer
26. The Displaced

    Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
    Viet Thanh Nguyen (editor)
27. The Leftovers
    Shaelyn Smith
28. Rockhaven

    A History of Interiors
    various authors
29. Spain
    Caren Beilin
30. The Barefoot Woman
    Scholastique Mukasonga
31. Wrestling with the Devil

    A Prison Memoir
    Ngugi wa Thiong'o
32. Eloquent Rage

    A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
    Brittney C. Cooper
33. So You Want to Talk About Race
    Ijeoma Oluo
34. Transgressive Circulation
    Johannes Goransson
35. Dept. of Posthumous Letters
    Dot Devota and Caitie Moore
36. John Okada

    The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy
    various authors
37. Pasolini's Our
    Nathanaël
38. To Float in the Space Between

    A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight
    Terrance Hayes
39. Lyric Multiples
    George Albon
40. Refuge
    Ming Lauren Holden

Fiction

1. The Incendiaries
   R.O. Kwon
2. There There
   Tommy Orange
3. Friday Black
   Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
4. Bury What We Cannot Take
   Kirstin Chen
5. Wild Milk
   Sabrina Mark
6. The Great Believers
   Rebecca Makkai
7. Red Clocks
   Leni Zumas
8. The End of Peril, The End of Enmity, The End of Strife, A Haven
   Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint
9. The Naked Woman
   Armonía Somers
10. The Third Hotel
    Laura van den Berg
11. Motherhood
    Sheila Heti
12. Strawberry Fields
    Hilary Plum
13. On Hell
    Johanna Hedva
14. A Lucky Man
    Jamel Brinkley
15. A River of Stars
    Vanessa Hua
16. The Collected Stories of Diane Williams
    Diane Williams
17. Lion Cross Point
    Masatsugu Ono
18. Call Me Zebra
    Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
19. Mecha Samurai Empire
    Peter Tieryas
20. Fruit of the Drunken Tree
    Ingrid Rojas Contreras
21. If You Leave Me
    Crystal Hana Kim
22. Florida
    Lauren Groff
23. The Emissary
    Yoko Tawada
24. Empty Set
    Verónica Gerber Bicecci
25. An American Marriage
    Tayari Jones
26. H & G
    Anna Maria Hong
27. Monster Portraits
    Del Samatar and Sofia Samatar
28. The Taiga Syndrome
    Cristina Rivera Garza
29. Sacred Smokes
    Theodore C. Van Alst
30. French Exit
    Patrick deWitt
31. The Poet X
    Elizabeth Acevedo
32. My Pet Serial Killer
    Michael J. Seidlinger
33. Comemadre
    Roque Larraquy
34. White Dancing Elephants
    Chaya Bhuvaneswar
35. The Golden State
    Lydia Kiesling
36. Break.up

    A Novel in Essays
    Joanna Walsh
37. Little Reunions
    Eileen Chang
38. Scribe
    Alyson Hagy
39. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
    Denis Johnson
40. Open Me
    Lisa Locascio
41. After the Winter
    Guadalupe Nettel
42. Pretend We Live Here
    Genevieve Hudson
43. Unnatural Habitats & Other Stories
    Angela Mitchell
44. Suicide Club

    A Novel About Living
    Rachel Heng
45. Not Heaven, Somewhere Else
    Rebecca Brown
46. The Immigrant's Refrigerator
    Elena Georgiou
47. The Lucky Ones Get to be People
    Rachel Haley Himmelheber
48. American Hippo

    River of Teeth, Taste of Marrow, and New Stories
    Sarah Gailey
49. The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
    Katya Apekina
50. Freshwater
    Akwaeke Emezi
51. The Pisces
    Melissa Broder
52. The Dirty Text
    Soleida Rios
53. My Year of Rest and Relaxation
    Ottessa Moshfegh
54. What We Were Promised
    Lucy Tan
55. Whiskey & Ribbons
    Leesa Cross-Smith
56. The Overstory
    Richard Powers
57. Self-Portrait with Boy
    Rachel Lyon
58. The Blurry Years
    Eleanor Kriseman
59. The Houseguest

    And Other Stories
    Amparo Dávila
60. The Poppy War
    R.F. Kuang

Kristin Iversen: Best Books Of 2018, as published by Nylon

• Asymmetry
  Lisa Halliday
• An American Marriage
  Tayari Jones
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• That Was Something
  Dan Callahan
• The Golden State
  Lydia Kiesling
• Friday Black
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• A Terrible Country
  Keith Gessen
• Census
  Jesse Ball
• If You Leave Me
  Crystal Hana Kim
• Eden
  Andrea Kleine
• Inappropriation
  Lexi Freiman
• The Incendiaries
  R.O. Kwon

Publishers Weekly: 10 Best Books of 2018

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

• Asymmetry
  Lisa Halliday
• Educated
  Tara Westover
• Heavy

  An American Memoir
  Kiese Laymon
• How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
  Alexander Chee
• Insurrecto
  Gina Apostol
• The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
  Denis Johnson
• Melmoth
  Sarah Perry
• Reagan

  An American Journey
  Bob Spitz
• The Shape of the Ruins
  Juan Gabriel Vásquez
• She Has Her Mother’s Laugh

  The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
  Carl Zimmer