This year, more than any other in my adult life, I made reading a priority. Perhaps THE priority would be the more accurate way to phrase it. In the mornings before work, during work breaks, while eating dinner, and in the precious last minutes before falling asleep, I have been reading. I've done little else. I have also - thanks to some nudging from a favorite podcast - begun listening to audiobooks once more. For years, I'd been unable to focus on stories spoken unless I'd already read the books themselves before. Thankfully that problem has passed.
All told, adding up every novel, novella, audiobook and middle grade chapter story I have read 212 books this year. Mostly it's been fiction, and usually the story is seeped in either sci-fi or fantasy though there have been a decent number of memoirs and random other non-fictions sprinkled in. I tend to read books dipped - if not drenched - in darkness, but every once in awhile I sought out something light. The longest book I've read was 746 pages, the shortest about 130. Michelle Obama's 'Becoming' was the audiobook that logged in the most hours at just over 19, and the shortest audio story didn't even reach three. I have loved many, enjoyed dozens more, and disliked others so much that I really should have just stopped reading them. I even managed to sneak in a few re-reads: 'Tithe' by Holly Black, 'Furiously Happy' by the wonderful Jenny Lawson, the impossibly beautiful 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' by Betty Smith, and a childhood favorite 'The Boggart' by Susan Cooper.One of the few regrets I do have for 2018 is that I didn't write about more of them here on this blog. Sure I did with a couple, but there were so, so many others that I would have loved to let people know about. I feel almost like I've let those stories down by not spreading word of their greatness! So I've started a new Faelina's Reads Instagram account which will hopefully spur me into more writing next year. As for 2018, I've narrowed it down to my Top 10(ish) favorites of the year (re-reads not considered):
It’s Christmas night and a daughter appears on her parent’s doorstep after having been missing for 20 years. She was with the faeries, she says, and for her only 6 months had. An impossible truth, yet her family cannot deny that she does not look a day older than 16. I read this book at the beginning of of the year and I still think of it almost every day. It’s filled with sadness, heartache, the deep relentless longing that exists in the hearts of us who so desperately search for magic around each and every corner. I spend every day hoping I will find this tale's forest of bluebells.
2. The Power - Naomi Alderman
This held the place of my favorite book of 2018 for most of the year, and it definitely is my favorite audio book out of the 100 I’ve listened too. Set in a near-ish future; women and girls everywhere suddenly develop the ability to cause physical pain to men, the result of a new muscle that is wrapped around every female’s collar bone. It is a vast and shocking story about what happens when the rules are abruptly changed and women rule the world. How quickly cruel women can be toward their old oppressors, have angry and hateful men become against their usurpers. A very rich and dark tale, the narrator does a phenomenal job of giving a voice to each character – whether they be from America, England, Africa or Russia. I love, love, loved this book and think everyone should read it.
3. Hunger - Roxanne Gay
Hunger is one of those books that I think every person on the planet should read, but most especially every woman. It’s a memoir, the story of Gay’s lifelong battle with food and obesity; of how her war began after she was gang raped at the age of 12. Most of her life has been different from mine in every possible way. I haven’t experienced her trauma, I’ve never been obese, and she has a relationship with food that gives my anorexic mind nightmares. But even so, there were so many lines of the book I would swear had been ripped straight from my mind. We as a culture need more books like these, so that hopefully, one day, we will can truly start seeing souls instead of bodies. Definite trigger warnings for rape and eating disorders.
4. Into the Drowning Deep/Feed - Mira Grant
Try as I might I just cannot figure out which of these two books I love more. Into the Drowning Deep has a rich luscious horror that lurks around the edges of each page, and drags you swimming down into the ocean depths where carnivorous mermaids sing. It’s beautiful and terrifying and I want so badly for it all to be true. Feed (the first of the NewsFlesh trilogy) is a story I shouldn’t like because it’s about zombies, and I hate the whole zombie genre. But it is SO GOOD; absorbing, fast paced, and full of surprises that will make you sit back stunned. I became a bit of a zombie myself with this trilogy, constantly wanting more, more, more of the story and characters within the pages. I am so grateful I discovered Mira Grant's works this year, and for any fans of the horror/fantasy genre I cannot recommend these books enough!
Sometimes in our world, there are doors that appear in the most inexplicable ways and impossible places. They appear to the children who know deep in their souls that they don’t belong on this earth. By daring to step through the door in front of them, that child then enters the world that speaks to the deepest dreams and desires of their heart. A world that is logic or nonsense, virtue or wicked. If the child is lucky they stay there forever, but sometimes, sometimes the child is forced to return to our world. This book – and subsequent series – is about those children. The ones who bereft and lost, spend every single second of their existence searching and hoping for their door to once more appear. For some it does. For others it never will. I loved this story with my entire heart.
6. Welcome to Borderland - Multiple Authors
This book is the latest in a series of publications dating back to 1986, thanks to the wondrous minds of Mark Alan Arnold and Terri Windling, In this crazy magical reality, the border to Elfland has returned and lives in clear view with the world as we know it. Only the presence of that much magic has created a rift in the scientific rules and laws that govern planet earth. A certain part of the land can't handle technology; it can't always manage magic either. Bordertown comes out of it. A precarious magical city surrounded by the even more unpredictable Borderlands. Elfs and humans live and interact with either. Music creates dancing colors in the sky. Curses will turn men into wolves. Coffee is treasured more than gold. I am addicted to reading these stories. Captivated while lost inside them, I become shaky and desperate for more the second the last sentence ends. There are 8 books in the series. I've been lucky enough to lay my hands on 5. Unfortunately, the first three books are no longer in print. I've found one, but if anyone out there happens to run across a copy of Bordertown and/or Life on the Border please buy it for me. I will pay you back!
This is one of the darkest books I've read this year, but out from it's midnight home shines a brilliantly crafted tale. Carolyn is our telescope into the world, and right from the start we learn that things are not all sunshine and roses. There's blood on her dress, one of her brother's is the embodiment of war, another sister is dead - though not for long, and the man they call Father is missing. In all there are 12; children they were when Father rescued them from a disaster in which all their parents and family were killed. To each young child he assigned a Library catalog, one in which they were to study and become and never, ever share with anyone. War, Language, Mathematics, Animal, Possible Futures, Healing, the Land Beyond Death. To ensure their strict adherence to his tutelage he inflicts some of the cruelest lessons and punishments imaginable. But then one day he's gone missing and the 12 now adults are anxious to learn why. So they embark on a quest. One that brings the quiet normal outside world their Library doors. One that almost destroys a universe. There are trigger warnings for just about every possible imaginable thing in this book, but if you think you can handle that then I highly recommend it. I did not want to leave this story behind.
8. The Art of Asking - Amanda Palmer
I wrote about this memoir shortly upon arriving in Washington. Since this post is already too long, I won't go into much detail about it again. Suffice it to say, that I loved listening to Amanda's story. I now listen to her music regularly, follow her on Instagram, and became a supporting member of her patreon (something I've never done for anyone/thing else before). She's amazing, wild, free, and fierce in her desire to create a better world through her art. Go listen to it now!
This was a last minute list maker. Originally this spot had been allotted to A Man Called Ove, Backman's incredibly sweet, heartening story of an old man whose inability to tolerate fools is about to face his biggest fool invasion yet. But then I decided to close out the year with Us Against You, the sequel to Backman's Beartown, and I realized that Beartown is truly the book that holds my heart. The tale of a frozen town whose heart and dreams are focused entirely on it's hockey club, Beartown and it's inhabitants wrecked me; gutted me so completely, I felt destroyed. Emotionally devastated. But I loved them so deeply. In the past when a book has made me cry, it has always only been when the book was directly in front of me; not when I was driving down the highway, nor too walking through the rain soaked woods. I did just that with theses ones though. Twenty years from now I know I will still be thinking of the characters; wondering what happened to them, what else they've been through, hoping against hope that they found happiness. I will always be rooting for Beartown.
10. Lilith's Brood - Octavia Butler
Without a shadow of a doubt my number one favorite book of 2018. Before January I'd never even heard of Octavia Bulter. Now in December, I've devoured 6 of her books and she is one of my most beloved authors. Technically Lilith's Brood is made of of three novels Butler published back in the 1980's - Dawn, Adulthood Rights, and Imago. I don't even really know how to describe it. There are aliens, other planets, living spaceships, the knowledge that the earth as we know it today no longer exists (though we never get the complete story as to why). Weird is an understatement. Magnificent is too. Her world building is phenomenal and the creation of characters inspiring. When I reached the final page I looked up and knew something in me had forever changed. This book will change you too.
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So that's it. There truly are so many others. Colson Whitehead and the shockingly real way he depicts the world. Victor Lavalle whose writing is so crisp and sharp you'd think it would contrast horribly with the impossible magic of his stories - only it doesn't. Franny Billingsly and her tinkling delightful way with words. Margaret Atwood - the writer I think I'd most aspire to be - with her stories that are ageless pearls, clear cut diamonds. Gillian Flynn's cutthroat depictions of the darker side of our souls. And the voice of Toni Morrison narrate her story 'Home' in a voice that sounds like hot maple syrup being poured over fresh pancakes on a Sunday morning.
If anyone wants to know more about the other books I've read this year, and what I thought about them, you can check out my Goodreads page here. If anyone has read the books I've listed, I would love to get your thoughts/opinions. If there is one thing I love as much as reading books, it's talking about them with fellow readers! Also, let me know if there are certain books you think I should read. Ok, that's all for now; thank you to anyone who lasted all the way through this post. I'm off to go read, and hopefully you are too!
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