These are the books I read this year that I would enthusiastically recommend. Within each category, they are loosely ranked by preference, but I left anything off that I didn’t want to tell at least someone—you should read this book! Some categories were more difficult to rank. For instance, Tara Westover’s and Michelle Obama’s books were very different…but you should read or listen to both of them!
If I had to pick overall favorites for the year it would be Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby for non-fiction and Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being for fiction. As always seems to be the case for me–my favorites have something to do what speaks to me at a particular time in my life as well as being exceptional writing and or storytelling.
I always consider saying more about each selection, but I am not very good at capturing what I love about a book in a sentence or two, and brevity would be necessary in a list this long. Feel free to ask questions about these choices or share your own great reads. I love to talk about books.
Fiction
A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
The House of Broken Angels, Luis Alberto Urrea
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
The Idiot,Elif Batuman
Pachinko, by Min Jee Lee
Everything I never Told You, Celeste Ng
The Probable Future, Alice Hoffman
Speculative Fiction
The MaddAddam Triology: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, Madd Addam, Margaret Atwood.
The first two Lady Astronaut Novels: The Calculating Stars& The Fated Sky, Mary Robinette Kowal
Young Adult
The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
Poetry
Trailhead, Keri Webster
Literary/Creative Nonfiction
The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit
Heart Berries, Terese Marie Mailhot
The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch
Memoir/Autobiography
Educated, Tara Westover
Becoming, Michelle Obama
Stop-Time: A Memoir, Frank Conroy
My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem
More Nonfiction
Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit
Epicurean Simplicity, Stephany Mills
Lasso the Wind, Timothy Eagan
Dust Bowl Girls, Lydia Reeder
Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann
How to
A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver
The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr
Satire
How to Be Black, Baratunde Thurston
Medical Nonfiction
In Pursuit of Memory, Joseph Jebelli