pagesofjulia

Note: I’m out of pocket during my final residency period at school. I love your comments! But it may take me several days or a week or more to respond.

My year-in-review post will be up next week, as usual. But first, also as usual, I want to share the list of my favorite things I read this year. (You can see past years’ best-of lists at this tag.) None of these were audiobooks, but a few were new releases, so I’ve marked those with *.

These three books and one essay got a rating of 10.

• Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore*, Elizabeth Rush – nonfiction
• Sock, Kim Adrian – nonfiction
• A Song for the River*, Philip Connors – nonfiction
• “The Fourth State of Matter,” Jo Ann Beard – nonfiction (reread)

And while I gave rather a lot of 9’s this year, I’ve chosen my favorites (from today’s perspective, at least) for you here, for a shorter list.

• Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process, John McPhee – nonfiction
• The Rope Swing: Stories, Jon Corcoran – fiction
• Souvenir, Rolf Potts – nonfiction
• Pieces of White Shell, Terry Tempest Williams – nonfiction (reread)
• Still Life With Oysters and Lemon, Mark Doty (reread)
• The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Charlotte Pence, ed. – nonfiction

Bonus: Shelf Awareness’s Best Books of the Year is available at that link, and includes two that I had the good luck to review (Everything Under* and Convenience Store Woman*).

Hooray for good books always! What are some of the best things you read this year?

Come back next week to see a further breakdown of my reading habits in 2018.

Filed under: musings | Tagged: best of, best of the year, lists |