GCBC: Hello Sunshine book club books - Part 1 - 2017-2018

 As you may know, Reese Witherspoon created her own book club a few years ago, called Hello Sunshine.  And my friend Sarah, the other member of my 2 person book club GCBC and partner in crime (if the crime is reading and making lists of books to read), and I have been reading all or most of the selections.  Some are better than others - I think Reese also picks books because she wants to adapt them, not necessarily because they’re the best books.  But she’s also definitely introduced me to some books I might not have read otherwise.  We were going to do a blog about all the books, but there are so darn many we realized we should split them up.  Consider this part 1, covering from when Reese started the book club in June 2017 through December 2018. 

Sarah adds: One of the things I love about Reese’s book club is that she only chooses female authors and goes out of her way to pick books from diverse authors and stories that empower women. 

Jen's Top 10 Books of 2018

I'm very excited to share with you my 10 favorite books that I read in 2018!  I read a record amount of books in 2018, so this really is the cream of the crop - and it was SO hard to narrow this list down!  The top 5 were pretty easy, but narrowing down to the remaining 5 was a real challenge.  So I'm also happy to tell you that in the coming weeks you can look for "best of the rest" post(s) highlighting some of the other books I loved in 2018!

Anyway, for many many years - dating back to a time when I barely used the internet (1999!) - I have been compiling a list of my ten favorite books read in the year just ended and sharing with my friends, first by e-mail, then by facebook, and starting last year, on this blog.  It's not necessarily books published in the year I make the list, just books I read that year.  Here's my list for 2018, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Royal We - Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
This Is How It Always Is - Laurie Frankel
Force of Nature - Jane Harper
Queen of Shadows - Sarah J. Maas
The Clockmaker's Daughter - Kate Morton
Eligible - Curtis Sittenfeld
What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw - Leah Stewart
Other People's Houses - Abbi Waxman
Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
The Female Persuasion - Meg Wolitzer


Traditionally, I used to just send around a list with no further comment on the books.  But now that I have more space, I want to tell you more about the books - first a little bit about each book itself, and then some general comments on the list as a whole.  Though if you've been reading this blog regularly, I think you have actually heard about most of these books in one post or another.  And I would love to hear what everyone else thought of these books, and what your favorite books of 2018 were!

Read on for more:

GCBC - Fall Reading Roundup

As I've mentioned a few times previously, I am in a book club of sorts that consists of just me and my friend Sarah, which we call, GCBC, which stands for Grand Central Book Club (since we usually meet for lunch at Grand Central).  We used to just pick a book to read occasionally when we had plans to get together, but earlier this year we decided that since we like to read so many of the same books anyway, we might as well coordinate reading them together.  Plus we both seem to derive perhaps as much enjoyment from planning out what we are going to read as we do the actual reading itself!  And since life has been busy and thus conspiring against us getting together, most of the book discussion these days is done over e-mail, which makes it pretty easy to turn it into a blog post to share our views!  So, following is a discussion between us of 12 books we both read this fall.

Book club books

At Passover seder at my parents' house two weekends ago, my dear family friend Liz and I were discussing our respective book clubs and good book club books.  Conveniently, while this question was fresh on my mind, my book club met last week.  Since I happen to have a Goodreads shelf keeping track of all the books we've read as a book club, we also took some time to scroll through the list and talk about the books and discuss which ones were the best.