Top 20 Books of 20 Years - The Best of the Best!

Since I started the blog, I've been periodically looking back at my ten favorite books which I read in each year since I started making top 10 lists.  I finally caught up to the present - and it just so happens that those lists cover 20 years of my reading - my top 10 lists so far stretch from 1999-2018!  So, I thought it would be fun to try to figure out my 20 favorite books of those 20 years of lists!  And yes, it's been a little while since I've posted anything - but part of the reason is that it has taken me a long time to narrow down the selections and then write this long post!

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2015

Since I started this blog, I've been periodically looking back at my old top 10 favorite book lists, starting with 1999 when I first started compiling a list each year and working my way up towards the present.   If you don't remember the details, these are lists I made contemporaneously at the end of the respective years, made up of books I read in that particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  I started out sharing these lists with just a small group of people, and over the years started sharing with more and more people, and through more and more different means, including this blog!  One of my first posts on the blog was my top 10 books of 2017, so after today's post that means I have just one more to go!  (Unless I keep this blog going for so many more years that enough time goes by that I want to look back on 2017 and after, ha ha.)

Here's my list from 2015, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Visitors - Sally Beauman
The One That Got Away - Bethany Chase
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
The Last Camellia - Sarah Jio
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
The Lake House - Kate Morton
The Children's Crusade - Ann Packer
The Midnight Rose - Lucinda Riley
Who Do You Love? - Jennifer Weiner
Walking on Trampolines - Frances Whiting

For more random details about these books, keep reading!

Must Read Authors

As befits someone who reads a lot and is constantly amassing new books to read, I have a long, long list of must read authors.  I thought it would be fun to try to narrow it down to not just authors I love, but authors who I anticipate their books with great interest and try to read them ASAP when they come out.  Since there are actually a pretty enormous group of authors for whom that is true, to narrow it down, I'm going to give myself a few parameters:  (1)  they have to have written at least 3 books, and (2) I have to have read all of their books.  There are other authors who I love but I'm still working on catching up on all of their books - I'll cover those in a future post.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably recognize most of these names as I've discussed them in my posts on various genres, among other things.  A few I even talk about enough that I've already given them their own tag, so I'll start with those and go roughly in order from there.

From the Top 10 Archives: Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2010

Since I started this blog, I've been periodically looking back at my top 10 favorites lists of years past.  Each list consists of my favorite books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  Today, I'll look at my list from 2010.  Full disclosure, I actually cheated in 2010 and put 11 books on the list!  😉 It's often a challenge to narrow my lists down to 10, but this is the only year I did it - made an exception because I read two books by the same author that I loved so much I just decided to list them as one entry!

Here's my list from 2010, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson
After You - Julie Buxbaum
Little Bee - Chris Cleave
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
In the Woods - Tana French AND The Likeness - Tana French
The Host - Stephenie Meyer
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton
One Day - David Nicholls
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
Lottery - Patricia Wood

For more about these books, read on!

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.

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2009

Since shortly after I started this blog about a year ago, I've been periodically looking back on my top 10 favorite books of years past, which were lists I made at the end of each year (since 1999!) and shared with a growing group of friends.  Each list consists of my favorite books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  Today, I'll look at my list from 2009.

Here's my list from 2009, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Opposite of Love - Julie Buxbaum
Belong to Me - Marisa De Los Santos
Love the One You're With - Emily Giffin
Barefoot - Elin Hildebrand
The House at Riverton - Kate Morton
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell
The Year of Fog - Michelle Richmond
Driving Sideways - Jess Riley
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak

Supernatural Fiction

With Halloween tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to do a post with a theme that relates to the holiday.  I don't read horror novels (or watch horror movies for that matter) because they're too scary for me!  But I do enjoy not-too-scary supernatural fiction.  So today, I'll share with you some recommendations for books about witches, vampires, and ghosts!

5 Star Review: The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton

Kate Morton is one of my favorite authors, as I've mentioned before on the blog.   It's been 3 years since she last published a book, so her latest book, "The Clockmaker's Daughter," was one of my most anticipated books of Fall 2018.  And, I'm happy to report that it did not disappoint, as it's one of her best.

Anticipated Books of Fall 2018

Hard to believe when it's still so hot, but summer is drawing to a close.  Well, technically summer does not end until September 22nd, but to me, summer ends and fall begins when school starts.  For some of you around the country, that already happened weeks ago.  But here in New York, school starts after Labor Day, so my kids have just gone back to school.

With how hot and humid it has been in New York, I'm really looking forward to some nice fall weather.  But of course I'm also looking forward to fall reading!  There are lots of books being published this fall that I'm looking forward to, including some by a few of my favorite authors.  Here are some of them, listed in order of publication with the dates in parentheses representing the publication dates:

Historical fiction books with present/past stories

I can't believe I haven't written a post focused on historical fiction so far, especially because it's one of my favorite genres!  In fact, I read so much historical fiction that there's no way I can cram it all into one post, so I'm going to subdivide it into multiple sub-genres.  For today, I'm going to focus on one of my most favorite types of books - books that go back and forth between two time periods, usually a present day and historical story.  I don't know exactly what it is about this kind of book that appeals to me, but I tend to just LOVE books that are structured this way.  Plus I respect that it must be trickier to write these books, as the author ideally needs to make both story lines equally compelling, and also to find a connection between the two stories that makes sense without being too obvious/gimmicky.