What I Read On My Winter Vacation

I came back yesterday from a wonderful week in the Bahamas with my family and our close family friends.  And, as has become a tradition on the blog, I'm going to share with you what I read while we were on vacation!

Me reading poolside

2018 - The Best of the Rest, Part 1

Back when I used to read a lot fewer books a year, my top 10 list pretty much encapsulated the books from the year that I would really recommend, give or take a few.  But now that I read SO many books a year, I have a lot more than 10 books which I would heartily recommend.  So in addition to my Top 10 books of 2018, I wanted to share with you many more books that I read last year which I would recommend!  So if you read all the books on my top 10 list you're interested in and are looking for more, you can hone in on the categories that interest you.  There are way too many books for me to blurb them all without this post taking forever to write (and read!), so I'm just going to list titles and authors.

And because I have SO many books to recommend, I'm going to break this post into two parts.  This one will cover realistic contemporary fiction and historical fiction; more other genres will be covered in the next post.

Books are listed below by genre.

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.

GCBC - Summer Reading Roundup

As I've mentioned a few times previously on this blog, my friend Sarah and I have a book club that consists of just the two of us.  We call it GCBC, short for Grand Central Book Club, since ideally we meet in person to discuss the books, which we usually do over lunch at Grand Central Terminal.  We used to just pick a book to read together only when we planned to meet, but earlier this year we were discussing books we both wanted to read, and since we're both slightly crazy obsessive types, we compiled a list of books we both wanted to read and started aligning our reading so that we were reading more and more books at roughly the same time, as long as both of us either owned the book or could get it from the library!

So, from mid-June to the beginning of the September, we read a whopping 10 books together!  And unfortunately, various factors conspired against us so we were unable to get together for lunch to discuss.  So, we decided to do just a quick summary of our thoughts on each book, both to share with each other and for the edification of readers of this blog as well!

What I Read on My Summer Vacation

We came back yesterday from a lovely week in Cape Cod.  So in what is becoming a tradition for this blog, I'm going to tell you all about what I read on vacation (and what the rest of my family read too).  I love to read all the time, obviously, but vacation reading is especially enjoyable - isn't there just something nice about reading by the beach or pool, especially when you have nothing else pressing to do?

Jonah reading

Young Adult Fantasy Series

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you've probably figured out by now that I love young adult books.  I've previously discussed young adult dystopian fiction and young adult realistic fiction.  Today, I'll talk about another one of my favorites - young adult fantasy.

I'm not sure what it is about young adult fantasy - often these are giant thick tomes with lots and lots of characters to keep track of over the course of multiple books in a series - yet they are also just so much fun to read.  My 13 year old daughter (almost 14) Allison is also a big fan of the genre, so she's read many of these as well and I'll fill you in on her opinions too where applicable.

So, if you share my love for the genre here are some of my favorite young adult fantasy series:

GCBC: Red Sparrow, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, and the Assistants

My friend Sarah and I have a book club composed of just the two of us, which we call GCBC, short for Grand Central Book Club.  Since for various reasons we have had to reschedule our last few lunches and therefore were unable to discuss our books at the actual Grand Central in NYC, we bring to you once again our conversation on the books we have been reading, conducted by e-mail and then edited into this post!

Today, we're discussing 3 books we've read over the past few months:  (1) "Red Sparrow," by Jason Matthews, a spy thriller about a young male CIA agent and a young female Russian agent who end up being assigned to spy on/recruit each other; (2) "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli, a young adult novel about a gay teenage boy who is not yet out to his friends or family, only to an anonymous fellow high school student on the internet whose identity he does not know; and (3) "The Assistants" by Camille Perri,which is kind of a chick lit/satirical novel about the assistant to the CEO of a media empire, who somewhat accidentally ends up in a Robin Hood-esque expense account embezzlement scheme.

Young adult realistic fiction

Today's post was inspired both by the fact that the last book I read was an awesome young adult novel, and by my friend Joanna, who asked for recommendations of books that are good for teenagers.  So I decided I would write about young adult realistic fiction.  I've previously written about young adult dystopian fiction, and in a future post I'll cover young adult fantasy.

This is not to suggest that only young adult fiction makes for good reading for teenagers - my own teenage daughter Allison also reads adult fiction and non-fiction, with some of her favorites including some of the adult dystopian novels in my dystopian fiction post, and also a couple of the books in my post on contemporary fiction with a science fiction edge.  (Interestingly, Allison has not read most of the books below because she generally finds realistic young adult fiction to be too romance-y.)  And when I was a teenager myself, the young adult genre was definitely not as robust as it is now, so I read a lot of mysteries and science fiction - I specifically remember working my way through all the books by both Agatha Christie and Robert Heinlein, among others.  Nor is a book being labeled young adult any guarantee it is more appropriate, especially for younger teens - I've definitely read a few young adult books that have a lot more sex/drugs/alcohol than many adult books!  But to the best of my recollection, that's not true of the books below.

That being said, here are some favorites of mine in the genre of  contemporary realistic young adult fiction:

What I Read on Vacation

I returned home last night from a great week in Mexico with my husband and kids.  I've written before about recommended vacation reading, so I thought this time I'd tell you all about what I read on my vacation!

Yup, that's me reading on the beach!

Dystopian fiction

Last night, my friend Becca asked for a recommendation of a book in the dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction category.   This happens to be one of my many favorite genres, so I had a lot of suggestions for her, and I figured it would make a good post too.  I'll be covering other genres in future posts, so if you have any specific requests, let me know!