I always find “best of” lists tough. When someone asks me what my favorite book of all time is, my head explodes. One book?! You want me to pick one book?! Sorry, not going to happen. Therefore, I realize that my Top Books of 2018 list may be longer than the norm, but I figure loving so many books is a good problem to have.
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, Priya Parker
Priya Parker is a facilitator who runs a consultancy in Brooklyn called Thrive Labs, and I fully admit to having a professional crush on her. She wrote this book to codify her learnings and practices when gathering groups of people together, whether for something as informal as a dinner party or as formal as a summit for hundreds of people. Her writing is beautiful, and the book is choc full of actionable tactics for any of us who curate experiences. I’ve recommended this to pretty much all of my clients and colleagues.
The Library Book, Susan Orlean
This was the last book I read in 2018, and boy was it worth the wait. The best way I can describe this book is that I wanted to crawl inside and live in it forever. Orlean’s writing is incisive, insightful, and just plain beautiful. I loved how she tied the L.A. Library fire into her personal love for libraries and experiences as a young reader. Bonus: the book is beautifully printed and bound - a great keeper for your personal library. See what she did there?
Virgil Wander, Leif Enger
I was kind of shocked to realize that there are only two novels on my 2018 list. Novels usually comprise about most of my reading, but I apparently went off the beaten path this year - just like this tangent. Anyway, I absolutely loved this book, which I picked up last minute after seeing some stellar reviews. Not at lot happens for the first 75% of this book, but it didn’t need to; Enger creates such a touching, evocative description of human connection and Midwestern community that I didn’t want to put it down.
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death, Maggie O’Farrell
What can I say? I love a good memoir. In 2017, I read O’Farrell’s This Must Be the Place (thanks, Modern Mrs. Darcy!) and loved her poetic style. I Am, I Am, I Am is a collection of essays (short stories? snippets?) about O’Farrell’s multiple near-death experiences. It’s gripping, haunting, and thought-provoking. She climbed far up my list of favorite authors with this one.
Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, Ingrid Fetell Lee
It’s pretty cool when people you know write books; it’s even cooler when those books turn out to be great (case in point: Mark Lukach!). Ingrid, a designer by training whose Masters thesis was about the aesthetics of joy, writes about cultivating joy by making shifts in the tangible world around us. She is also a beautiful writer, who activates an otherwise academic topic with emotive prose and thoughtful examples. I adored this book, and have recommended it to just about everyone I know
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert
I’ve loved Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing style since Eat, Pray, Love (for your naysayers, read The Signature of All Things and tell me she’s not a phenom). As a design thinking and innovation consultant, I am constantly trying to help people tap into their creative selves. I’m also trying to rediscover my creative capacity as a writer and creator in other realms, and this book was an ode to - well, basically everything I just said. Gilbert manages to write about things like muses and personify ideas without alienating the reader, and I am a sucker for anyone who advocates for people to “be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.” This is now a staple of my professional library.
Educated, Tara Westover
A memoir about education? This combined two of my favorite things, and with all the accolades, Educated was no disappointment. Westover’s story is an extreme one of homeschooling and what i would classify as parental neglect. She examines her childhood with both a critical and wistful eye, while never succumbing to self-pity or aggrandization. Her story was fascinating, and an important reminder of the power of an education to unlock doors.
China in Ten Words, Hua Yu
When I found out I would be spending a decent amount of time in China this year (I love my job), I drank half a bottle of red wine and ordered 25 books from my local library. True story. When I showed up to collect the first 6, the librarian told me to “maybe press pause for a bit” and release my nypl.org trigger finger. But I digress. As an aspiring linguist (one day!), I am fascinated by language - how much connotation a single word can hold, how powerful language can be in both creation and destruction, and how language evolves to reflect culture (and often influences it). This is written by an author famous in China, but whom I had never heard of. Each section of the book focuses on one Chinese word, and uses that word to anchor essays and anecdotes about Chinese culture. It’s a fascinating exploration into the culture of a complex and ever-changing society.
The Likeness, Tana French
I have never been one for mystery; I just thought that the genre wasn’t my cup of tea. As it turns out, I had been reading shitty mystery, and that was the problem. I picked up In the Woods last year, French’s first book in the Dublin murder series, and was blown away (The Likeness is the second). Seriously - my partner got really sick of me talking about how good it was. The plot is complex and detailed and unexpected, the characters aren’t very likable, and her writing takes you so deep into a psyche or environment that you lose all sense of time and place. I am planning to read everything else by her, including book #3.
Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay
2018 will forever be known (to me) as the year of my first Roxane Gay, and I am here. for. it. Man, this woman is a powerhouse. I’ve known of Roxane Gay for quite some time, but it took me awhile to get to her writing. I loved reading her philosophy on modern feminism, her perspective on feminist culture as a woman of color, and just slowly chewing on each delicious sentence she laid out for the reader. Difficult Women is on my bookshelf and will kick off my 2019 Roxane Gay experience. I can’t wait.