This is my annual community service to book-bloggers – a list of the books that appear most frequently on all of the lists (37 of them) I listed on Best Books of 2018 – A List of Lists.
Here it is, the 2018 Commonly-Agreed-by-the-People-Who-Publish-Best-of-2018-Book-Lists-Before-December-31 top 50 books.
Books that made five lists –
01. White Houses by Amy Bloom
02. Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
03. Those Who Knew by Idra Novey
04. French Exit by Patrick deWitt
05. The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn
06. Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
07. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
08. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
09. That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam
10. You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
11. Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
Books that made six lists –
12. Crudo by Olivia Laing
13. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
14. Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
15. The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
16. Last Stories by William Trevor
17. Melmoth by Sarah Perry
18. Becoming by Michelle Obama
19. Feel Free by Zadie Smith
20. Calypso by David Sedaris
21. Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao
22. Churchill: Walking With Destiny by Andrew Roberts
Books that made seven lists –
23. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
24. Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart
25. The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani
26. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
27. The Pisces by Melissa Broder
28. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
29. The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon
30. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Books that made eight lists –
31. Severance by Ling Ma
32. Motherhood by Sheila Heti
33. Recovering by Leslie Jamison
Books that made nine lists –
34. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
35. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Books that made ten lists –
36. The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
37. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
38. Milkman by Anna Burns
39. Florida by Lauren Groff
Books that made 11 lists –
40. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
Books that made 12 lists –
41. Kudos by Rachel Cusk
42. The Overstory by Richard Power
Books that made 13 or 14 lists –
43. Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
44. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
45. Normal People by Sally Rooney
46. Educated by Tara Westover
Books that made 15 or 16 lists –
47. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
48. There There by Tommy Orange
49. Circe by Madeline Miller
Book that made 17 lists –
50. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
I’ve read three (Bloom, Sittenfeld, Westover); own three (Rooney, Groff and Finn) and am busting to read another eight (Jones, Orange, Kushner, Power, Jamison, Heti, Nunez and deWitt).
Do you agree with the critics – will any of these titles make your ‘Best of 2018’ list?