Librarians love a good list – especially when it relates to books! The plethora of ‘Best Book’ lists published in the newspapers at the end of the year give us inspiration for Christmas presents and library stock.(see the bottom of this post for some of them). We surveyed our school community to see what staff and students considered their favourite reads of 2018. To keep this as broad as possible we didn’t restrict it to books published in 2018, just books read this year. More responses are coming in so more interesting reading suggestions will be added to this list.
Having read all but one (I’m currently reading ‘Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller so haven’t got on to ‘Circe’ yet) I think it’s a great list already: fiction covering – a YA dystopian trilogy, a gripping realistic thriller with teen protagonists and a re-imagining of a classical story. There is so much to be fascinated by and learn from the 3 factual titles – Trevor Noah entertains whilst telling us so much about apartheid South Africa, Tara Westover bravely shows us her resilience and strength with a remarkable memoir about her extraordinary childhood and Hans Rosling will make you question everything about the way you see the world.
So far the top 3 fiction titles are:
- After the Fire by Will Hill
- The Territory by Sarah Govett
- Circe by Madeline Miller
Top 3 non-fiction titles are:
- Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
- Educated by Tara Westover (this is our book club read for January)
Here’s what one of our staff wrote about ‘Circe’
Circe is the long awaited follow up novel from Madeline “Song of Achilles” Miller. It was a bit more of a slow burn than its predecessor, but ultimately well worth sticking with; it’s a story about growing up, growing old and learning what it takes to become truly human.
Y9 student Poppy voted for ‘After the Fire’ and wrote:
After the Fire was from a perspective that I have never heard before so I found it completely intriguing. It also revealed lot about human nature and obeying orders.
You can read a longer review of this gripping novel here
Books of the Year 2018 – lists from a range of newspapers and websites:
- The Guardian – fiction, politics, food and more
- Five Books website – the best fiction of 2018 chosen by Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Five Books best books of 2018 – Covering science, non-fiction, politics, economics, philosophy, nature
- The Telegraph 50 best books of 2018
- Best books of 2018 Hilary Mantel and Yuval Noah Harari pick their favourites
- The Week: Best books of 2018 – 22 novel ideas for Christmas
- Sports books of 2018 from The Irish Times
- The New Yoker – best books of 2018
- Bill Gates 5 books I loved in 2018 (including Educated by Tara Westover and Yuval Noah Harari’s ’21 Lessons)
- The Independent 10 best new novels for 2018 (including The Lido and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock)