Best Books of the Year
Best Books of 2018
Other Years: 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018
The following are the best books of 2018, as determined by book review trade magazines, national newspapers, and popular arts and culture publications. The Top 20 listed below was compiled by tallying the number of Best Books of the Year lists from major outlets and websites. The parentheses following each book indicate the total number of lists on which the book was included.
Top 20
1. There There by Tommy Orange (105)
2. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (104)
3. Circe by Madeline Miller (96)
4. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (89)
5. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (76)
6. Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday (63)
7. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (62)
8. The Overstory Richard Powers (60)
9. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (59)
10. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (58)
11. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (55)
12. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (54)
13. Milkman by Anna Burns (51)
14. Kudos by Rachel Cusk (50)
15. Becoming by Michelle Obama (49)
16. The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwan (48)
17. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyou (47)
18. Heart Berries by Therese Marie Mailhot (46)
18. Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon (46)
20. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (45)
Other Books on 25 or more lists:
Florida by Lauren Groff (44), Calypso by David Sedaris (41), Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (41), How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee (41), Severance by Ling Ma (41), All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung (40), The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson (40), Motherhood by Sheila Heti (40), The Library Book by Susan Orlean (39), Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (38), Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith (36), The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer (36), The Witch Elm by Tana French (36), The Immortalists by Chloe Benjmain (35), Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston (33), Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi (33), The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (33), You Think It, I’ll Say It: Stories by Curtis Sittenfeld (32), Lucky Man: Stories by Jamel Brinkley (31), The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (31), The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (30), The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani (29), How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan (29), The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (28), The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison (28), Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (28), Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (27), Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires (27), The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst (27), My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (26), Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (25), The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling (25), I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell (25), A Place for Us by Farheen Mirza (25), Red Clocks by Leni Zumas (25), These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill LePore (25), Transcription by Kate Atkinson (25), Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (25)
