Best Books of 2018

My favorite books that I read in 2018.

I read 22 books in 2018, most of which I reviewed on this blog. Here are my favorites that I read this year. The links will take you to the full review of the book.

Promise Me, Dad, by Joe Biden, 2017. Biden’s heartfelt memoir of losing his son Beau to cancer, and making the decision to not run for President in 2016 is an extremely powerful book. 

The Judge Hunter, by Christopher Buckley, 2018. One of our finest satirists follows 2015’s The Relic Master with another fine historical comedy, this one set in the New World in the 1600’s. 

Summer, by Edith Wharton, 1917. This novel follows eighteen-year-old Charity Royall, who lives in the stifling small town of North Dormer. Things get more exciting when a handsome young architect comes to visit. 

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, 1905. The novel that put Wharton at the forefront of great American writers, it traces the fortunes of the beautiful Lily Bart as she navigates New York high society. 

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, by Jane Leavy, 2002. An excellent portrait of Sandy Koufax, one of the best pitchers of the 1960’s, and the hold he continues to have on the public imagination. 

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, 1968. Perhaps the definitive book on the American Hippie movement, chronicled by one of greatest American writers of the second half of the 20^th century. Are you on the bus or off the bus?

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925. I re-read Gatsby this year, and the novel still has great power. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, it’s full of beautiful sentences and vivid images.