Bookish: Top 5 Wednesday – Best Books You’ve Read So Far in 2018

 

Falling back to typical form I have done this post two days too late. If this were a Top 5 Friday I would still probably do it on a Sunday.

One has a plan, it’s just one doesn’t stick to it. Aaaaand I’m back to being obnoxious and using ‘one’ I see. Sorry about that, I can’t cope with this little English heatwave we are having. No really, I am dying for autumn.

It was actually last week’s Top 5 Wednesday that was all about looking forward with the topic, ‘books you want to read before the end of the year.’ This week’s topic is all about looking back.

Thank you Goodreads. No seriously. If I didn’t log all the books I’ve read onto Goodreads there is no way I would remember what I have and haven’t read. And as time seems to not be a concrete concept for me then I would have randomly picked some books out from 2016 fully believing I read it 5 minutes ago.

Before I delve into my top 5 I’m going to take a look at what I’ve read so far in 2018 and how that’s stacking up with some…

• 26 books read so far
• 14 are Young Adult
• 12 are Adult
• 11 are Fantasy 
• 4 are Speculative
• 4 are Romance
• 3 are Contemporary
• 2 are Historic
• 1 is Mythological
• 1 is Horror

Ok, so that’s what I read. What are the stats on what I think?

• 2 books I rated as 5 stars
• 5 books I rated as 4 stars
• 10 books I rated as 3 stars
• 8 books I rated as 2 stars
• 1 book I rated as 1 star

Overall we are looking at a 2.96 average. Want me to go further? Of course you do. Who doesn’t love a sexy, sexy stat?

• Young Adult average rating = 2.71
• Adult average rating = 3.25

What about genre? You must be dying to know what the average ratings are by genre, right? Right?! I’m gonna do it anyway!

• Fantasy = 2.81
• Speculative = 2.75
• Romance = 2.75
• Contemporary = 4.00
• Historic = 4.00
• Mythological = 2.00
• Horror = 2.00

Um. Ok. So what picture does this paint of me?

I’ve used some highly technical analysis and a really high-tech graphic tool to demonstrate my scientific findings.

Hmm. It seems that what makes my heart sing isn’t hitting those higher rating from me for some reason.

Could it be that I am extremely overly critical of what I love like some helicopter parent that just wants her children to do well but can’t help but find fault in everything? Could it be that those contemporary and historic fiction books were just brilliant in their own right and so deserve those higher ratings? Could it be that ‘Caraval’ which I truly hated with the passion of a thousand suns brought down both the score of the YA fiction and the fantasy genre ratings?

Yes. Yes and most effing definitely… yes.

Well done to you if you’ve stuck with me so far.

Your reward is my Top 5. Ha! Reward… fools!

I won’t bang on too much about Uprooted as I already have done a lot of that already. I’ve created an edit which can be found here and a review is written up and waiting for me to post. I gave Uprooted five stars as it is the adult fantasy I didn’t know I needed until I read it.

Again another one that I won’t bang on about too much as I have written a review which can be found here.

The Hate U Give is a YA contemporary and though I wasn’t too sure what to expect it honestly surprised me. I gave this one five stars along with ten trillion other people. I think it’s deserved. I’ve seen the trailer for the movie and am worried that I may sob openly and in public.

The Witch Finder’s Sister was a spontaneous ‘why not’ purchase as I don’t have any deep love for historical fiction yet find anything to do with women in history and accusations of witchcraft in history incredibly fascinating.

I have written the review and its pending posting. What a friggin’ surprise there. I actually really enjoyed this one and gave it four stars. I do a little brief history of Matthew Hopkins, England’s self-styled Witch Finder General, in the review as I don’t think that part of England’s history is particularly well known.

In a nutshell – he isn’t very nice at all and this book looks at a fictional account of what it would have been like to be his sister.

Margaret Atwood wrote one of my most favourite books of all time (The Handmaid’s Tale) and though Alias Grace isn’t quite my favourite it is still incredibly very good. I gave it four stars and a lot of my time thinking about who the protagonist Grace Marks was and whether or not she was truly a murderess as claimed.

At first I found it slow growing and then it reached into my chest and yanked around in there to check that my heart was still beating. If The Handmaid’s Tale was a dystopian breakdown of what it could be like for women in a new, patriarchal society then Alias Grace was a historical breakdown of what it was like for women (especially lower class woman) in an actual, patriarchal society.

I despair of myself because I read The Cruel Prince at the very beginning of the year and have yet to write up a review which means that when it actually comes time for me to write and post the review it will be a lot of me going, “erm…and um…” which is a shame because I gave this four stars.

The first line of my review will be this though:

Everyone in The Cruel Prince is an asshole. 

Ok, maybe not one character but apart from her everyone else is. You know what? It seemed to be more fun that way.

 

What do you think of my Top 5? Do you wish I would actually post on a Wednesday? Do you wish that I would never ever ever include sexy, sexy stats again? Do you wish you had read these? Alternatively, do you wish you hadn’t? 

I’m all for open and honest commentary!

Look forward to hearing from you!