If you want to be a good writer, read. You will absorb the tenets of good writing without thinking too hard about it. Pay attention and you will learn to write better even faster. it will happen faster.

My favorites from 2018 were all fiction, with the exception of David Halberstam’s The Children. If I added a twelfth book, it would be Ann Patchett’s book of essays, This Is A Happy Marriage. Not only did she write about how to write well, reading the way she structured her essays and the language she used gave me deeper insight into the craft and art of writing well. 

1. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward: It was the beauty of her language and her ability to use it to make the characters come alive that put this book first for me. Her writing will draw you in and wrap you in the story, its place, and, most of all its characters. If you don’t read anything else from this list, read this.
2. The Children by David Halberstam: Halberstam educated me by telling the most fascinating stories about the young people in Nashville who were at the center of the civil rights movement.
3. The Waves by Virginia Woolf: Her writing has captivated me since I first read it in college. This is not an easy novel but the beauty of her writing was worth every minute I put into it.
4. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson: She does some beautifully creative storytelling in this novel.
5. A Long and Happy Life by Reynolds Price: His first novel and it is a tenderly told tale.
6. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin: This slim novel is hard to put down. Ms. Schweblin is the master of taut, creative storytelling.
7. Outline by Rachel Cusk: This novel showed me a new way to tell stories. I was riveted.
8. Sunburn by Laura Lippman: I have long loved Lippman’s mysteries. This perfectly told noir novel took her work to a new level. I thought about the book and its characters for days after finishing it.
9. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: You won’t be able to put this down.
10. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Because it shows you how to write with a powerful punch to your reader’s gut.
11. The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips: This novel throws the reality of racism in your face by drawing its characters and their lives so well you feel what happens to them.

Lagniappe: Anything by Louise Penney and J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith.

What were your favorite books last year? And what are you looking forward to reading this year?