TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2018

hey everyone its Jenny and welcome back to my channel the story eight over so today I'm coming to you with a video that I've been meaning to do for a while now I was planning to do it at the end of 2018 but here we are at the beginning of 2019 happy new year everyone and I'm going to tell you my top ten books of 2018 so these are the top ten books that I loved during the year of 2018 so these are books that I read during 2018 not necessarily the ones that came out in 2018 so I will say that although this is like the top 10 the first 5 that I'm gonna mention are at the bottom of my top 10 list and they don't really have a particular order I didn't like like one more than the other particularly but for the top 5 I definitely did kind of rank them so the last book that I will mention is my number one favorite book of the year you can probably already guess it if you've been watching my recent videos because I talked about it like every passing second but it was not the way for the end of this video to confirm that gasps all right so coming in number 10 from my top 10 books of 2018 is one that I'm really surprised is actually on this list I was really excited about it when it was coming out and when I had heard about it and I just didn't really know anything about it when it was coming out so when I went into it I had no expectations and then I read it and I absolutely loved it and it's just one of those books that was told in a way that was really compelling and I was just rooting for the main character and she was just such a flawed and kind of crazy character and it was just so real and that book is an absolutely remarkable thing by Hank green Hank Green's debut novel just a little bit why I was kind of apprehensive going into this book he is John Green's brother if you didn't know so I loved some of the John Green's books but I didn't know anything about Hanks writing and so I wasn't sure if it was actually gonna be good but here we are it's on my top 10 list I absolutely love this book I know a lot of booktubers really like this because it does deal with kind of minor Fame and popularity and that kind of thing and it's about this girl who is a youtuber which is so wild and crazy and meta and it comes from a place of truth because Hank himself is a youtuber so I just thought it was a really interesting book and is sort of a sci-fi but most of it really deals with kind of April's rise to fame and then kind of her dealing with the aftermath and the repercussions of that I definitely think this is a book that you should go into without knowing anything about it like not knowing too much about it because it is kind of one of those crazy hard to explain eccentric kind of books the main character is really weird there's like a lot of weird things that happen in this book but I absolutely loved it I did feel like I wanted more out of the ending which is probably why it's on the lower end of this list but still really really enjoyed it and I'm really excited to see what Hank is planning to do in the sequel I do feel like it does stand on its own really well but I'm really interested just to see what happens with the rest of the characters so that was my 10th favorite book of the year so as for the next book coming in at number nine as I said the last five books on this list of ten aren't really in a particular order so this book wasn't necessarily better or worse than the ones that are coming after it or before but coming in at number nine is a book slash series which I absolutely loved and I discovered this year it came out a while ago and I just never got around to reading it and I'm so glad I finally got around to it this year I read the first book in January and loved loved loved it and that is an ember in the ashes by Sabaa to here this was an amazing series I absolutely love it there are three books out right now so an ember in the ashes a torch against the night and Reaper at 8:00 I absolutely loved all three this is a fantasy series that kind of rips your heart up as you go along you were rooting for the characters like all the way through and then stop it to here just does horrible things to them and you your heart is just dying the whole time so if you enjoy emotional torture in you know your reading experience then this series is great for that I absolutely loved the main characters of this series Elias and laia and then there's also another character called Helene I love all three of them we get perspectives from all three of them from the second book onward and it's just really great and I love seeing their struggle in this like crazy fantasy world where there's like so many odds stacked against them and I just love seeing that and I also just loved seeing this series because it was two Brown kids on the front cover and I just loved that and I just loved seeing how somebody here was just pulling the series together and she has like a role model as like an author of color I just loved seeing that so I'm really glad I got to read her books this year another thing I particularly loved about the first book was the character development I went to this book like not really knowing much about it and it was just so interesting to see how the main characters change from the beginning to the end of the book and so on in the later books as well but I felt like who's the strongest in the first book it was just so like inspiring and amazing and just seeing like these characters who are at such a low point at the beginning like rise up to the challenge it's just so so amazing so I definitely recommend this if you love fantasy if you love some compelling characters if you want to read a serious with POC main characters definitely recommend them alright coming in at number eight is a book that I own but I don't have it with me today and that is wild card by Marie Lu if you don't know I have like a really long book talk up for this book and it's one of my most watched videos and I absolutely love this book in that video and that book talk I just go look really in-depth and - basically every scene slash moment of that book is absolutely loved a wild card was one of my highly anticipated reads of 2018 I was waiting for it the second I finished were cross which is the first book in this series and it is by Marie Lu who is one of my favorite authors I loved her legend trilogy I was just so excited when I heard about like the concept of war cross it's basically about this Kakkar bounty hunter girl who gets hired by this billionaire guy who has made this like crazy game called war cross and he hires her to catch a hacker in the game and so she becomes one of the players in this game and it's just really really crazy and it involves a lot of like virtual reality and like augmented reality and some really great plot twists and a really great romance I know a lot of people didn't like wild card as much as they liked war cross and I can definitely see why I really left war cross and when I read it but I do love wild card just for its own merits in the sense that it was a much darker book it dealt with a lot more heavy topics and I felt like it did such an amazing job at the end with wrapping up the series and you know putting across a messages that Marilla was trying to convey and it's just so well done I do feel like it was slightly slower than war crust especially like in the first half but I still loved it to pieces and I loved the characters and I it's just gonna go down as one of my favorite series so I absolutely loved it I could not mention it in this video all right coming in at number 7 is another book that I absolutely love to but I do not own it so I'm gonna put a picture up here and that is the prince and the dressmaker this is a graphic novel that I discovered this year I had seen a few people kind of talking about it buzzing about it on Goodreads and booktube just looking at the cover you can tell it's really really cute and the reason I just loved it is because it is such a eautiful your kind of story it was just so wholesome and I loved reading it and I think I was just giddy the whole time I was reading it because it made my heart sing like at the end of it I was just so happy for the characters and I loved the illustration style I thought it was so beautifully done basically this book is about this prince who hires this poor dressmaker to make dresses for him because he likes to wear dresses and he likes to dress as a woman and he likes to go out dressed as a woman at night and go to balls and fancy parties and he looks beautiful and it's a story about you know him learning to accept himself as he is and you know getting other people to accept him but it's also a love story and it's about this dressmaker who falls in love with him regardless of what he's wearing and it's just so so beautiful and there's also a beautiful scene towards the end of the book as well involving the princes father and if you've read the graphic novels and you know I just loved that scene it just makes me so so happy I like I remember I cried at the end of this graphic novel and it seems extreme but like it was just so beautiful so this is one of my favorite books of 2018 alright so coming up at number 6 is not really a book specifically but it's an author that I got into in 2018 and I absolutely love his books I love like everything he creates and I'm planning to read more of his books in 2019 but specifically I'm talking about for everyone by Jason Reynolds so Jason Reynolds is the author that I'm absolutely in love with this year I think in this summer I got really obsessed with his stuff because I read this little short poem speech thing that he wrote and I also read one of his books called long way down off of the picture here it's a novel written in verse and it's very short it was such a beautifully done book Jason Reynolds actually narrates the audiobook for it as well so that was really beautiful cuz that's what I listen to when I read the book I didn't read it physically I listened to the audiobook and I absolutely loved it but I also really looked for everyone which is kind of speech slash poem and it's kind of like this motivational thing for dreamers it's for people who are you know writers or storytellers or dreamers or painters or artists creatives anything or even just regular people people who dream of you know doing something one day and wanting to achieve that dream it literally is for everyone and it's just you know a motivational thing I absolutely loved it I ran at a time when I needed it and Jason Arnold has just a really brilliant you know poetry style and I loved it and I also listened to the audiobook for this one it's really really short it's about 25 minutes and he narrates it himself and it's just so beautiful so I absolutely loved Jason Reynolds stuff this year and I'm planning to read more heaviest books in 2019 I watched into the spider-verse and I'm so planning to read his Miles Morales book like I'm so excited so this is definitely a favorite this year and I definitely definitely recommend it this is such a short read it's definitely worth it if you can't buy it I definitely recommend going to library and getting it because it's great all right coming in at number five so this is where the list kind of actually gets numbered you know I'm actually ranking at this point so this is another book that I actually own but I don't have it with me right now because I lent it to a friend and I absolutely love this book and it's actually interesting because this is actually a sequel it's like the second book in a trilogy which is not a usual thing for me I never really liked the second book in a series so this was just kind of wild but that book is Gemina by amie kaufman and jay kristoff so this is the second book in the illuminate files trilogy so it's illuminate Gemini and obsidian and oh my god guys this book blew me away I read it at the beginning of 2018 in January I believe and I had read illuminae a while I think a year before that and jemna had been out for like I think six months to a year already when I read it and I had been really excited to read it but I just never got around to reading it and then when I finally decided to pick it up I'm so like impressed with that sequel because it didn't feel like a sequel for one and it also like stood really well on its own but the reason I really just loved it so so much even more than the first book and the third book was because of the two main characters so the two main characters are Hannah and Nick and so if you know the series it kind of works with like different main characters in each book even though the story kind of continues throughout the book so Jem knows the start of like a new story but it's also continuing some of the stuff from illuminate and I just love love loved if you don't illuminate is a sci-fi story and it's told in kind of a really weird format it's told with like I am and emails and like notices and countdowns and like different kinds of things and so every time you're flipping through you're getting something new and Gemini is also told in the same way but the thing I love but Gemina was one of the characters but also it's a crazy twist and I felt like they really did an amazing job with just all of the plotline and just like the way that everything was converging and my mind was just totally blown by this book I was just so impressed with the storytelling and just the way the format worked in this book I felt like it went beyond the bounds of even the first book the first book was revolutionary but then the second book was even more so to me so out of the three I loved Gemina the most and I definitely recommend it if you like sci-fi if you like spaceships if you like you know a lot of action if you like you know crazy plot twists if you like some really hilarious and funny and snarky and bantery characters definitely recommend it and I also just loved it because Hannah the main female character was just so badass and I like was so impressed with her as a character she was such a strong female character not in just the sense of like you know being kick-ass or anything but she was just so smart she was strategic she just does so many things on her own and it was just so wild so I absolutely loved Gemma and I definitely recommend it to anyone who seems even marginally interested in it all right coming in at number four is actually a manga that I read in 2018 and this is one that people had like mentioned here and there and I had heard about it on booktube and other places like I never actually knew anything about her or anything about what it was about so I just kind of picked it up on a whim I bought like the collections and I read it and my life was changed it was just one of those books that like really hit hard and it was a very emotional read for me and it was just so so beautifully done and that series slash manga is orange by Ichiko Takano this is the first collection guys this was beautiful if you're gonna read a manga I definitely recommend this one it is kind of a contemporary story with these kids at this high school and basically the main character naho receives a letter from herself I think ten years in the future telling her to save one of their friends who was going to die in the future so there is a trigger warning for suicide and kind of depression and that kind of stuff so be aware of that but this was just so so beautiful it's about like these friends coming together to help their friend and it was just so heartwarming and raw and beautiful and I loved seeing how much these characters cared for each other and I cared so much about them and it was just really really well done so good guys if you're gonna read a manga anytime in 2019 read this one I absolutely loved it had so much substance to it one thing I really loved about this is that like I'd read some of it she'd return on its other stuff and I feel like those ones lochley substance that this one had I feel it was a story that was really close to their heart and I could feel that comes through in the pages so it was really really beautifully done and it just I like it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it so I'm gonna stop here all right coming in at number three on this list is one that totally blew me away I didn't even intend to read it this year I liked it wasn't even on my it was kind of on my radar but like I wasn't really paying attention to everyone's buzz about it and I never actually knew what it was about like no one had told me anything about like the plot line or like what actually happens or let the hook of the story so I kind of just picked it up on a whim I picked it up as an e-book on my e-reader from my library and guys guys I don't know why I didn't read this series sooner because it just blew me away and it's just such a wholesome beautiful fantasy and that is strange to the dreamer by Laini Taylor this is a you know fantasy that doesn't feel like other fantasies in the sense that like it's not like the typical kind of high fantasy with like a travel story and you know taking on a king or like any of that this is one of those boxes has such a wholesome main character the main character Lazlo Strange is basically Milo from Atlantis the loss and pyre and I love Milo from Atlantis the lost Empire he's just such a cute sweet nerdy wholesome character and Lazlo is exactly the same he is just so good-natured and sweet at heart and it's just so interesting to see that like there are so many cruel characters or you know vengeful characters in these books but Lazlo at every turn is just so good hearted as just so deering to see how his morality and his good-natured affects the people around him and makes them rethink their questionable choices and I just love love loved this series in this book in particular it has beautiful romance as well and not only does it have like a very dreamlike quality to it because of Lee Taylor's a beautiful writing style it's this it's like it's like biting into cake it's beautiful guys like you need to read it just for the writing style even but aside from that one of things I really loved about this book is that it deals with kind of the aftermath of oppression and war and also how sometimes the people on the side of the oppressor once the oppressor is taken down can be come the oppressed afterwards which is a really strange way to put it and I don't know how to explain it without spoiling things but it's just it shows how no one is you know inherently good or evil and how a lot of things are circumstantial and how even people who have done bad things deserve a second chance and it's just really goddamn beautiful guys and I just really really recommend it if you were looking for a fantasy to read read this one all right coming in at number two is one that I seriously thought was gonna be my favorite book of the year but my number one favorite book of the year blew it out of the park but still I love love love this book it was one of my first reads of the year this is the sequel to the first book which is another interesting case where I like the sequel better than the first one which is also interesting because I know a lot of people didn't like the sequel as much as the first one but I did and that is Thunderhead by Neil Schusterman this is a sequel to sigh by Neil suit Schusterman and it's part of the arc of sight series and the third book is coming out sometime in 2019 I think I'm hoping but oh my god guys this is a sci-fi series as you can tell I really excited eyes but this is a sci-fi series that takes place like hundreds of years into the future where humanity is kind of like conquered death and disease and aging and all those things so everyone basically lives forever and so in order to curb population growth and all of that there are these people called sides but basically glean /kill people to kind of curb population growths so when the time comes they have to reach like a certain quota of people that they kill every year just to keep the balance and then the world is also run by this kind of a I called the Thunderhead and it has a cloud of all human knowledge and it runs basically everything and has eyes on everything and it's kind of like this utopian world so in the first book these two characters become the apprentices of a sighs and they're going to train to become sides themselves and there's just a lot of fallout from the first book that comes into play in the second book and the AI character has a much bigger role in the second book hence why it's called Thunderhead what just blew me away just because of you know the whole world and how it's imagined and it really makes you consider what it means to be human and what it means when you no longer age and what it means if you're living forever and all the moral kind of implications of that but this series also has just some really great like plot twists and action sequences and some really great kind of moving parts this one in particular felt so interesting because we get a new character in this month whose purpose you don't really understand until like the end of the book and it was just so well done and this book just blew me away my mind was just blown and I was just like how how did this author just like conceive of this idea because it was just so wild to me and I think I loved it so much because it was just so well crafted and I just really admired that so I'm super super excited to see where the series goes in the next book it can literally go anywhere like you've read this book and like you've gotten to the end of they know the world then you know you can literally go anywhere so I'm super super excited if you are looking for a really great sci-fi definitely recommend this series even if you're not really into sci-fi it's not that like sci-fi II it's more of kind of a dystopian ish world even though it's like a utopia but it's still really great so definitely recommend alright coming in at number one my favorite book of the year and the best book of 2018 is of course a very large expanse of sea by Tara mafi I have mentioned this countless times in multiple videos but how much I love this book I have a 43 minute book talk of it go watch it for my full thoughts on it and a lot of spoilery bits but I do have a non-spoilery bit at the beginning I love this book basically follows our main character Shireen who is a 16 year old Iranian American Muslim girl who is living in America post 9/11 a year after 9/11 and kind of navigating her high school life and it also really deals with her relationship with this white boy at her school named ocean and you know them falling for each other but also using that relationship as a way to show how the Islamophobia and hate and racism and xenophobia kind of comes into play and becomes so much stronger when she's in a relationship with this quintessential white American boy and it's just such a you know precise and sysop and harsh and hard-hitting but it is also a really beautiful book like their relationship was just so beautiful to me and just seeing Shireen's process of taking down her walls and trying to see the nuances and the goodness in people even though she's receiving all of this hate and racism and trying to find the good in the world regardless it was just so so beautiful I loved because it was just so truthful I related to the main character a lot and I just think it's one of those books that it's a really short it's a really quick read and it's just one of those books that you can read and you can definitely come out of it having learned something and empathize more with the people around you that you don't necessarily know as much about I certainly think it's a book that deserves like all the awards and accolades possible because it was just so well done I loved my fees writing in this book it was just so kind of clear and concise and she hits on so many you know really truthful points and she really goes into depth about what it means to be American when you don't necessarily look or sound or seen like the quintessential American person but even besides all the identity politics it's just such a beautiful heartwarming read so definitely definitely recommend this book if you are gonna pick up any book that I mentioned today as I said in my book haul pick up this time because it was amazing it was my favorite book of the year do me a favor read it it's amazing let me know your thoughts on it alright so those are all the books that I loved in 2018 my top 10 books the books that I thought were the best of the ones that I read in 2018 I hope you enjoyed this video thank you so so much for watching please let me know if you have read any of these books what you thought of them if you haven't read them are you planning to read them what were your top 10 books of 2018 the ones that you read and love I would love to hear about them and discuss you in the comments and as always all my social media information is down in description box below I'm on Goodreads Instagram and Twitter and I also think I have a tumblr in there and where I don't actually post anything but go check it out but thank you so so much for watching I am super excited about 2019 and all the amazing books that I'm going to read so can't wait to continue this journey on this channel so thank you so so much for watching and making this possible and supporting my videos so I will see you in my next video and as always please remember that this story ain't over bye [Music]

Channel: thisstoryaintover

Views: 7,262

Rating: 4.9479165 out of 5

Keywords: books, top ten books of 2018, top 10 books of 2018, top ten books 2018, top 10 books 2018, top ten books, top 10 books, read, reading, favourite books 2018, favorite books 2018, best books 2018, book rec, book recommendations

Id: U_5huoTW-V0

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019