by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
It’s that time of year when the lists of the best books of
the year come out, most of them before December 1st. I suppose they are published so early so that
you can use them as guides for buying Christmas gifts. As a person who orders books for four
libraries all year long, I love to compare these lists to the choices I’ve
made, as well as to each other; in the end, there’s not much consensus on
what’s really the best. It is fun to see
which books end up on multiple lists, though – there must be something great
about them!
The one book that I keep seeing on one list after another is
Educated by Tara Westover.
Amazon
named it the best book of 2018.
Most
places don’t choose just one top book, but the memoir also ended up on the New
York Times, Time Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Publishers Weekly,
Reader’s Digest, Library Journal, and NPR lists of the best books of the year,
often on their top ten.
I think I’m
going to have to read this one with the adult book club once it isn’t being
checked out constantly.
It has been one
of our library system’s most popular books this year.
In her memoir, Westover tells the story of growing up in a
survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho.
She was so isolated that she didn’t get an education, but she taught
herself enough math and grammar to be admitted to college, which was a path out
of her dysfunctional family. She
eventually earned a PhD from Cambridge University, completely changing her
life.
The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border is
another memoir that is appearing on multiple best-of lists.
Author Francisco Cant
ú is the grandson of a Mexican
immigrant, the son of a park ranger in the American Southwest, and himself a
former Border Patrol agent.
He found the
Border Patrol work dehumanizing and left it, but when an immigrant friend
disappeared after traveling to Mexico to visit family, he found himself needing
to find out more about what happened.
Reviewers
describe the writing as no-nonsense but beautiful. The subject of the book is certainly
very timely.
There There by Tommy Orange is making the cut for many
end-of-the-year lists.
This novel is
about urban Native Americans attending the Big Oakland Powwow in Oakland,
California.
Orange reveals the reasons
each character is attending: to reconnect with family after getting sober, to
honor a loved one’s memory, to watch a relative perform, and to perform for the
first time after learning the dance on YouTube.
Reviews of the book include words like “masterful,” “groundbreaking,”
and “devastating.”
Orange is a professor
and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma; this is
his first novel.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup is
a nonfiction book that’s appearing on many of the year-end lists.
Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou
originally broke the story of the fraud that was being committed by the company
Theranos.
He and the newspaper were
threatened with lawsuits but they continued to investigate what turned out to
be the biggest corporate fraud since Enron: founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes
was lying to investors and the FDA, raising billions of dollars of investment
capital for a technology that didn’t work.
Carreyrou tells the whole story in this book.
These books are available at the Litchfield Library, along
with many others you may see on gift guides and best-of-2018 lists.
