I almost gave up on Three Body Problem because it starts off a little slowly and it's difficult to see where the book is going. Absolutely worth it in the end, though. The second two are the kinds of books you can rip through quickly if you've got a little extra reading time over the holidays.
Diaspora by Greg Egan - Takes the idea much, much further. What might happen to humanity if virtualized "human" minds embodied in robots or not embodied at all became the two most common ways for people to be. Also, fascinating and surprisingly rigorous diversions into math and physics.
The prose is very readable, the characters pretty awesome and it's just such a very fresh take on fantasy.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37173847-foundryside?fro...
And The Verge ("Foundryside is a cyberpunk adventure wrapped in an epic fantasy novel"): https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/23/18148907/foundryside-rob...
From this year, I read all but two of the Haruki Murakami books and all short stories. I love his writing style (great translations), and the fact that the stories are about not all the time realness. Kafka on the Shore is a great starting book. Also Norwegian Wood is another example, though this strayed away from the magical aspect I like of his.
Another from this year was The Dubliners, collection of short stories from James Joyce. I was stuck in Dublin during a snow storm this past spring, so I'm sure this lead me to like the stories more, but I swear they're amazing and I haven't found anything else like them. They're all tiny points in people's lives, and the things that happen make differences for the people or are also easy to remember and not forget. Get one with reference notes in the back too.
Besides those, Love in the Time of Cholera was another one way up on my list. Similar to One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I think I prefer slightly more, but reading both is interesting to read since Cholera was written 20 years after Solitude and we can see how the author changed over time.
Overall though, my absolute top tier books are East of Eden, Catch-22, and My Struggle (Knausgaard). 1000% read those. I like including these so if somebody reads this and likes these books as well, they can somewhat trust my other suggestions.
I'm curious - did you read it on its own, or did you read some kind of resource along with it? I've seen recommendations to read it alongside websites/books that help understand it.
I am reminded of the foreword, the author of which I forget, who said that it clearly isn't a breeze to read, you have to put in actual effort to understand the damn sentences. This is totally true, if I let my mind wander as with any other book, I have to go back and re-read it.
Florida - Lauren Groff Sublime, poetic, haunting collection of short stories.
Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang Exhalation - Ted Chiang Being released in May 2019 (I got an advance copy), but many of the stories are previously published and/or available online. "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" is just wonderful. Ted Chiang's work is the definition of economy in storytelling. Absolutely quality over quantity.
The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death's End - Liu Cixin I’m not sure how fulfilling it would be to just read the first one. They really feel like a single (big) novel. Worth it.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O - Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland Kind of Stephenson-light(?). Smart, entertaining and seems destined to be a TV series.
The Secret History - Donna Tartt A bit slow to get going. Lots of Greek, snow, and booze at a private liberal-arts college in Vermont.
The Grownup - Gillian Flynn (short story)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim...
I read a lot of fiction (30+ novels a year) and this book really blew me away.
Oh and by the way, it's not about Samurai or Japan or anything like that. If you're interested in thinking about the nature of intelligence / learning while reading some beautiful prose, get this book.
I only got through ~300 pages before giving up though, maybe a plot arises and takes the lead but I never reached it.
Other than that Nabokov's Lolita is just celestial. And it's not only about the wording which is beyond beauty. Sometimes I caught myself thinking that this book reads me not the other way around. It's very precise, very unabashed, very intimate. Sometimes it looks surprisingly like your own reflection. Can't recommend enough.
- Vengeful and Vicious by VE Schwab - Collapsing Empire by Scalazi (late 2017, but close enough to 2018)
Not released in 2018, but still fun and new to me this year. - The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown
The Forbidden Door - Dean Koontz
The Crooked Staircase - Dean Koontz
The Outsider - Stephen King
Sleeping Beauties - Stephen King & Owen King
The Fallen - David Baldacci
Zeroes - Chuck Wendig
The Supernatural Enhancements - Edgar Cantero
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
Incredible voice acting, gripping storyline, and hilarious dialogue.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells also very good, except the price for book 2+ are ripoffs at $12 for only 150-170 pages.
- Chocky - John Wyndham
- Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
- The Eight Mountains - Paolo Cognetti
- The Executioner Weeps - Frederic Dard
- The Invisibility Cloak - Ge Fei
- The Midnight Fox - Betsy Byars
- Ms Ice Sandwich - Mieko Kawakami
- Such Small Hands - Andres Barba
- The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura
- Ties - Domenico Starnone
- Trick - Domenico Starnone
Can't remember whether it was this year or last year, but Walter Jon William's Metropolitan series is great, too.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh
The Great Alone - Kristin Hannah
Disappointments:
The Fifth Season - NK Jemisin - gimmicky nonsense. I realize I'm in the minority.
Autonomous - Annalee Newitz - This guy falls in love with a robot that is basically being described as in the shape of a refrigerator, among other things. I couldn't get over how stupid it all was.
Did you read this after the first two? It is the third in a series, and IMO not as good as the first one (the second was also less good).
That said, the first was great, one of the best fantasy books I've read in a long time.
Circe, Madeline Miller - Entertaining and memorable tale with many characters from Greek mythology.
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry ran a close second, and I'm in the middle of Wolf Hall and quite liking it, too.
It was a historical fiction about Irish independence and has become my favorite book.
