I made it an unofficial goal for 2018 to read 52 books. To jumpstart this, my mom and I started a competition with each other to see who could read the most books in 2018. My end count ended up being 58, but my mom won with a little over 70. I attribute my loss to being a full-time student and part-time employee, but it could also be that my mom is just a faster reader than I am. Anyhow, I thought I would include the entirety of the books I read along with my rating out of 5 stars so that perhaps you can kickstart your 2019 reading list.
"Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel; 4/5
"Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink" by Anthony McCarten; 5/5
"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini; 5/5
"The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield; 4/5
"The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins; 5/5
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury; 5/5
"The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls; 5/5
"Sharp Objects" by Gillian Flynn; 5/5
"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn; 4/5
"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood; 3/5
"Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut; 3/5
"The Bhagavad Gita"; 4/5
"The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World" by Joni Seager; 4/5
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini; 5/5
"We Were Liars" by E. Lockhart; 4/5
"Salem Falls" by Jodi Picoult; 5/5
"Big Little Lies" by Liane Moriarty; 5/5
"The Basic Eight" by Daniel Handler; 4/5
"More Than This" by Patrick Ness; 3/5
"Mosquitoland" by David Arnold; 4/5
"Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters; 2/5
"Never Let Me Go" by Kazoo Ishiguro; 4/5
"I'm Thinking of Ending Things" by Iain Reid; 3/5
"Turn of Mind" by Alice LePlante; 4/5
"Being Peace" by Thich Naht Hanh; 5/5
"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck; 4/5
"Paper Towns" by John Green; 5/5
"Warrior Woman: The Exceptional Life Story of Nonhelema, Shawnee Indian Woman Chief" by James Alexander Thom; 3/5
"Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green; 5/5
"This is Where it Ends" by Marieke Niijkamp; 4/5
"Niki's Honor" by Laila Anwarzai Ayoubi; 4/5
"Passover Haggadah"; 3/5
"Girl in Pieces" by Kathleen Glasgow; 4/5
"Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed; 5/5
"The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath; 4/5
"Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng; 5/5
"The Sun and Her Flowers" by Rupi Kaur; 5/5
"Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster" by Jon Krakauer; 5/5
"Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer; 5/5
"Someday, Someday Maybe" by Lauren Graham; 4/5
"The Lying Game" by Ruth Ware; 3/5
"Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Gail Honeyman; 5/5
"Yes Please" by Amy Poehler; 4/5
"Uglies" by Scott Westerfield; 4/5
"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker; 5/5
"Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert; 5/5
"The Rules of Magic" by Alice Hoffman; 4/5
"The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology" by Thich Naht Hanh; 5/5
"Eleanor and Park" by Rainbow Rowell; 5/5
"The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness; 5/5
"The Ask and the Answer" by Patrick Ness; 5/5
"All the Bright Places" by Jennifer Niven; 4/5
"The Alice Network" by Kate Quinn; 5/5
"I Was Here" by Gayle Forman; 4/5
"Clockwork Angel" by Cassandra Clare; 5/5
"Anatomy of a Misfit" by Andrea Portes; 3/5
"It's Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini; 5/5
"Fangirl" by Rainbow Rowell; 5/5
I know I have a lot of 4 and 5 stars here, but most of the books I read this year were really good. My favorite ended up being a tie between "The Alice Network" and "Fangirl." So if you're looking to read some excellent books this coming year but don't know where to start, check out some of the books on my list and go from there. Happy reading!