Favorite and Disappointed Books in 2018

Happy New Year friends!! Today, on BookTube I talked about my favorite books of 2018, and they are all fictions. Together with my 7 Books Opened My Eyes in 2018 video, I have in total of 15 favorite books that I am grateful for. And looking back, I don't have many books that I don't like, but there are three books made me disappointed, and I want to talk about them here.

But first, the favorites:

Books mentioned in this video:

CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN by Sayaka Murata
WHEN I HIT YOU by Meena Kandasamy
A HERO BORN by Jin Yong
THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK by Imogen Hermes Gowar
THE LAST QUARTER OF THE MOON by Chi Zijian
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Portal to my booktube channel

Disappointed Books

The Idiot

by Elif Batuman

This is one of my most anticipated books before I read it, a lot of people on BookTube community loved this book and it was also short listed on the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018. I went into this book wanted to explore why the author chose the same name for her book as the Dostoyevsky's book, but left feeling I was an idiot. It talked about the life of a Harvard freshman year student, and that was all. Reading it was like read the same paragraph again and again and again. Ironically in the beginning of the book, there's a professor asked the protagonist if she liked to read the same paragraph over and over again, and she said yes. But I was not a reader like that, the book was not for me.

See What I Have Done

by Sarah Schmidt

This is a fiction inspired by a famous axe murder. True crime fiction is one of my favorite genre, but there are so many problem in this book. Firstly, so many unnecessary characters. There were in total of 4 characters, at least one of them was added just to confused readers, and it did nothing good to the narration. And the timeline was messed up for a book titled each chapters with a specific time. Narration sounds juvenile for 30-40 years old characters. And the writing was lazy, it kept telling you how you should feel as a reader and repeat the same phrases like "my heart skipped a beat" for different characters.

I AM I AM I AM

by Maggie O'Farrell

I have, also very high expectation for this book, but it felt somehow plain to me. As the subtitle suggested, it's 17 pieces of memory of the author when she was dealing with loses, illness, and other heaviness. But except a few stories, most of the chapters went completely off my head. But I do appreciate this book's openness and honesty about chronical illness and other things like child birth and miscarriage. So many people are afraid to talk about them for who-knows-what reasons. It was just the writings was not for me, maybe if I had read other books by the author, this book would work better for me.

I am grateful for I only have 3 books on this list, that indicates I had a good reading year in 2018 :)

And cheers for the new year!!