Year-End Lists

Paste Magazine: Best Books of 2018, Novels and Nonfiction

[see also 2024 • 2023 • 2022 • 2010s • 2017]

Novels

1. Circe
   Madeline Miller
2. The Incendiaries
   R.O. Kwon
3. The Poppy War
   R.F. Kuang
4. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
   Hank Green
5. Warlight
   Michael Ondaatje
6. Crudo
   Olivia Laing
7. All the Ever Afters

   The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother
   Danielle Teller
8. Girls Burn Brighter
   Shobha Rao
9. The Friend
   Sigrid Nunez
10. Melmoth
    Sarah Perry
11. Southernmost
    Silas House
12. The Calculating Stars
    Mary Robinette Kowal

Nonfiction

1. Educated
   Tara Westover
2. Into the Raging Sea

   Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro
   Rachel Slade
3. Fisherman's Blues

   A West African Community at Sea
   Anna Badkhen
4. So You Want to Talk About Race
   Ijeoma Oluo
5. Beastie Boys Book
   Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz
6. Feel Free
   Zadie Smith
7. All You Can Ever Know
   Nicole Chung
8. When They Go Low, We Go High

   Speeches That Shape the World - and Why We Need Them
   Philip Collins
9. The Death of Truth

   Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
   Michiko Kakutani
10. Bad Blood

    Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
    John Carreyrou
11. Barracoon

    The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”
    Zora Neale Hurston
12. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
    Alexander Chee
13. Not That Bad

    Dispatches from Rape Culture
    Roxane Gay (editor)
14. Born to Be Posthumous

    The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
    Mark Dery
15. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

    One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
    Michelle McNamara
16. How Democracies Die
    Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt