Well here we are at the end of another year which means it must be time for me to look back at everything I have read and pick out some favourites.

Erk.

I aimed to read 36 books in 2018 and I think I aimed a little low as my final count actually stands at 68!! Which is why choosing a Top 5 is going to be tough.

So of course I’m going to cheat by doing two lists so I can have more than 5: My Top 5 Reads of 2018 and My Top 3 Smut Club Reads of 2018.

Today is all about the Smut Club books of 2018. Here are the 12 contenders:

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Fragile Things: Short Fictions & Wonders by Neil Gaiman
• Fahrenheit 451 by Raymond Bradbury
• A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking
• The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Bridge To Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
• Bedtime Stories: A Collection Of Erotic Fairy Tales by Jean Johnson
• The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland
• Tinkers by Paul Harding
• The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
• The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Out of the twelve I only abandoned one (Fragile Things– I read the first four or five stories and then put it down and sort of forgot about it) but a couple of others took a LOT of effort to get through (A Brief History Of Time – because it took all of my brain power and then some, Bedtime Stories – because it was just terrible, and Tinkers – because I just didn’t see the point of anything in the book…), and one was a re-read (Frankenstein).

Owning up here, I haven’t actually finished reading The Blade Itself yet either – I’m 200 pages in with another 400ish to go. I am enjoying it very much though I don’t think it is going to change my top 3 choices overall. Now, at our Christmas Smut Club party, we voted on our top 3 and I can’t actually remember which I picked as my 2 & 3 spots because it’s a close run thing – I will be amused if another Smut-goer points out I’ve picked entirely different things on this list!

In reverse order, my Top 3 Smut Club Reads 2018 are: 

3. Fahrenheit 451 by Raymond Bradbury

2. The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland

1.The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

So there we have: a Science Fiction ‘classic’ that I was fully expecting to hate as much as I hated 1984 because they are so often clumped together, but that pleasantly surprised me and stuck with me ever since I put it down; a novel about the Dark Ages that I would never have picked up in a million years other than to stroke the shiny cover, but that surprised me with a vibrant cast of characters (most of whom were, admittedly, all called Martha) and a setting that caught my imagination more than I expected; and finally, a non-fiction book about a snail on somebody’s bed-side table that was so much more than that whilst also being absolutely just that.

I love that Smut Club challenges me to read things I wouldn’t ordinarily choose, even if some of those things are not to my taste (I wanted to throw Tinkers through a window) and I am looking forward to seeing what 2019 has us picking up!

Have you read any of the books we picked up this year? What did you think of them?

I’ll be back tomorrow with my Top 5 Reads of 2018 excluding these 12!