The eight must-read books of the year.

As 2019 rises towards us, it’s time to take a last-chance stroll through the library of marvellous new books that the outgoing year gave us. Here’s a selection of the very best volumes published in 2018, all chosen with a view to entertaining and enlightening readers, but also books with something to tell us, directly or indirectly, about the world around us and the way we live now.

Perhaps someone will give you one or two of them for Christmas. Perhaps you’ll buy one or two of them as a gift for someone else. If the former, lucky you. If the latter, make sure you borrow them at some point. You’ll be wiser and happier and better informed for the time you spend in their company.

**Becoming by Ms Michelle Obama **

Now possibly even more popular than her husband, the former First Lady has written the memoir of the year, threading the story of an eyewitness to history with reflections on feminism, activism and how that remarkable marriage works.

**Heimat: A German Family Album by Ms Nora Krug **

What would it be like to grow up in the shadow of guilt for a war that ended before you were born? Ms Nora Krug – born in Germany, now living in the US – has lived it, and in her affecting and witty graphic work describes coming to terms with her homeland’s role in WWII while investigating her own family’s history of complicity.

**_ The Order Of Time_ by Mr Carlo Rovelli **

What on earth is “time”? If anyone can explain, it’s the theoretical physicist Mr Carlo Rovelli, and he does so with style and lucidity in this tiny but eye-opening book. He’s not afraid of a literary reference, either. Or, come to that, a drawing of a smurf.

**Crashed: How A Decade Of Financial Crises Changed The World by Mr Adam Tooze  **

Broader in scope and deeper in detail than Mr Michael Lewis, Mr Tooze really explains how the US subprime crisis rippled into the Eurozone and what it means for the world in general. If you want to understand this stuff, here’s where to start.

**_ The Recovering: Intoxication And Its Aftermath_ by Ms Leslie Jamison **

Memoir, cultural history and literary criticism blend in Ms Lesley Jamison’s story of her own alcoholism and recovery, and her frank questioning of every alcoholic writer’s great fear: does the inspiration dry up when you dry out?

**Milkman by Ms Anna Burns **

Don’t be put off by claims, following its Man Booker win, that this short, funny, unsettling novel is “difficult”. Just think of it as a voice – a distinctively Northern Irish voice – telling you a remarkable story.

**Warlight by Mr Michael Ondaatje **

Mr Michael Ondaatje is on masterful form in this story of wartime espionage and family secrets or, possibly, wartime secrets and family espionage. Here is great literary subtlety woven through a dream-like thriller plot.

**Certain American States by Ms Catherine Lacey **

We should all read more short stories, and that’s a pleasure rather than a duty when they’re written by Ms Catherine Lacey. These are hugely original, droll and unexpected stories about people in crisis doing (usually) the worst possible things to resolve them.

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