My 2018 Retrospective

                              

 With my views at around 22,300, I've had approximately 7,500 views in 2018.  When I first started to blog, I didn't think thousands of people would be interested.  This total certainly exceeds my expectations.

As usual, my most viewed post was on my blog for strong female protagonists, High Flying Reviews.  It was my review of Insurrectio , a novel in the alternate history Roma Nova series by Alison Morton.  I'm sure that the reason why it was most viewed is because Alison Morton has quite a following. You can find that review here.

My most viewed post on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer was a review of The Spying Moon, the first novel in a projected crime series about a Canadian female constable by Sandra Ruttan.  It could be that there is currently a great deal of interest in Canadian law enforcement, but  I consider it more likely that publicist Wiley Saichek who gave me the opportunity to review this book, and the publisher Down and Out Books are very assiduous promoters.  You can find that review here.

I am now closing the statistics portion of this post and will proceed to my 2018 favorites who are recipients of:

                             The Golden Mask Awards

Best Book I Read in 2018

Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann which is a historical study about Africans in England during the Tudor period.  This is a scholarly book.  Many readers may find it dull. I was amazed by the content which caused me to think about the reasons behind slavery and prejudice.

Best Fiction I Read in 2018

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo which is also the best YA book and the best fantasy.  While it's true that I'm a huge fan of Wonder Woman, I am not enthralled by every book dealing with her.  I felt that this one was inspiring, excellently written and focused on significant themes.

Best Book Published in 2018

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark which is also the best science fiction that I read in 2018.  This is a steampunk novella that takes place in New Orleans and has a protagonist who is deeply identified with an African Goddess.  I reviewed it on this blog here.

Best Indie Book Published in 2018

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey which is also the best mystery that I read in 2018.  The publisher is Soho Press which describes themselves as an independent publisher.  I hesitated before giving this book the best indie award because I have in the past defined an indie publisher as one that is disadvantaged in distribution.  Soho Press books are everywhere.  This is because they are being given a boost by Penguin/Random House's distribution network.  I predict that some time in the foreseeable future, Soho's sales figures and prominence will be major publisher level, and no one will describe them as an independent publisher.

The Widows of Malabar Hill takes place in India in the 1920's.  The protagonist is a pioneering female lawyer who is also a Parsi which is an ethnic and religious minority in India. This book is highly original and a powerful piece of fiction.  I reviewed it on Flying High Reviews here.

Best Historical Fiction

A Different Kind of Angel by Paulette Mahurin is the non-genre historical novel which I read in 2018 that I found most relevant to contemporary concerns.  The central character was a 19th century refugee who fled to the U.S. and was consigned to a mental institution because she couldn't speak English.  I reviewed it on this blog here.

Best Thriller

The Astronaut's Son by Tom Seigel whose protagonist was trying to discover how his astronaut father died.  There are secret conspiracies and intense characterization.  I reviewed it on this blog here.

Best Graphic Book

Photographic which is a graphic biography of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero.  The prose is gorgeous, there are some unusual photographs and I learned some very interesting things about Mexico.

Best Net Galley

Radio Free Vermont by Bill McKibben which was also the first book I read in 2018.  There have been some years where my last read was extraordinary.  This was a year when my first read turned out to be a favorite.  It isn't just that I agree with Bill McKibben politically, I thought the concept was well-developed and I learned a great deal about the history of Vermont.  See my review on this blog here.

Except for Sujata Massey, all the authors whose books received awards from me in 2018 were completely new to me.  So I am continuing my record of success with discovering new authors.