Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books of 2018, So Far

This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the Artsy Reader Girl, is the best books we've read in 2018.

In order of my reading them...

1. Star Trek the Fall: Ceremony of Losses, David Mack
2. Poetry Night at the Ballpark, Bill Kauffman
3. Fares, Please! A Popular History of Trolleys, Horsecars, Streetcars,Buses, Elevateds, and Subways, John Anderson Miller
4. Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, Scott Horton
5. Verbal Judo: The Art of Persuasion, George Thompson
6. A Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, Ian Mortimer
7. How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, Russ Roberts
8. Exploding the Phone: The Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell, Phil Lapsley
9. Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
10. Little Brother,  Corey Doctorow

About the books:

Star Trek: Ceremony of Losses  is only part of a series, but features compelling moral drama about a doctor who does the right thing when his government  is being manipulative.

Poetry Night at the Ballpark is a collection of miscellany by a favorite author. I likened it to encountering him at a bar and then having a long, fascinating conversation about a variety of things.

Fares, Please! really speaks for itself. It's a fun history of public transportation.

Fool's Errand is a critical history of the Afghanistan war that stirs the water and asks why the hell Americans aren't more pissed off at the constant bloodshed and waste of this war.  Ooh, did Queen Elizabeth just tweet something passive aggressive about her new daughter in law?  War? What war?

Verbal Judo is a pocket guide to nonviolent communication  and conflict deescalation.  Useful stuff if you work with the public.

A Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval History was a fun social history of medieval England.

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Mind  interprets Adam Smith's poorly-known Theory of Moral Sentiments,  to explore the meaning of life in being loved and being lovely.

Exploding the Phone reviews the phone-hacking scene of the fifties to the eighties, when computers made it more difficult and became objects of hacking interest themselves.

Ready Player One is...awesome.

Little Brother  takes the surveillance state, a kid, and a user's guide to cybersecurity and mixes them together for a YA techno thriller that not only argues for privacy, but gives readers the tools to achieve it against the government's designs.  That's my kind of self-government.