There was a meme going around BookTok recently of people trying to pick (or even remember) their favorite books over the last ten years. A glance at my Goodreads stats told me I could juuuust pull this off, with entries going back as far as 2012.
So after a perusal of what books I logged (things get a little fuzzy a decade ago when I wasn’t as dedicated to Goodreads), here are my picks for favorite read of each year! Note that I said FAVORITE. These are the books that have stuck with me over the years; in a couple instances, I chose a four star read over a five star because it has made a larger impression on me over time. And of course, in the years where I’ve read more books, it was harder and harder to choose a single book. Ask me to make this list again in a week, and I might have different answers.
One last note, these were my favorite reads in the year I read them, not necessarily in the release year.
So here we go! Ten years, ten favorite books.
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
Realms of My Mind 
Oh man, you have some great books on here. Lies of Locke Lamora is a favorite, same with Mistborn!
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This is fun! I did a best of the decade a couple of years ago except I picked five books for each year, which was easier, but this is a fantastic list. Especially Jade City and City of Blades😁
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Yeah, once I hit the last five years or so (where I started reading a lot), choosing one book became VERY hard.
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Quite a few of these are on my TBR! I don’t think I could go back this far. I’ve only had goodreads since 2016, and I don’t have a clue when I read books before that.
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Pre-2015 starts to get sketchier because I wasn’t using the site regularly, so it’s entirely possible there were other books I read those years that I have since forgotten. But the picks I had available worked fine for me!
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That’s like a lovely progression of the fantasy genre… Awesome list Caitlin !!! I’m gonna do it too 😍😍😍
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Oh yay! I’m excited to see what your picks are!
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Even I’m excited to open my GR and figure it out 😊😊
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A fun list which not only promotes books from the “past,” but also recent reads. It shows the variety in your taste in books, too!
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Ooh, this is a fun challenge, but I doubt I would remember my favorites from 5+ years ago (and my reading taste has changed so much since then that I don’t know if I’d want to admit to my favorites over the years, hahaha). I just started Goodreads in 2020 and switched to the StoryGraph since then so my reading logs are all over the place. I only use Goodreads to log books when I have a review to write now.
Jade City is a great choice! It was one of my favorites last year. I also loved Mistborn, but I never got past the second book in the series.
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Hahah, yeah, it was interesting in the one or two instances where I’d rated something 4 and I went “…you know, I think I ended up liking that better in the long term than the books I rated 5 stars.”
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This is such a cool idea!
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Wow, very cool that you’re able to go that far back. I don’t even remember what I was reading 10 years ago except that I wasn’t reading very much. Was that maybe around the time The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books got popular? I remember reading those. And Game of Thrones sometime in the last 10 years. Good to see Katherine Arden on here…I’m excited about starting the trilogy at some point.
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Wonderful idea, and great list of books! Must have been tough to narrow it down, I don’t think I would be able to just choose one for each year.
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It was REALLY hard some years. I ended up just going with a gut reaction.
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