2018 Books in Review
In 2018 I read 101 books. This was my first foray into triple digits since 2014 when I read 100 on the nose and the most since I read 116 in 2009. Of those 101 books, 75 were prose, 25 were graphic novels, and 1 was a poetry collection.
Those numbers were up dramatically from 2017. As I mentioned at the end of Q1, I was going to far fewer movies and reading far more books. That trend continued throughout 2018. As we'll see in more detail when I post my 2018 Cinema Year in Review, I saw 30 fewer movies in 2018 than I did in 2017. Probably not coincidentally, I read almost 30 more prose novels in 2018 than in 2017. Since I feel like I missed very few movies worth mentioning in 2018, and I enjoyed the vast majority of the books I read instead, I'm calling this a solid win.
I do find it weird that if you take my sister's 52 books and my 101 books, and there was only a single overlapping book. That book was Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward, who was my authorial crush for the year.
Without any further ado, here's the big list for 2018. Because of the last weekend series, I had comments on many of these books that were written within the week of finishing them. I've linked them on the list.
* = Graphic Novels
^ = Poetry
& = Management Books (aka, books I read for work)
Italics - Favorites
Sarah Gailey - River of Death - T 1/02
Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines - T 1/02
*Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner & Frank Stack - Our Cancer Year- W 1/03
Jason Turbow - Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s - Su 1/07
Stephen King - Finders Keepers - T 1/09
Greg Grandin - Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City - F 1/12
Philip Reeve - Predator’s Gold - S 1/13
*John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell - March: Book One - Su 1/14
*John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell - March: Book Two - M 1/15
*John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell - March: Book Thee - M 1/15
Stephen King - End of Watch - M 1/22
*Harvey Pekar - Our Movie Year - F 1/26
Alice Walker - The Color Purple - S 1/27
Octavia E. Butler - Kindred - M 1/29
Claire Vaye Watkins - Gold Fame Citrus - W 2/07
Phillip Reeve - Infernal Devices - F 2/09
John U. Bacon - The Great Halifax Explosion - S 2/10
Phillip Reeve - A Darkling Plain - Su 2/11
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner - What Unites Us - M 2/12
Taylor Branch - Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965 - W 2/21
&Camille Fournier - The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth & Change - M 2/26
Alex Haley - The Autobiography of Malcolm X - M 2/26
Lindsey Fitzharris - The Butchering Art - W 2/28
Stephen King - The Bazaar of Bad Dreams - T 3/06
James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time - W 3/07
Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man - W 3/14
Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem - F 3/16
Stephen King & Owen King - Sleeping Beauties - Su 3/18
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad - F 3/23
Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest - T 3/27
William Shakespeare - Troilus and Cressida - W 3/28
Bill Fawcett - How to Lose a Battle: Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders - S 3/31
^Morgan Parker - There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé - T 4/03
James Salter - Don’t Save Anything - W 4/04
Cixin Liu - Death’s End - M 4/16
&Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford - The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win - T 4/17
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric’s Demon - S 4/22
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric and the Shaman - S 4/28
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric's Mission - Su 4/29
Tom Mueller - Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil - Su 4/29
Chris Kyle w/William Doyle - American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms - T 5/01
John Carlin - Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation - W 5/02
*Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale - Batman: The Long Halloween - R 5/03
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.1 - M 5/07
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.2 - W 5/16
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.3 - S 5/19
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.4 - Su 5/20
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.5 - Su 5/20
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.6 - F 5/25
*Berkeley Breathed - One Last Little Peek - F 5/25
Kurt Vonnegut - Deadeye Dick - M 5/28
*Howard Tayler - Schlock Mercenary v.13: Random Access Memorabilia - R 5/31
Steve Martin - Pure Drivel - Su 6/03
*Junji Ito - Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror - Su 6/10
Anthony Doerr - All the Light We Cannot See - T 6/12
Lois McMaster Bujold - Mira’s Last Dance - W 7/04
*Kean Soo - Jellaby: Monster in the City - S 7/07
*Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean - The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch - S 7/07
Taylor Branch - At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968 - M 7/16
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric's Fox - T 7/17
Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Su 7/22
Mo Daviau - Every Anxious Wave - M 7/23
*Garth Ennis, Russ Braun - Jimmy's Bastards v.1: Trigger Warning - S 7/28
*Neil Gaiman, Rafael Albuquerque, Rafael Scavone, Dave Stewart - A Study in Emerald - Su 7/29
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory - S 8/04
Junot Diaz - This Is How You Lose Her - S 8/04
J.K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith - Career of Evil - M 8/06
Peter Moskowitz - How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and The Fight for the Neighborhood - Su 8/12
John Steinbeck - Once There Was a War - R 8/16
Junot Diaz - Drown - F 8/17
&Dale Carnegie - How to Stop Worrying & Start Living - W 8/22
China Mieville - Railsea - Su 8/26
Jack Belden - Retreat with Stillwell - S 9/01
Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story - Su 9/09
&Barbara Kellerman - Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters - W 9/12
*Harvey Pekar & Gary Dumm - Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story - F 9/14
*Mike Mignola & others - Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1955 - S 9/15
*Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello and others - Batman: the Dark Knight - Master Race - Su 9/16
Paul Bogard - The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light - T 9/25
Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing - W 9/26
Cameron McWhirter - Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America - W 9/26
Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Su 9/30
*Garth Ennis, Russ Braun - Jimmy's Bastards v.2: What Did You Just Say? - S 10/06
Steven Solomon - Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization - M 10/15
Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones - S 10/20
Charles Dickens - Bleak House - S 11/03
Jesmyn Ward (editor) - The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race - T 11/06
Mike Shropshire - Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and “The Worst Baseball Team in History” the 1973-1975 Texas Rangers - R 11/08
Jesmyn Ward - Men We Reaped - S 11/10
Crystal M. Fleming - How to Be Less Stupid About Race - M 11/12
Jesmyn Ward - Where the Line Bleeds - Su 11/18
Sparky Lyle - The Bronx Zoo - Su 11/18
&Cameron Herold - Meetings Suck: Turning One of the Most Loathed Elements of Business Into One of the Most Valuable - T 11/20
James Robenalt - Ballots and Bullets: Black Power Politics and Urban Guerrilla Warfare in 1986 Cleveland - Su 12/02
*Garth Ennis, Matt Martin, Keith Burns, Tomas Aira - War Stories: v.3 - Su 12/09
*Garth Ennis, Tomas Aira - War Stories, v.4 - Su 12/09
Paul Zimmerman - Dr. Z: The Lost Memoirs of an Irreverent Football Writer - W 12/12
Peter Singer - Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter - T 12/18
James Forman Jr - Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America - T 12/18
Richard Wright - Native Son - Su 12/23
Buzz Bissinger - Three Nights In August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager - S 12/29
My focus author tactic from 2017 fell apart; I hit Steinbeck, King, Dickens, Vonnegut and Bujold, but that leaves out the 10 other authors on that list. I added Jesmyn Ward to the list for future reference. Of course, I also read plenty of things from my slush pile, many of which turned up due to recommendations from friends and mentions in articles.
I continued to plow through the now decade long Shakespeare resolution. Plowing is the right word, too. I finished Troilus and Cressida in March, and then the next section of my Complete Works was the sonnets. Since I coincidentally finished my one poetry volume for the year a few days later (Morgan Parker, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce, which I mostly enjoyed and often found beautiful and profound), I started reading sonnets with breakfast. Nine months later, I'm only in the 50s, which is slightly more than one a week. I may skip past and read some more plays while the sonnets are in progress.
In March I mentioned that I had organically found myself reading far more books my authors of color. That ultimately became the big trend of 2018 as it continued off and on throughout the remainder of the year with minimal effort on my part. At this point I have read most of the most famous African-American novels, not to mention a whole host of other books by African-American authors.
After seeing the first preview for the Mortal Engines movie over Christmas 2017, I read the full Mortal Engines Quartet. Each of the four books was enjoyable in a YA dytsopian manner. I'm glad I read them, and I'm pretty sure that I only enjoyed the movie as much as I did because I had read them first. I recommend to anyone who likes YA - they were much better than the Hunger Games, for example.
I intended to read a lot of Harvey Pekar this year, but topped out with three books, the best of which was unquestionably Our Cancer Year which he cowrote with his wife about their experience dealing with his diagnosis and treatment for lymphoma. It is wrenching and will make you cry.
You might not cry but you will probably get very angry reading the March trilogy, which is an illustrated history of the Civil Rights movement by John Lewis. As a easily consumed history of the Civil Rights movement that doesn't sugar coat anything, it's a great thing to give to your favorite tween or teenager as an entry point into this critically important part of American history. It's certainly more consumable than volumes 2 and 3 of Taylor Branch's America in the King Years, which I finished this year. Volume 2 ("Pillar of Fire") was almost as good as the Pulitzer prize wining first volume, but the 3rd volume ("At Canaan's Edge") sort of fell off a cliff when it chose to end with King's assassination with a brief epilogue instead of the several hundred pages he could have wrapped it up with.
I also finished catching up with Stephen King, a process I had begun in late 2017 and due to every 18 months or so. In 2018 this meant finishing four books, the best of which was his collaboration with his son Owen, Sleeping Beauties, which had all the charm of Under the Dome and few of the faults. Finders Keepers was also very good; I liked it far more than the first and third books in its trilogy. I see King published two more books after I got caught up in 2018 alone, so I'll be back sooner than later.
If you like hard science fiction, you should read Liu Cixin's trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past. It convinced me we should stop sending messages out to other stars, that's for sure! At a minimum, read the first book, The Three Body Problem, for one of the most novel first contact stories you've seen.
I have had a sporadic interest in books about water, or set in a world without it. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization was a very nice historical summary of all the ways humanity have used water in our works. Gold Fame Citrus is another post-drought novel set in the American Southwest. It's not as good as The Water Knife, and I'm not sure it's actually good, but it has a pleasant surrealist bent to it that I appreciated.
Many times over the years I've discussed with friends "if you had a time machine, what concerts would you go to?" Mo Daviau answered this for nineties indie rockers in bravura form with Every Anxious Wave. If you loved college radio in the 1990s, or just like time travel stories, check it out.
Lois McMaster Bujold may well be my favorite author. Her six Penric novellas made it into hard copy last year, and I read the first five. They are set in her world of Chalion, the only reason I didn't read the sixth one was that the library didn't have it. They do now, and it's on hold. I'll probably buy them all.
Jesmyn Ward was my author crush of the year. I started with the aforementioned Sing, Unburied, Sing and then read all three of her novels, her memoir and a book of short pieces she edited that was a response to The Fire Next Time (which I also read this year and was very good). I liked all of her stuff. I suggest starting with her novel Salvage the Bones. If you like that, you'll most likely enjoy her other two novels Where the Line Bleeds and Sing, Unburied, Sing. I thought the latter was much better, myself. If you don't care for fiction, her memoir Men We Reaped is excellent.
Another author who I did a deep dive into was Junot Diaz. The short story collections Drown and This Is How You Lose Her are essentially the Dominican version of The Namesake, and they're almost as good. I should warn you that they depict a culture that is deeply sexist, which Diaz basically says he can't leave out without telling it truly. Both collections are far better than his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I'd only recommend if you loved the first two books, have a deep knowledge of 80s geek culture, and have empathy who watch life go past.
One of the most interesting non-fiction books I read in 2018, and possibly the best, was The End of Night, where Paul Bogard goes into depth about the history of artificial illumination and the various problems it can cause. It is a thought provoking read about what we have lost by forcing back the darkness.
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman, Jr. is on the surface about how we arrived at the over-incarceration era. However, it also doubles as an engineering lesson: lots of small steps, each of which seems correct and well supported on its own, can lead to a disaster. Malcolm X probably wouldn't have been surprised. His autobiography is every bit as good as advertised and should be required reading for everyone.
On a sad note, Dr. Z died in November. A stroke in 2008 kept him from writing the long promised memoirs, but his wife and friends put together some of what he had already written into TThe Lost Memoirs of an Irreverent Football Writer. Of necessity, they had to pad it out with some of his columns so the overall effect isn't great, but the oft alluded to stories of sparring with Ernest Hemingway and taking a rifle butt to the head while covering the 1972 Olympic Terrorist Attack had already been written, and written well. They make you wish all over again that he'd had a chance to do the memoir himself.
Another excellent memoir is Retreat with Stillwell, which correspondent Jack Belden wrote about the Burma Campaign in WWII. It's one of the best war diaries I've ever read, and it's about a theater of the war that isn't as well represented. Staggeringly, the library system had a copy that was older than my father and still readable.
Ethics in the Real World is a collection of short stories by Peter Singer that helped push me the last bit to give up red meat. It covers a lot of topics in utilitarian fashion.
I read Career of Evil by Galbraith/Rowling, which made me think that her best character isn't Hermione but instead is the team of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. I look forward to reading the fourth book.
Most years it isn't easy to call out a worst book, but that won't be a problem this year. The very first book I finished in 2018 was River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey. I'm always happy when someone does alternate history behind the basic "What if the South won the war?" or "What if the Nazis won the war?" and the concept of "what if the U.S. actually subsidized importing hippos?" is great... but then this book completely and utterly falls apart. It fails basic world building in ways that made me want to scream and throw the book across the room. If it hadn't been a short novella I would not have finished it, and I *always* finish what I start. So 10/10 for concept, and -278/10 for execution. The fact that this crap got published and even nominated for an award blows my mind.
Those numbers were up dramatically from 2017. As I mentioned at the end of Q1, I was going to far fewer movies and reading far more books. That trend continued throughout 2018. As we'll see in more detail when I post my 2018 Cinema Year in Review, I saw 30 fewer movies in 2018 than I did in 2017. Probably not coincidentally, I read almost 30 more prose novels in 2018 than in 2017. Since I feel like I missed very few movies worth mentioning in 2018, and I enjoyed the vast majority of the books I read instead, I'm calling this a solid win.
I do find it weird that if you take my sister's 52 books and my 101 books, and there was only a single overlapping book. That book was Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward, who was my authorial crush for the year.
Without any further ado, here's the big list for 2018. Because of the last weekend series, I had comments on many of these books that were written within the week of finishing them. I've linked them on the list.
* = Graphic Novels
^ = Poetry
& = Management Books (aka, books I read for work)
Italics - Favorites
Sarah Gailey - River of Death - T 1/02
Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines - T 1/02
*Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner & Frank Stack - Our Cancer Year- W 1/03
Jason Turbow - Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s - Su 1/07
Stephen King - Finders Keepers - T 1/09
Greg Grandin - Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City - F 1/12
Philip Reeve - Predator’s Gold - S 1/13
*John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell - March: Book One - Su 1/14
*John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell - March: Book Two - M 1/15
*John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell - March: Book Thee - M 1/15
Stephen King - End of Watch - M 1/22
*Harvey Pekar - Our Movie Year - F 1/26
Alice Walker - The Color Purple - S 1/27
Octavia E. Butler - Kindred - M 1/29
Claire Vaye Watkins - Gold Fame Citrus - W 2/07
Phillip Reeve - Infernal Devices - F 2/09
John U. Bacon - The Great Halifax Explosion - S 2/10
Phillip Reeve - A Darkling Plain - Su 2/11
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner - What Unites Us - M 2/12
Taylor Branch - Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965 - W 2/21
&Camille Fournier - The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth & Change - M 2/26
Alex Haley - The Autobiography of Malcolm X - M 2/26
Lindsey Fitzharris - The Butchering Art - W 2/28
Stephen King - The Bazaar of Bad Dreams - T 3/06
James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time - W 3/07
Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man - W 3/14
Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem - F 3/16
Stephen King & Owen King - Sleeping Beauties - Su 3/18
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad - F 3/23
Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest - T 3/27
William Shakespeare - Troilus and Cressida - W 3/28
Bill Fawcett - How to Lose a Battle: Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders - S 3/31
^Morgan Parker - There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé - T 4/03
James Salter - Don’t Save Anything - W 4/04
Cixin Liu - Death’s End - M 4/16
&Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford - The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win - T 4/17
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric’s Demon - S 4/22
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric and the Shaman - S 4/28
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric's Mission - Su 4/29
Tom Mueller - Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil - Su 4/29
Chris Kyle w/William Doyle - American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms - T 5/01
John Carlin - Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation - W 5/02
*Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale - Batman: The Long Halloween - R 5/03
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.1 - M 5/07
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.2 - W 5/16
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.3 - S 5/19
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.4 - Su 5/20
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.5 - Su 5/20
*Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content, v.6 - F 5/25
*Berkeley Breathed - One Last Little Peek - F 5/25
Kurt Vonnegut - Deadeye Dick - M 5/28
*Howard Tayler - Schlock Mercenary v.13: Random Access Memorabilia - R 5/31
Steve Martin - Pure Drivel - Su 6/03
*Junji Ito - Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror - Su 6/10
Anthony Doerr - All the Light We Cannot See - T 6/12
Lois McMaster Bujold - Mira’s Last Dance - W 7/04
*Kean Soo - Jellaby: Monster in the City - S 7/07
*Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean - The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch - S 7/07
Taylor Branch - At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968 - M 7/16
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric's Fox - T 7/17
Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Su 7/22
Mo Daviau - Every Anxious Wave - M 7/23
*Garth Ennis, Russ Braun - Jimmy's Bastards v.1: Trigger Warning - S 7/28
*Neil Gaiman, Rafael Albuquerque, Rafael Scavone, Dave Stewart - A Study in Emerald - Su 7/29
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory - S 8/04
Junot Diaz - This Is How You Lose Her - S 8/04
J.K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith - Career of Evil - M 8/06
Peter Moskowitz - How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and The Fight for the Neighborhood - Su 8/12
John Steinbeck - Once There Was a War - R 8/16
Junot Diaz - Drown - F 8/17
&Dale Carnegie - How to Stop Worrying & Start Living - W 8/22
China Mieville - Railsea - Su 8/26
Jack Belden - Retreat with Stillwell - S 9/01
Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story - Su 9/09
&Barbara Kellerman - Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters - W 9/12
*Harvey Pekar & Gary Dumm - Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story - F 9/14
*Mike Mignola & others - Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1955 - S 9/15
*Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello and others - Batman: the Dark Knight - Master Race - Su 9/16
Paul Bogard - The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light - T 9/25
Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing - W 9/26
Cameron McWhirter - Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America - W 9/26
Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Su 9/30
*Garth Ennis, Russ Braun - Jimmy's Bastards v.2: What Did You Just Say? - S 10/06
Steven Solomon - Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization - M 10/15
Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones - S 10/20
Charles Dickens - Bleak House - S 11/03
Jesmyn Ward (editor) - The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race - T 11/06
Mike Shropshire - Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and “The Worst Baseball Team in History” the 1973-1975 Texas Rangers - R 11/08
Jesmyn Ward - Men We Reaped - S 11/10
Crystal M. Fleming - How to Be Less Stupid About Race - M 11/12
Jesmyn Ward - Where the Line Bleeds - Su 11/18
Sparky Lyle - The Bronx Zoo - Su 11/18
&Cameron Herold - Meetings Suck: Turning One of the Most Loathed Elements of Business Into One of the Most Valuable - T 11/20
James Robenalt - Ballots and Bullets: Black Power Politics and Urban Guerrilla Warfare in 1986 Cleveland - Su 12/02
*Garth Ennis, Matt Martin, Keith Burns, Tomas Aira - War Stories: v.3 - Su 12/09
*Garth Ennis, Tomas Aira - War Stories, v.4 - Su 12/09
Paul Zimmerman - Dr. Z: The Lost Memoirs of an Irreverent Football Writer - W 12/12
Peter Singer - Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter - T 12/18
James Forman Jr - Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America - T 12/18
Richard Wright - Native Son - Su 12/23
Buzz Bissinger - Three Nights In August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager - S 12/29
My focus author tactic from 2017 fell apart; I hit Steinbeck, King, Dickens, Vonnegut and Bujold, but that leaves out the 10 other authors on that list. I added Jesmyn Ward to the list for future reference. Of course, I also read plenty of things from my slush pile, many of which turned up due to recommendations from friends and mentions in articles.
I continued to plow through the now decade long Shakespeare resolution. Plowing is the right word, too. I finished Troilus and Cressida in March, and then the next section of my Complete Works was the sonnets. Since I coincidentally finished my one poetry volume for the year a few days later (Morgan Parker, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce, which I mostly enjoyed and often found beautiful and profound), I started reading sonnets with breakfast. Nine months later, I'm only in the 50s, which is slightly more than one a week. I may skip past and read some more plays while the sonnets are in progress.
In March I mentioned that I had organically found myself reading far more books my authors of color. That ultimately became the big trend of 2018 as it continued off and on throughout the remainder of the year with minimal effort on my part. At this point I have read most of the most famous African-American novels, not to mention a whole host of other books by African-American authors.
After seeing the first preview for the Mortal Engines movie over Christmas 2017, I read the full Mortal Engines Quartet. Each of the four books was enjoyable in a YA dytsopian manner. I'm glad I read them, and I'm pretty sure that I only enjoyed the movie as much as I did because I had read them first. I recommend to anyone who likes YA - they were much better than the Hunger Games, for example.
I intended to read a lot of Harvey Pekar this year, but topped out with three books, the best of which was unquestionably Our Cancer Year which he cowrote with his wife about their experience dealing with his diagnosis and treatment for lymphoma. It is wrenching and will make you cry.
You might not cry but you will probably get very angry reading the March trilogy, which is an illustrated history of the Civil Rights movement by John Lewis. As a easily consumed history of the Civil Rights movement that doesn't sugar coat anything, it's a great thing to give to your favorite tween or teenager as an entry point into this critically important part of American history. It's certainly more consumable than volumes 2 and 3 of Taylor Branch's America in the King Years, which I finished this year. Volume 2 ("Pillar of Fire") was almost as good as the Pulitzer prize wining first volume, but the 3rd volume ("At Canaan's Edge") sort of fell off a cliff when it chose to end with King's assassination with a brief epilogue instead of the several hundred pages he could have wrapped it up with.
I also finished catching up with Stephen King, a process I had begun in late 2017 and due to every 18 months or so. In 2018 this meant finishing four books, the best of which was his collaboration with his son Owen, Sleeping Beauties, which had all the charm of Under the Dome and few of the faults. Finders Keepers was also very good; I liked it far more than the first and third books in its trilogy. I see King published two more books after I got caught up in 2018 alone, so I'll be back sooner than later.
If you like hard science fiction, you should read Liu Cixin's trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past. It convinced me we should stop sending messages out to other stars, that's for sure! At a minimum, read the first book, The Three Body Problem, for one of the most novel first contact stories you've seen.
I have had a sporadic interest in books about water, or set in a world without it. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization was a very nice historical summary of all the ways humanity have used water in our works. Gold Fame Citrus is another post-drought novel set in the American Southwest. It's not as good as The Water Knife, and I'm not sure it's actually good, but it has a pleasant surrealist bent to it that I appreciated.
Many times over the years I've discussed with friends "if you had a time machine, what concerts would you go to?" Mo Daviau answered this for nineties indie rockers in bravura form with Every Anxious Wave. If you loved college radio in the 1990s, or just like time travel stories, check it out.
Lois McMaster Bujold may well be my favorite author. Her six Penric novellas made it into hard copy last year, and I read the first five. They are set in her world of Chalion, the only reason I didn't read the sixth one was that the library didn't have it. They do now, and it's on hold. I'll probably buy them all.
Jesmyn Ward was my author crush of the year. I started with the aforementioned Sing, Unburied, Sing and then read all three of her novels, her memoir and a book of short pieces she edited that was a response to The Fire Next Time (which I also read this year and was very good). I liked all of her stuff. I suggest starting with her novel Salvage the Bones. If you like that, you'll most likely enjoy her other two novels Where the Line Bleeds and Sing, Unburied, Sing. I thought the latter was much better, myself. If you don't care for fiction, her memoir Men We Reaped is excellent.
Another author who I did a deep dive into was Junot Diaz. The short story collections Drown and This Is How You Lose Her are essentially the Dominican version of The Namesake, and they're almost as good. I should warn you that they depict a culture that is deeply sexist, which Diaz basically says he can't leave out without telling it truly. Both collections are far better than his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I'd only recommend if you loved the first two books, have a deep knowledge of 80s geek culture, and have empathy who watch life go past.
One of the most interesting non-fiction books I read in 2018, and possibly the best, was The End of Night, where Paul Bogard goes into depth about the history of artificial illumination and the various problems it can cause. It is a thought provoking read about what we have lost by forcing back the darkness.
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman, Jr. is on the surface about how we arrived at the over-incarceration era. However, it also doubles as an engineering lesson: lots of small steps, each of which seems correct and well supported on its own, can lead to a disaster. Malcolm X probably wouldn't have been surprised. His autobiography is every bit as good as advertised and should be required reading for everyone.
On a sad note, Dr. Z died in November. A stroke in 2008 kept him from writing the long promised memoirs, but his wife and friends put together some of what he had already written into TThe Lost Memoirs of an Irreverent Football Writer. Of necessity, they had to pad it out with some of his columns so the overall effect isn't great, but the oft alluded to stories of sparring with Ernest Hemingway and taking a rifle butt to the head while covering the 1972 Olympic Terrorist Attack had already been written, and written well. They make you wish all over again that he'd had a chance to do the memoir himself.
Another excellent memoir is Retreat with Stillwell, which correspondent Jack Belden wrote about the Burma Campaign in WWII. It's one of the best war diaries I've ever read, and it's about a theater of the war that isn't as well represented. Staggeringly, the library system had a copy that was older than my father and still readable.
Ethics in the Real World is a collection of short stories by Peter Singer that helped push me the last bit to give up red meat. It covers a lot of topics in utilitarian fashion.
I read Career of Evil by Galbraith/Rowling, which made me think that her best character isn't Hermione but instead is the team of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. I look forward to reading the fourth book.
Most years it isn't easy to call out a worst book, but that won't be a problem this year. The very first book I finished in 2018 was River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey. I'm always happy when someone does alternate history behind the basic "What if the South won the war?" or "What if the Nazis won the war?" and the concept of "what if the U.S. actually subsidized importing hippos?" is great... but then this book completely and utterly falls apart. It fails basic world building in ways that made me want to scream and throw the book across the room. If it hadn't been a short novella I would not have finished it, and I *always* finish what I start. So 10/10 for concept, and -278/10 for execution. The fact that this crap got published and even nominated for an award blows my mind.