I changed careers this year. I’m an editor now. I don’t plan to shutter this website, but neither do I plan to update it. Instead, find me over at https://www.bluemanuscript.com/book-talks/book-rundown-2023.
Book rundown, 2022
Welcome, welcome, to the 16th year in which I review my annual book reading in unnecessary detail.
Total books read:
- 67, up from 46 last year
Age levels:
- Adult: 66
- YA: 0
- Children’s: 1
Books that were published in 2022:
- Atomic Anna, by Rachel Barenbaum.
- The Beauty of Dusk, by Frank Bruni.
- A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, by Becky Chambers.
- Calling for a Blanket Dance, by Oscar Hokeah.
- Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir.
- Allow Me to Retort, by Elie Mystal.
Nonfiction:
Twelve.
Fiction:
Fifty-five. For decades I did not care to listen to audiobooks. I finally eased into them when I discovered I could listen to nonfiction–but only nonfiction–without getting distracted. For a long time, that gave me something like parity between fiction and nonfiction in my reading consumption. But since teaching myself to listen to fiction, my numbers have skewed back to the natural order of things. Eighty-two percent of my reading was fiction. That’s about right.
Genres (as some books have more than one genre, total exceeds 67):
Nonfiction:
- Disability studies – 2
- Health – 1
- History – 4
- Memoir – 1
- Political science – 1
- Science – 3
- Social science – 1
- Spirituality – 1
Fiction:
- Adventure – 2
- Crime/Thriller/Mystery – 8
- Fantasy – 18
- Historical fiction – 3
- Horror – 9
- Literary fiction – 9
- Science fiction – 15
- Western – 1
Miscellaneous:
- Annual fat Russian novel: Taras Bulba, by Nikolai Gogol. It would be the worst Russian novel I’ve ever read, only that honor goes to Alexander Belyaev’s The Amphibian, science fiction about a creature who is half man, half fish. It is terrible.
- Re-reads: Eleven: Tamsyn Muir (2), Art Spiegelman (2), and Stephen King (7, because I was working my way through a re-read of his collected short fiction).
- Audiobooks: 40.
- Unique authors: 44
- Most read author: Stephen King, my all-time most-read author, with 8 books, followed by Martha Wells with 6.
- Collections of short-form fiction or nonfiction: 7
- Graphic novels: 2
Best book of the year (tie):
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, looks at race, racism, and caste in the United States, Nazi Germany, and India. It is a stunning work of scholarship, but written to be accessible to a popular audience.
The House in the Cerulean Sea, by T. J. Klune. I typically do not want to read a story dominated by a cast of children, and I emphatically do not care to read love stories, yet this is one of the loveliest books I’ve ever read. A low-ranking office worker is sent to inspect conditions at an orphanage for unusual children. By unusual I mean one of the orphans is a blob of sentient jelly. To steal from a reader I respect: reading this book is like getting a hug from an old friend.
Best audiobook narrations:
- Moira Quirk, narrating Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series. Despite all the animated corpses, or because of all the animated corpses, these are very funny books, and Quirk’s reading adds to the humor. She can also do a host of convincing accents.
- Elie Mystal, narrating his own Allow Me to Retort. He just gets so dynamic when he’s swearing about Supreme Court decisions.
- George Guidall, an astonishingly prolific narrator, in this case giving life to the characters in the ongoing Walt Longmire mysteries.
- Kevin R. Free, humanizing Murderbot in the books by Martha Wells.
- Holter Graham, doing accurate North Carolina accents in The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Stephen Sherrill.
- Adjoa Andoh, distinctly narrating a whole bunch of characters, all of them women, in Lauren Groff’s The Matrix.
Themes:
- Nothing stands out this year, except to say that I enjoyed this year’s batch of books, collectively, more than any year in recent memory. There were a few duds, but this was a fine year for reading.
K. J. Parker. Is he still the best?
Yes, along with his pseudonym, Tom Holt.
Honorable mentions:
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers. A short, sweet, meditative reflection on what it means to be human. I thought the first half was kind of snoozy, but the book took off as soon as the robot was introduced. This is another book that feels like a hug.
- Circe, by Madeline Miller. Given the slightly formal prose and the reserved personality of the title character, I was not expecting this book to assault me with emotions.
- Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. This third entry in the Locked Tomb series is as wild as the first two (and it absolutely will not make sense until you’ve read them first, starting with Gideon the Ninth). Muir is a brilliant plotter, and her prose is sharp.
- Allow Me to Retort, by Elie Mystal. The history and current politics of the United States Supreme Court, now with extra swearing.
- The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki. For a book with themes of mental illness, religion, substance abuse, homeless, and grief, this is such an affirming story. It’s hard to summarize, and you might find your mind wandering in the first little bit, but it’s so good once you get going, I promise.
- Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. Well damn if this book doesn’t stand the rest of time. Victor Frankenstein jumped to the head of the queue in my personal list of most awful villains.
- How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith. A study of slavery in American history, and how those stories warp and reverberate through the present.
- Maus, by Art Spiegelman. Maus got banned at a school in early 2022. (Book censorship is enjoying–I refuse to use the word renaissance in this context–is enjoying a resurgence in contemporary America. Do you know who else enjoyed banning books? The Nazis in Hitler’s Germany.) These nonfiction graphic novels tell the story of Spiegelman’s father, a Jew who survived Auschwitz.
- Murderbot series, by Martha Wells. The point-of-view character in these books is Murderbot, a robot who just wants to watch soap operas, rather than providing security to human space explorers.
All the books I read:
Bardugo, Leigh. The Language of Thorns. Fantasy (2017)
Barenbaum, Rachel. Atomic Anna. Science Fiction (2022)
Bruni, Frank. The Beauty of Dusk. Memoir (2022)
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Beguilement. Fantasy (2006)
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Legacy. Fantasy (2007)
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Passage. Fantasy (2008)
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Horizon. Fantasy (2009)
Chambers, Becky. A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Science Fiction (2021)
Chambers, Becky. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. Science Fiction (2022)
Chappell, Fred. A Shadow All of Light. Fantasy (2016)
Chödrön, Pema. When Things Fall Apart. Spirituality (1996)
Coelho, Paulo. The Alchemist. Adventure (1988)
Gogol, Nikolai. Taras Bulba. Adventure (1835)
Groff, Lauren. The Matrix. Historical (2021)
Grossman, Lev. The Silver Arrow. Fantasy (2020)
Harrow, Alix E. The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Fantasy (2019)
Hokeah, Oscar. Calling for a Blanket Dance. Literary (2022)
Holt, Tom. Doughnut. Science Fiction (2013)
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Klara and the Sun. Science Fiction (2021)
Johnson, Craig. Death without Company. Mystery (2006)
Johnson, Craig. Kindness Goes Unpunished. Mystery (2007)
Johnson, Craig. Another Man’s Moccasins. Mystery (2008)
Johnson, Craig. The Dark Horse. Mystery (2009)
King, Stephen. Blaze. Crime (2007)
King, Stephen. Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Horror (1993)
King, Stephen. Hearts in Atlantis. Horror (1999)
King, Stephen. Everything’s Eventual. Horror (2002)
King, Stephen. Just After Sunset. Horror (2008)
King, Stephen. Full Dark, No Stars. Horror (2010)
King, Stephen. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. Horror (2015)
King, Stephen. If It Bleeds. Horror (2020)
Klune, T. J. The House in the Cerulean Sea. Fantasy (2020)
Knox, Joseph. True Crime Story. Crime (2021)
Ladau, Emily. Demystifying Disability. Disability Studies (2021)
LaValle, Victor. The Ballad of Black Tom. Horror (2016)
Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. Horror (1954)
McKinley, Robin. Rose Daughter. Fantasy (1997)
Meals, Roy A. Bones Inside and Out. Science (2020)
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd. Adventure (1924)
Miller, Madeline. Circe. Literary (2018)
Muir, Tamsyn. Gideon the Ninth. Fantasy (2019)
Muir, Tamsyn. Harrow the Ninth. Fantasy (2020)
Muir, Tamsyn. Nona the Ninth. Fantasy (2022)
Mystal, Elie. Allow Me to Retort. Political Science (2022)
Nerenberg, Jenara. Divergent Mind. Health (2020)
North, Claire. The Pursuit of William Abbey. Fantasy (2019)
Ozeki, Ruth. The Book of Form and Emptiness. Literary (2021)
Parker, K. J. How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It. Fantasy (2020)
Parker, K. J. Inside Man. Fantasy (2021)
Perry, Thomas. A Small Town. Crime (2020)
Price, Adam O’Fallon. The Hotel Neversink. Literary (2020)
Roach, Mary. Fuzz. Science (2021)
Savage, Thomas. The Power of the Dog. Western (1967)
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Science Fiction (1818)
Sherrill, Stephen. The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. Fantasy (2002)
Smith, Clint. How the Word Is Passed. History (2021)
Spiegelman, Art. Maus. History (1986)
Spiegelman, Art. Maus II. History (1992)
van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score. Science (2014)
Vonnegut, Kurt. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Literary (1965)
Wells, Martha. All Systems Red. Science Fiction (2017)
Wells, Martha. Artificial Condition. Science Fiction (2018)
Wells, Martha. Rogue Protocol. Science Fiction (2018)
Wells, Martha. Exit Strategy. Science Fiction (2018)
Wells, Martha. Network Effect. Science Fiction (2020)
Wells, Martha. Fugitive Telemetry. Science Fiction (2021)
Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste. Social Science (2020)
Previous years:
Book rundown, 2021
Well gosh, it’s year 15 of my annual book rundowns. Imagine that. I used to read around 100 books annually, but it’s been less than that for like ten years now. This is embarrassing but temporary, much like the weight I have gained in the same decade.
Total books read:
- 46, up from 33 last year
Age levels:
- Adult: 45
- YA: 0
- Children’s: 1
Books that were published in 2021:
- The Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman
- Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
- Honeycomb, by Joanne M. Harris
- Drug Use for Grown-ups, by Carl L. Hart
- Why Bushwick Bill Matters, by Charles Hughes
- Comfort Me with Apples, by Catherynne M. Valente
- She Kills Me, by Jennifer Wright
Nonfiction:
Ten
Fiction:
Thirty-six
Genres (as some books have more than one genre, total exceeds 46):
Nonfiction:
- Memoir – 1
- Music history – 1
- Philosophy – 1
- Religion – 1
- Science – 1
- Social science – 5
- True crime – 1
Fiction:
- Adventure – 3
- Crime – 1
- Fantasy – 18
- Historical fiction – 1
- Horror – 9
- Literary fiction – 8
- Mystery – 1
- Poetry – 1
- Science fiction – 2
- Superhero – 1
- Thriller – 1
Miscellaneous:
- Annual fat Russian novel: The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories. I am aware this is not a novel.
- Re-reads: Eleven: J. R. R. Tolkien (4), Stephen King (4), and Jacqueline Carey (3. never again.)
- Audiobooks: 36. I shudder to think how little I’d read without audiobooks.
- Unique authors: 37.
- Most read author: J. R. R. Tolkien, tied with Stephen King. Fun fact, Stephen King is my most-read author ever. He has 76 unique entries in my spreadsheet. Second-most read, I cannot believe I am about to confess to the unwashed internet, is Carolyn Keene (who is really just a collective pseudonym for the writers behind Nancy Drew.)
- Collections of short-form fiction or nonfiction: 6
Best book of the year (tie):
How to Be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi, is the best book I’ve read yet about understanding race and racism. It does such a good job showing how racism is a thing that exists, even if the person or system who caused it didn’t mean to be racist. Kendi argues that the best way to end racism is through policy changes.
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders. I struggled mightily at first, because the audiobook is bewildering, but it was worth it, in the same way it was worth it for me as an undergrad to fight through Faulkner. This is about President Abraham Lincoln grieving his 11-year-old son, and all the deceased residents of the afterlife–the Bardo–trying to help Willie adjust.
Themes:
- Racism is bad. It was during this year that I finished up 12 months of reading focused on themes of race, racism, and antiracism. Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Anti-racist is the best I read.
- Grief is difficult. Several excellent books made me think about grief and loss, including Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, and The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
K. J. Parker. Is he still the best?
Hell yes he is, though this year I didn’t read any books under his name (a pseudonym), but rather a book written under his primary name, Tom Holt.
Honorable mentions:
- The Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman. One of the finest fantasy novels I’ve read in ages. It honors the conventions of fantasy while creating something new and captivating. It is at turns adventurous, scary, funny, and grim. Buehlman narrates the audio and it is just superb.
- The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter. Published in 1979, this collection of feminist fairy tales is dark and shivery.
- Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. The whole book is good (though difficult to describe without spoilers), but the first third or so is a master study in atmosphere. The haplessly unreliable narrator doles out clues, and there’s not a thing you can do but try to put the pieces together.
- Drug Use for Grown-ups, by Carl L. Hart. A drug researcher makes the case for legalizing recreational drugs, including the more dangerous ones, like meth and heroin. So many people (including doctors, policy makers, and the general public) believe that Drugs = Bad. This is not always true, and even when drugs are bad, the best treatment is not incarceration but medical care.
- An Orc on the Wild Side, by Tom Holt. A Middle Earth story that centers the narrative around orcs, wraiths, and other people who deserve to have a say.
- The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Some decades following the death of King Arthur, an elderly couple set out on a simple quest to find their son. It’s about grief and loss and love. I need to read all of Ishiguro’s books. He always leaves me sobbing.
- The Cold Dish, by Craig Johnson. This is the first in a long-running series starring Walt Longmire, a sheriff in Wyoming. Excellent character development and dialogue, good pacing and action. There are only so many books and I have to pick carefully, since I can only get through so many in a lifetime, but I do want to keep going with this series.
- Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire. This novella is about the kids who went to other worlds and then were forced to come back. It is somehow quirky, charming, and horrific all at once.
- Tenth of December, by George Saunders. I don’t normally get fired up about short stories, especially LITERARY short stories, but each one of these was an emotional affair, and I went around recommending it to basically everyone for a month or two there. Saunders narrates the audiobook and it is amazing.
- The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien: specifically, as narrated by Andy Serkis, the actor behind Gollum. This is such a thumping good adventure story anyway. Serkis doing the narration elevates it to something else entirely.
- Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu. It’s about American stereotypes of Asian people, which sounds depressing and terribly literary, but it is fresh and fun and funny. Do the audiobook if that’s your thing.
All the books I read:
Armitage, Simon. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Poetry 2007
Buehlman, Christopher. The Blacktongue Thief. Fantasy 2021
Carey, Jacqueline. Kushiel’s Dart. Fantasy 2001
Carey, Jacqueline. Kushiel’s Chosen. Fantasy 2002
Carey, Jacqueline. Kushiel’s Avatar. Fantasy 2003
Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber. Fantasy 1979
Chekhov, Anton. The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories. Literary 2020
Clarke, Susanna. Piranesi. Fantasy 2021
Cowell, Cressida. Knock Three Times. Fantasy 2019
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Fantasy 1843
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Social Science 1903
Haig, Matt. The Midnight Library. Literary 2020
Hammett, Dashiell. The Thin Man. Crime 1934
Harris, Joanne M. Honeycomb. Fantasy 2021
Hart, Carl L. Drug Use for Grown-ups. Science 2021
Holt, Tom. An Orc on the Wild Side. Fantasy 2019
Hughes, Charles. Why Bushwick Bill Matters. Music history 2021
Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Buried Giant. Fantasy 2015
Jacobs, John Horner. A Lush and Seething Hell. Horror 2019
Johnson, Craig. The Cold Dish. Mystery 2005
Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. Social Science 2019
King, Stephen. Night Shift. Horror 1978
King, Stephen. Different Seasons. Horror 1982
King, Stephen. Skeleton Crew. Horror 1985
King, Stephen. Four Past Midnight. Horror 1990
Lewis, C. S. A Grief Observed. Philosophy 1960
Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven. Science Fiction 2014
Martinez, A. Lee. Monster. Fantasy 2009
McGuire, Seanan. Every Heart a Doorway. Fantasy 2016
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. Mexican Gothic. Horror 2020
Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Wounded Healer. Religion 1979
Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race. Social Science 2018
Perry, Thomas. The Burglar. Thriller 2019
Ruff, Matt. Lovecraft Country. Horror 2016
Saunders, George. Tenth of December. Literary Fiction 2013
Saunders, George. Lincoln in the Bardo. Literary Fiction 2017
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. Fantasy 1937
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Fantasy 1954
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Two Towers. Fantasy 1954
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King. Fantasy 1954
Valente, Catherynne M. Comfort Me with Apples. Fantasy 2021
Walschots, Natalie Zina. Hench. Superhero 2020
Ward, Jesmyn. The Fire This Time. Social Science 2017
Winters, Mary-Frances. Black Fatigue. Social Science 2020
Wright, Jennifer. She Kills Me. True Crime 2021
Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. Literary Fiction 2020
Previous years:
Book rundown, 2020
The year of our lord 2020, with Covid-19, work-from-home, and widespread lockdowns, was for many a chance to spend extra time reading and writing. As one meme helpfully pointed out, Shakespeare used the opportunity of a plague to write King Lear. I did not write a foundational text of world civilization but, and I do not say this boastfully, I perfected the technique of staring blankly into space.
Like so many, I responded to chronic massive trauma with nightmares, memory loss, trouble focusing, and brain fog. That I was able to read books at all is a victory.
Two new features to my book reading this year. On Saturdays, I started discussing the books I’d read on social media, as part of a daily check-in in these difficult times. I hope to keep this feature in some form post-pandemic. And in response to the murder by police of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, I resolved that half my reading be on themes of race, racism, or anti-racism for one year. I ultimately read 12, but since I didn’t start this challenge till June, that’s a respectable number.
Total books read:
- 33, down from 54 last year ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Age levels:
- Adult: 30
- YA: 1
- Children’s: 2
Books that were published in 2020:
- The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones
- The Hidden Girl, by Ken Liu
- Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
- Me and White Supremacy, by Layla Saad
Nonfiction:
- Thirteen
Fiction:
- Twenty
Genres (as some books have more than one genre, total exceeds 33):
Nonfiction:
- Autobiography – 1
- Essays, various topics – 1
- Ethics – 1
- Investigative Journalism – 1
- Library science – 1
- Memoir – 2
- Science – 2
- Social science – 5
Fiction:
- Crime/Thriller – 3
- Erotica – 1
- Fantasy – 5
- Horror – 6
- Literary fiction – 2
- Mainstream/contemporary – 1
- Science fiction – 5
Miscellaneous:
- Annual fat Russian novel: The Amphibian, by Alexander Belyaev
- Re-reads: 1, when I was purging from my library, I found a graphic novel, emphasis on graphic: Celluloid, by Dave McKean, which has zero words, because words are extremely not the point. According to my notes, I had read this in 2010, though I had no memory of it. I like Dave McKean but this is not really my sort of book, so it’s been donated in the hopes someone with more prurient tastes can enjoy it
- Audiobooks: 22
- Unique authors: 33
- Most read author: Tamsyn Muir, and only because I read two of her books. Some years I binge read an author. Not this year.
- Collections of short-form fiction or nonfiction: 3
Themes:
Apart from my intention to read books on race, racism, and antiracism, no strong themes, except that I read more horror than anything else. This is fitting for 2020.
Best book of the year:
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I do not love McCarthy’s whole oeuvre the way some of you do. I didn’t really get into Blood Meridian, and some of his books I gave up on after a few pages. But when he writes a book I like, it is phenomenal. There is one passage that will stick with me for a long time, not the haunted house horror scene (you know which one I mean) but the one immediately after.
K.J. Parker tho. Isn’t he the best?:
Yes.
Honorable mentions:
- The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. Sheer fun. Painfully regressive social values, unresolved plot holes, two-dimensional women, which just goes to show that you can love a flawed thing.
- Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. So difficult to describe this, but it’s lovely. It’s a blend of ethics, science, poetry, spirituality, and plants.
- No Time to Spare, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Best known for her science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin here writes essays on a variety of topics, including literary criticism, social observations, and her cat.
- Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. Astonishingly good books. I’ve been recommending Muir to everyone. Brilliant plotting! Hysterically funny writing! Lesbian necromancers in spaaaaaaacccce!
- The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson. Far and away one of my favorite nonfiction writers, Ronson takes a deep dive into bizarre territory: in this case, psychopathy.
- Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad. If I were going to pick any one book to help white people understand racism, this would be it. If you’re looking for a book for your book group or shared workplace book, consider this one.
- The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. Young adult novel about a Black teenager who sees her friend fatally shot by the police.
- Deathless, by Catherynne M. Valente. Familiar figures from Russian folklore set in the early twentieth century.
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The first part of the book, covering Malcolm’s life before he finds religion, is all booze and women and drugs and doing crimes. Thereafter we follow Malcolm’s time with the Nation of Islam and his epiphany at Mecca. This is essential reading for any American.
All the books I read:
| Author | Title | Genre | pub year |
| Baldwin, James | The Fire Next Time | Social Science | 1963 |
| Belyaev, Alexander | The Amphibian | SF | 1928 |
| Butler, Octaivia | Kindred | SF | 1979 |
| Chandler, Raymond | The Big Sleep | Crime | 1939 |
| Coates, Ta-Nehisi | Between the World and Me | Social Science | 2015 |
| Cowell, Cressida | How to Train Your Dragon | Fantasy | 2003 |
| Daniels, Ezra Claytan | BTTM FDRS | Horror | 2019 |
| Dinesen, Isak | Out of Africa | Memoir | 1937 |
| Doty, James R. | Into the Magic Shop | Memoir | 2016 |
| Jones, Stephen Graham | The Only Good Indians | Horror | 2020 |
| Junger, Sebastian | War | Social Science | 2010 |
| Kimmerer, Robin Wall | Braiding Sweetgrass | Science | 2013 |
| Krueger, Stephen G. | Supporting Trans People in Libraries | Library Science | 2019 |
| Langan, John | The Wide Carnivorous Sky | Horror | 2013 |
| Le Guin, Ursula K. | No Time to Spare | Essays | 2017 |
| Liu, Ken | The Hidden Girl | SF | 2020 |
| Martinson, T. J. | The Reign of the Kingfisher | Crime | 2019 |
| McCarthy, Cormac | The Road | Literary | 2006 |
| McDermid, Val | Forensics | Science | 2014 |
| McKean, Dave | Celluloid | Erotica | 2010 |
| Muir, Tamsyn | Gideon the Ninth | Fantasy | 2019 |
| Muir, Tamsyn | Harrow the Ninth | Fantasy | 2020 |
| Parker, K. J. | Prosper’s Demon | Fantasy | 2019 |
| Perry, Thomas | The Old Man | Thriller | 2017 |
| Rice, Anne | The Witching Hour | Horror | 1990 |
| Ronson, Jon | The Psychopath Test | Investigative Journalism | 2011 |
| Saad, Layla | Me and White Supremacy | Social Science | 2020 |
| Stine, R. L. | Camp Red Moon | Horror | 2019 |
| Thomas, Angie | The Hate U Give | Mainstream | 2017 |
| Tóibín, Colm | The Testament of Mary | Literary | 2012 |
| Valente, Catherynne M. | Deathless | Fantasy | 2011 |
| Vitale, Alex | The End of Policing | Social Science | 2017 |
| X, Malcolm and Alex Haley | The Autobiography of Malcolm X | Autobiography | 1965 |
Previous years:
Anti-racism books
How to Be An Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi
For the next year, I resolve that half the books I read will be about race, racism, or anti-racism. This won’t fix the race problems in America, but it will help make me a better ally. I went searching for books on anti-racism and compiled the recommendations from this list (supplemented with a few titles I and some friends wanted to recommend):
- An Antiracist Reading List,by Ibram X. Kendi
- The Antiracist Reading List, also by Ibram X. Kendi
- Scary Mommy Book Club Stop Asking People Of Color To Explain Racism–Pick Up One Of These Books Instead, by Rachel Garlinghouse
- Black Lives Matter, by Red Balloon Bookshop
- An Anti-Racist Reading List, by BookPeople
I excluded children’s and young adult titles (except for the YA novels The Hate U Give and All American Boys). Otherwise, this list compiles all the titles from the above sources. I’ve listed them alphabetically by author, grouped according to which books got the most mentions.
Three mentions
| Author | Title | Genre |
| Alexander, Michelle | The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness | Nonfiction |
| Diangelo, Robin | White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism | Nonfiction |
| Kendi, Ibram X. | How to be an Antiracist | Nonfiction |
Two mentions
| Author | Title | Genre |
| Coates, Ta-Nehisi | Between the World and Me | Memoir |
| Young, Damon | What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays | Memoir |
| Anderson, Carol | White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide | Nonfiction |
| Anderson, Carol | One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy | Nonfiction |
| Berry, Daina Ramey and Kali Nicole Gross | A Black Women’s History of the United States | Nonfiction |
| Eddo-Lodge, Reni | Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race | Nonfiction |
| Lorde, Audre | Sister Outsider | Nonfiction |
| Muhammad, Khalil Gibran | The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America | Nonfiction |
| Oluo, Ijeoma | So You Want to Talk About Race | Nonfiction |
| Saad, Layla F. | Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor | Nonfiction |
| Solomon, Akiba and Kenrya Rankin | How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance | Nonfiction |
| Stevenson, Bryan | Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Nonfiction |
| Rankine, Claudia | Citizen: An American Lyric | Poetry |
| Smith, Danez | Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems | Poetry |
One mention
| Author | Title | Genre |
| de Veaux, Alexis | Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde | Biography |
| The W. E. B. DuBois Center | W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America | Biography |
| Butler, Octavia | Kindred | Fiction |
| Hurston, Zora Neale | Their Eyes Were Watching God | Fiction |
| Jones, Tayari | An American Marriage | Fiction |
| Morrison, Toni | Beloved | Fiction |
| Morrison, Toni | The Bluest Eye | Fiction |
| Reynolds, Jason and Brendan Kiely | All American Boys | Fiction |
| Thomas, Angie | The Hate U Give | Fiction |
| Toomer, Jean | Cane | Fiction |
| Ward, Jesmyn | Sing, Unburied, Sing | Fiction |
| Whitehead, Colson | The Underground Railroad | Fiction |
| Whitehead, Colson | The Nickel Boys | Fiction |
| Angelou, Maya | I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Memoir |
| Carter Jr., Melvin | Diesel Heart: An Autobiography | Memoir |
| Cooper, Brittney | Eloquent Rage | Memoir |
| Jackson, Mitchell | Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family | Memoir |
| Jones, Saeed | How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir | Memoir |
| Laymon, Kiese | Heavy | Memoir |
| Malcolm X and Alex Haley | The Autobiography of Malcolm X | Memoir |
| Sellers, Cleveland | The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC | Memoir |
| Ward, Jesmyn | Men We Reaped: A Memoir | Memoir |
| Woodfox, Albert | Solitary | Memoir |
| Abu-Jamal, Mumia | Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? | Nonfiction |
| Anderson, James D. | The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 | Nonfiction |
| Baldwin, James | Notes of a Native Son | Nonfiction |
| Baldwin, James | The Fire Next Time | Nonfiction |
| Baptist, Edward E. | The Half Has Never Been Told | Nonfiction |
| Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller, eds. | Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation | Nonfiction |
| Berman, Ari | Give Us the Ballot | Nonfiction |
| Berry, Daina Ramey | The Price for Their Pound of Flesh | Nonfiction |
| Blackmon, Douglas A. | Slavery by Another Name | Nonfiction |
| Bray, Mark | Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook | Nonfiction |
| Brown, Adrienne Maree, ed. | Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good | Nonfiction |
| Brown, Austin Channing | I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness | Nonfiction |
| Butler, Paul | Chokehold: Policing Black Men | Nonfiction |
| Connelly, Kerry | Good White Racist?: Confronting Your Role in Racial Injustice | Nonfiction |
| Davis, Angela | Are Prisons Obsolete? | Nonfiction |
| Davis, Angela J. | Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment | Nonfiction |
| Desmond, Matthew | Evicted | Nonfiction |
| Dudziak, Mary L. | Cold War Civil Rights | Nonfiction |
| Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne | An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States | Nonfiction |
| Edim, Glory, ed. | Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves | Nonfiction |
| Fields, Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields | Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life | Nonfiction |
| Foner, Eric | Reconstruction | Nonfiction |
| Forman Jr., James | Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America | Nonfiction |
| Giddings, Paula J. | When and Where I Enter | Nonfiction |
| Harvey, Jennifer | Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America | Nonfiction |
| Hill, DaMaris B. | A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland | Nonfiction/td> |
| Hill, Myisha T. | Check Your Privilege: Live into the Work | Nonfiction |
| Hinton, Elizabeth | From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime | Nonfiction |
| hooks, bell | killing rage: Ending Racism | Nonfiction |
| Hughes, Langston | The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain | Nonfiction |
| Joseph, Peniel E. | Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America | Nonfiction |
| Kendall, Mikki | Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot | Nonfiction |
| Kendi, Ibram X. | Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America | Nonfiction |
| Lee, Erika | The Making of Asian America: A History | Nonfiction |
| Litwack, Leon | North of Slavery | Nonfiction |
| Locke, Alain | The New Negro | Nonfiction |
| Lowery, Wesley | They Can’t Kill Us All | Nonfiction |
| Metzl, Jonathan M. | Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland | Nonfiction |
| Mock, Janet | Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More | Nonfiction |
| Model, Suzanne | West Indian Immigrants: A Black Success Story? | Nonfiction |
| Morris, Monique W. | Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools | Nonfiction |
| Morrison, Toni | The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations | Nonfiction |
| Ortiz, Paul | An African American and Latinx History of the United States | Nonfiction |
| Reséndez, Andrés | The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America | Nonfiction |
| Roberts, Dorothy | Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century | Nonfiction |
| Robinson, Cedric | Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition | Nonfiction |
| Rothstein, Richard | The Color of Law | Nonfiction |
| Shin, Sun Yung, ed. | A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota | Nonfiction |
| Sugrue, Thomas J. | The Origins of the Urban Crisis | Nonfiction |
| Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta | From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation | Nonfiction |
| Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, ed. | How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective | Nonfiction |
| Theoharis, Jeanne | A More Beautiful and Terrible History | Nonfiction |
| Thurman, Wallace | The Blacker the Berry | Nonfiction |
| Vitale, Alex S. | The End of Policing | Nonfiction |
| Ward. Jesmyn | The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race | Nonfiction |
| Washington, Harriet A. | A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind | Nonfiction |
| Washington, Harriet A. | Medical Apartheid | Nonfiction |
| White, Deborah Gray | Too Heavy a Load | Nonfiction |
| Wilkerson, Isabel | The Warmth of Other Suns | Nonfiction | Smith, Clint | Counting Descent | Poetry |
Book rundown, 2019
I read 54 books this year, slightly less than last year. I used to read twice that much. That was before the internet came along and rewired my brain. Each year I vow to reverse the internet damage, and each year it’s harder. I’m trying to regain my focus, through more deliberate internet usage and through mindfulness meditation, but I watched more than my share of dog videos this year.
I did finish writing a first draft of a manuscript, for what it’s worth, though I slacked off on writing these past few months.
May 2020 be the year of more reading and more writing.
Total books read, cover-to-cover:
- 54
Age levels:
- Adult: 46
- Children’s: 8
Books that were published in 2018:
- Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, by K. J. Parker
- The Last Days of August, by Jon Ronson
- The Man They Wanted Me to Be, by Jared Yates Sexton
Nonfiction:
- Twenty-five
Fiction:
- Twenty-nine
Genres (as some books have more than one genre, total exceeds 58):
Nonfiction:
- Adventure – 1
- Biography – 2
- Economics – 1
- History – 2
- Humor – 4
- Investigative Journalism – 1
- Memoir – 6
- Nature Writing – 1
- Science – 5
- Self help – 1
- Social science – 3
- Survival – 1
- True crime – 2
Fiction:
- Adventure – 2
- Crime/Thriller – 2
- Epic poem – 1
- Fantasy – 11
- Historical fiction – 3
- Literary fiction – 10
- Science fiction – 3
- Western – 1
Miscellaneous:
- Annual fat Russian novel: Instead of a novel, I did a collection of Chekhov short stories
- Re-reads: 9
- Audiobooks: 33
- Unique authors: 46
- Most read author: Lloyd Alexander, because I revisited the Prydain books this year
Themes:
Nothing very noticeable, except that I read more literary fiction this year. Literary fiction and I have an uneasy relationship (too few dragons, among other problems), but my favorite two books this year was were critically acclaimed works of literature.
Best book of the year:
The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, the basis for the movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson–which I’ve never seen, so I was unprepared for how much it would break my heart. Gentlemen, you need to learn to express your emotions.
K.J. Parker tho. Isn’t he the best?:
He is, he really is.
Honorable mentions:
- The Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander. I loved these books as a kid, and I’ve re-read them twice as an adult. They’re Welsh High Fantasy.
- The Wizards of Once and Twice Magic, by Cressida Cowell. I’m not sure if I would have loved these as much if I’d read the print version, but David Tennant does the audio narration and oh my heavens. He’s such a talented narrator–plus he gets to use he native Scottish accent for the sorta-wicked queen.
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman, about the culture class between Hmong refugees and American doctors.
- Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney. Somehow I made it this long without reading the whole thing. What a rollicking fun story.
- Unbroken, by Lauren Hillenbrand. I’ve had enough WWII books for a lifetime, but I made an exception and I’m glad I did. As with all the best survival stories, it features an ungodly number of sharks.
- Tribe, by Sebastian Junger. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role of community. This hit home in a lot of ways.
- Missoula, by Jon Krakauer. I had a few misgivings about reading about sexual assault as written by a man, but I’m such a Krakauer fan that it was worth it.
- Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry. Holy shit, this was a good book. Did not see that coming. This was my second favorite book this year. It starts out as a collection of charming character sketches and then turns suuuuper violent.
- Dirty Job, by Christopher Moore, who is a treasure. He’s such a funny writer.
- Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, by K. J. Parker, who is among my very favorite living novelists. Everything I know about medieval siege warfare I owe to this man. I now have opinions on catapults v. trebuchets.
- How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan, about mind-expanding drugs like mushrooms and LSD. To say nothing of the recreational potential, there are so may possible therapeutic uses for these drugs, but almost no one is doing research on them because we, as a society, are a little too Puritanical. Heaven forfend that something with medical value might also be recreationally enjoyable. (See also: marijuana.)
- The Godfather, by Mario Puzo. It’s not a work of high literature, but holy hell this was a fun read.
- The Last Days of August, by Jon Ronson. I’m such a fan of Jon Ronson. He takes the most bizarre topics (in this case, the death of a porn star) and turns them into fascinating works of nonfiction.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain. You don’t need me to sing the praises of Mark Twain. This was such a fun book. Goodness. Medieval time-travel meets alternate history.
- Crosstalk, by Connie Willis, who is my favorite living science fiction writer. This one’s about telepathy
All the books I read:
| Alexander, Lloyd | Taran Wanderer | Fantasy | 1964 |
| Alexander, Lloyd | The Black Cauldron | Fantasy | 1965 |
| Alexander, Lloyd | The Book of Three | Fantasy | 1966 |
| Alexander, Lloyd | The Castle of Lyr | Fantasy | 1967 |
| Alexander, Lloyd | The High King | Fantasy | 1968 |
| Alexander, Lloyd | The Foundling | Fantasy | 1973 |
| Balcombe, Jonathan | What a Fish Knows | Science | 2016 |
| Chekhov, Anton | The Kiss and Other Stories | Literary | 1915 |
| Cowell, Cressida | The Wizards of Once | Fantasy | 2017 |
| Cowell, Cressida | Twice Magic | Fantasy | 2018 |
| Dickey, James | Deliverance | Literary | 1970 |
| Didion, Joan | Blue Nights | Memoir | 2011 |
| Ender, Guilia | Gut | Science | 2014 |
| Ennis, Garth | Rover Red Charlie | Adventure | 2014 |
| Fadiman, Anne | The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down | Social Science | 1997 |
| Flores, Dan | Coyote America | Science | 2016 |
| Grann, David | The White Darkness | Adventure | 2018 |
| Harris, Dan | Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics | Self help | 2017 |
| Heaney, Seamus (tr.) | Beowulf | Epic Poetry | 2000 |
| Hillenbrand, Lauren | Unbroken | Survival | 2010 |
| Ishiguro, Kazuo | The Remains of the Day | Literary Fiction | 1989 |
| Jemisin, N. K. | How Long ‘Til Black Future Month | Science Fiction | 2018 |
| Johnson, Denis | Jesus’ Son | Literary Fiction | 1992 |
| Junger, Sebastian | Tribe | Social Science | 2016 |
| Krakauer, Jon | Missoula | True Crime | 2015 |
| Lahiri, Jhumpa | The Interpreter of Maladies | Literary | 1999 |
| Larson, Gary | Cows of Our Planet | Humor | 1992 |
| Larson, Gary | The Chickens Are Restless | Humor | 1993 |
| Larson, Gary | Far Side Gallery v. 4 | Humor | 1993 |
| Le Guin, Ursula K. | The Left Hand of Darkness | Science Fiction | 1969 |
| Leopold, Aldo | A Sand County Almanac | Nature Writing | 1949 |
| Lipska, Barbara | The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind | Memoir | 2018 |
| McMurtry, Larry | Lonesome Dove | Western | 1985 |
| Moore, Christopher | A Dirty Job | Fantasy | 2016 |
| Noah, Trevor | Born a Crime | Memoir | 2016 |
| Nunez, Sigrid | The Friend | Literary | 2018 |
| O’Brien, Tim | The Things They Carried | Literary | 1980 |
| Parker, K. J. | Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City | Fantasy | 2019 |
| Pollan, Michael | How to Change Your Mind | Science | 2018 |
| Price, Adam O’Fallon | The Grand Tour | Literary | 2016 |
| Puzo, Mario | The Godfather | Crime | 1969 |
| Ramos, Jason | Smokejumper | Memoir | 2015 |
| Randisi, Robert J, ed. | Greatest Hits | Thriller | 2005 |
| Rash, Ron | The Risen | Literary | 2016 |
| Reitman, Janet | Inside Scientology | Investigative Journalism | 2011 |
| Ronson, Jon | The Last Days of August | Biography | 2019 |
| Sedaris, David | When You Are Engulfed in Flames | Humor | 2008 |
| Sexton, Jared Yates | The Man They Wanted Me to Be | Memoir | 2019 |
| Steinbeck, John | The Wayward Bus | Literary | 1947 |
| Thaler, Richard | Misbehaving | Economics | 2015 |
| Twain, Mark | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court | Historical | 1889 |
| Weatherford, Jack | Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World | History | 2004 |
| Willis, Connie | Crosstalk | Science Fiction | 2016 |
| Wohlleben, Peter | The Hidden Life of Trees | Science | 2015 |
Previous years:
Book Rundown, 2018
I read 58 books this year, disgraceful compared to the glory days my twenties, but it’s six more books than last year, and I have some hope that next year will be better. For the first few months of 2018, I did not allow myself any pleasure reading, save what I listened to an audio while walking the dog or doing laundry. The idea was to carve out time for me to write. It was supposed to be an incentive, too: as soon as I finished my manuscript draft, I could go back to reading books!
It was such a dumb idea.
I’m not sure what I did with that time (Twitter? Is it possible I wasted it all on Twitter?) but I was neither reading nor writing. It was a bleak period. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to 100+ books annually, but I won’t deliberately deny myself books again.
Total books read, cover-to-cover:
- 58
Age levels:
- Adult: 57
- Children’s: 1 (The One and Only Ivan)
Books that were published in 2018:
- Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
- Transcription, by Kate Atkinson
- A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey
- The Witch Elm, by Tana French
- Elevation, by Stephen King
- The Outsider, by Stephen King
- The Coming Storm, by Michael Lewis
- Academic Libraries for Commuter Students, by Mariana Regalado and Maura A. Smale
Books I wrote that were published in 2018:
- The ABCs of ERM: Demystifying Electronic Resource Management for Public and Academic Librarians
Nonfiction:
- Forty (this, despite my generally preferring fiction)
Fiction:
- Eighteen. I am, with great trepidation, learning to tolerate fiction on audio. Perhaps fiction will have a greater share of the pie next year.
Genres (as some books have more than one genre, total exceeds 58):
Nonfiction:
- Biography – 6
- History – 3
- How-to – 1
- Journalism – 1
- Language – 1
- Leadership – 1
- Library science – 1
- Literary criticism – 1
- Memoir – 15
- Psychology – 2
- Science – 8
- Self help – 2
- Social science – 7
- Survival – 2
- True crime – 2
Fiction:
- Crime/Thriller – 2
- Fantasy – 8
- Historical fiction – 1
- Horror – 2
- Literary fiction – 2
- Mythology – 1
- Popular/mainstream – 1
- Science fiction – 1
Miscellaneous:
- Annual fat Russian novel: The Funeral Party, by Ludmila Ulitskaya (disappointing; I should stick with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers. Will 2019 be the year I finally read War and Peace?)
- Re-reads: 0. Whoa. I think this is a first.
- Audiobooks: 41
- Unique authors: 53
Themes:
Partly due to deliberate choice, partly due to the serendipity of what was available for checkout from the library, two themes emerged in my reading: I read more books by and about people of color, and I read more books about science and math (especially true if you include medicine in your definition of science, which you should). These two themes overlapped several times, as with Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Related: the Epic Rap Battle between Sir Isaac Newton and Bill Nye is worth it just for the Tyson cameo (“astrophysics black guy“).
Best book of the year:
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanathi, a book that is beautiful both in style and substance. This is a cancer memoir by a surgeon who started his academic career as a literature major. It is a lovely meditation on death and dying.
K.J. Parker tho. Isn’t he the best?:
He is, he really is.
Honorable mentions:
- The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate. Reminiscent of Charlotte’s Web. I love that the bad guys are not wholly bad and that, when our hero Ivan (a silverback gorilla) faces a difficult decision, there are no good choices available. That’s pretty heavy stuff for a children’s book.
- Transcription, by Kate Atkinson. I would be fine with never reading another British WWII book, by Atkinson’s a good enough writer that she makes it worthwhile, and anyway there’s espionage involved, so.
- The Suicide Motor Club, by Christopher Buehlman, who is the best thing to happen to American horror literature in years.
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain, which I loved for what I assume are obvious reasons.
- A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey. Unexpectedly good memoir from the former FBI director, including a scene that made me cry. I now understand his Hillary Clinton announcement in the 2016 presidential election cycle.
- My Reading Life, by Pat Conroy. The author of The Prince of Tides talks about the books that were meaningful to him. He narrates his audiobook and it’s just lovely.
- The Stranger in the Woods, by Michael Finkel. Christopher Knight lived in a tent in the Maine wilderness for nearly twenty years. This is a true crime story (Knight stole food and supplies from nearby vacation homes) by, ore importantly, it’s a story that makes you wonder just how much you need other people.
- The Witch Elm, by Tana French. As I have repeatedly claimed, French is the best writer in contemporary crime. Fight me.
- Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann. Historical true crime about a conspiracy to kill Osage Indians in the 1920s. Given the number of murders and the breadth and audacity of the crimes, it’s astonishing that this story fell out of common memory.
- Believe Me, by Eddie Izzard. You’ve got to listen to the audio version. Eddie keeps going off-script and it is HYSTERICAL.
- The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger. You know what’s going to happen (spoiler: the ship sinks), by Junger’s a good enough writer that part of you hopes you’re wrong.
- Detroit, by Charlie LeDuff. Reads like gritty street noir, but it’s a nonfiction history of the city.
- No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy, widely held to be one of America’s greatest living writers. This is my second McCarthy novel, after Blood Meridian, and I found it to be far more accessible. It’s Western noir and, my goodness, that Anton Chigurh is a nasty fellow.
- Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, who can write circles around most everybody else. This is her retelling of Rumplestiltskin.
- The Two of Swords, by K.J. Parker. This is more cheerful than most of Parker’s books, in that not quite everyone is dead at the end–whole armies and most of society, yes, but the spy who is the sort-of main character manages to stay alive.
- So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, who is an odd man who writes about odd subjects. He is my favorite curmudgeon.
- Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly. The basis for the movie of the same name, this is the story of the black women in the space program whose math first put a man on the moon.
- Little Failure, by Gary Shteyngart, who grew up in Russia but emigrated to the United States with his parents. Hilarious memoir.
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. This is one of those books that deserved all the buzz it got. It’s the story of the black woman who unwittingly changed science medical science with her cancerous cells.
- The Refrigerator Monologues, by Catherynne M. Valente. Following the Brett Kavanaugh nightmare, I sought a feminist balm for my soul. This is a collection of related stories, told from the perspectives of the wives and girlfriends of superheroes.
- The Inner Life of Animals, by Peter Wohlleben. I am such a sucker for books about animal behavior.
- Get Well Soon, by Jennifer Wright. Laugh-out-loud funny about the history of plagues.
Dishonorable mentions:
In recent years–as I have become personally acquainted with members of the literary community, and as my own literary aspirations have grown–I have become uncomfortable with publicly criticizing authors who are still living. They might stumble across my opinions and then feel bad, and to what end? Two of the books I read this year were objectionable, but I’ll keep quiet about that here.
But a third objectionable book was by a dead man, so all’s fair. I finally got around to reading Ralph Waldo Emerson and wow, that guy’s a dick. He is Ayn Rand with trees.
All the books I read:
| Author | Title | Genre | Year |
| Applegate, Katherine | The One and Only Ivan | Popular | 2012 |
| Atkinson, Kate | Transcription | Historical | 2018 |
| Bennett, Michael | Fuck Feelings | Self help | 2015 |
| Blackmoore, Stephen | Dead Things | Fantasy | 2013 |
| Boukreev, Anatoli | The Climb | Survival | 1999 |
| Brown, Theresa | The Shift | Memoir | 2015 |
| Buehlman, Christopher | The Suicide Motor Club | Horror | 2016 |
| Cain, Susan | Quiet | Social Science | 2012 |
| Comey, James | A Higher Loyalty | Memoir | 2018 |
| Conroy, Pat | My Reading Life | Memoir | 2010 |
| de Waal, Frans | Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? | Science | 2016 |
| Demick, Barbara | Nothing to Envy | History | 2009 |
| Emerson, Ralph Waldo | Self-Reliance | Self help | 1841 |
| Finkel, Michael | The Stranger in the Woods | Biography | 2017 |
| Fisher, Carrie | The Princess Diarist | Memoir | 2016 |
| Forsyth, Mark | The Etymologicon | Language | 2011 |
| French, Tana | The Witch Elm | Crime | 2018 |
| Gaiman, Neil | Norse Mythology | Myth | 2017 |
| Gladwell, Malcolm | What the Dog Saw | Social Science | 2009 |
| Goldstein, Amy | Janesville | Social Science | 2017 |
| Grann, David | Killers of the Flower Moon | History | 2017 |
| Harris, Dan | Ten Percent Happier | Memoir | 2014 |
| Izzard, Eddie | Believe Me | Memoir | 2016 |
| Junger, Sebastian | The Perfect Storm | Survival | 1997 |
| Kalanithi, Paul | When Breath Becomes Air | Memoir | 2016 |
| King, Stephen | On Writing | Memoir | 1999 |
| King, Stephen | Elevation | Fantasy | 2018 |
| King, Stephen | The Outsider | Horror | 2018 |
| LeDuff, Charlie | Detroit | Journalism | 2013 |
| Lewis, Michael | The Undoing Project | Social Science | 2016 |
| Lewis, Michael | The Coming Storm | Social Science | 2018 |
| McCandless, Carine | The Wild Truth | Memoir | 2014 |
| McCarthy, Cormac | No Country for Old Men | Crime | 2005 |
| Melinek, Judy | Working Stiff | Memoir | 2014 |
| Moore, Wes | The Other Wes Moore | Memoir | 2010 |
| Munroe, Randall | What If? | Science | 2014 |
| Nasar, Sylvia | A Beautiful Mind | Biography | 1998 |
| North, Claire | The Sudden Appearance of Hope | SF | 2016 |
| Novik, Naomi | Spinning Silver | Fantasy | 2018 |
| Parker, Dorothy | Parker: Selected Stories | Literary Fiction | 1995 |
| Parker, K. J. | The Two of Swords, v. 1 | Fantasy | 2017 |
| Parker, K. J. | Mightier Than the Sword | Fantasy | 2017 |
| Parker, K. J. | The Two of Swords, v. 2 | Fantasy | 2017 |
| Parker, K. J. | The Two of Swords, v. 3 | Fantasy | 2017 |
| Regalado, Mariana and Maura A. Smale | Academic Libraries for Commuter Students | Library Science | 2018 |
| Riggs, Nina | The Bright Hour | Memoir | 2017 |
| Ronson, Jon | So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed | Social Science | 2015 |
| Shetterly, Margot Lee | Hidden Figures | Science | 2016 |
| Shteyngart, Gary | Little Failure | Memoir | 2014 |
| Skloot, Rebecca | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Science | 2010 |
| Strand, Ginger | The Brothers Vonnegut | Science | 2015 |
| Taleb, Nassim | The Black Swan | Social Science | 2007 |
| Tyson, Neil deGrasse | Astrophysics for People in a Hurry | Science | 2017 |
| Ulitskaya, Ludmila | The Funeral Party | Literary Fiction | 1997 |
| Valente, Catherynne M. | The Refrigerator Monologues | Fantasy | 2017 |
| Ward, Jesmyn | Men We Reaped | Memoir | 2013 |
| Wohlleben, Peter | The Inner Life of Animals | Science | 2016 |
| Wright, Jennifer | Get Well Soon | History | 2017 |
Previous years:
Book rundown, 2017
I don’t read as much as I want to. I clawed my way up to 52 books this year, which would have been an unacceptably low number a decade ago. …Yeah, I just checked my notes, and in 2007 I read 141 books. I have fallen from grace.
But I did write a book, so.
Total books read, cover-to-cover:
- 52
Age levels:
- Adult: 51
- Childen’s: 1 (The Velveteen Rabbit)
Books that were published in 2017:
- The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden
- River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey
- Gwendy’s Button Box, by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
- The Blinds, by Adam Sternbergh
- Borne, by Jeff Vandermeer
Books that will be published in 2018:
- The ABCs of ERM: Demystifying Electronic Resource Management for Public and Academic Librarians
Books written:
- The ABCs of ERM: Demystifying Electronic Resource Management for Public and Academic Librarians
Nonfiction:
- Twenty-three
Fiction:
- Twenty-nine
Genres (as some books have more than one genre, total exceeds 52):
Nonfiction:
- Cultural criticism – 1
- Economics – 1
- History – 4
- Letter – 1
- Library science – 1
- Literary criticism – 1
- Memoir – 10
- Psychology – 1
- Science – 2
- Social science – 2
- Spirituality – 1
- Survival – 1
Fiction:
- Alternate history – 10
- Canon/classic – 1
- Crime/Thriller – 3
- Fantasy – 21
- Historical fiction – 1
- Horror – 1
- Science fiction – 2
Miscellaneous:
- Annual fat Russian novel: A Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Lermontov
- Re-reads: 8 (all the volumes of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series)
- Audiobooks: 21 (all of the nonfiction I read this year, with the exception of the book I wrote. Not much market for library science on audio.)
- Authors: 35
Best book of the year:
This House of Sky, written by Ivan Doig (and narrated by Tom Stechschulte, probably by favorite narrator this year). Ivan’s mom dies on his sixth birthday. This is not a spoiler. We find this out in the first sentence. This is a coming-of-age story about a boy in mid-twentieth-century Montana, beautifully written. You feel like Ivan and his family members are your own friends.
Honorable mentions:
- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, by Caitlin Doughty. Likely the funniest memoir by a mortician you’ll ever read. She narrates her own audiobook and had me cracking up.
- The Trespasser, by Tana French. Still the best thing going in crime writing. Her books will haunt you.
- The Dark Tower series, by Stephen King. Do you enjoy sobbing? Simply by reading these eight books, you too can become emotionally invested in main characters who will die horrible deaths.
- Gwendy’s Button Box, by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar. Short, sweet novella and coming-of-age story.
- The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert. An investigation of what we’ve done to our planet. This may be the bleakest nonfiction I’ve ever read. It’s magnificent, but I don’t know if I can recommend it. It makes you feel horrible.
- Paper, by Mark Kurlansky. Same guy who wrote the microhistory of cod. Lots of arcane tidbits about the history of paper, tidily told.
- H Is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald. Another writer who does a fine job narrating her own audiobook, Macdonald weaves together her father’s death, her attempt to train a goshawk, and the story of T.H. White. Easily one of my favorite books this year.
- The Hike, by Drew Magary. Adventure story on acid.
- Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik. The Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons for airships.
- The Blinds, by Adam Sternbergh. Freaky little town in Texas where everybody’s got a secret, only nobody can remember what it is.
- De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde. This is the letter Wilde wrote to his boyfriend while serving two years for being gay.
- The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. I missed reading this book as a kid. I can see why people still like it.
Best handbook of electronic resources management for public and academic librarians:
The ABCs of ERM: Demystifying Electronic Resource Management for Public and Academic Librarians, by Jessica Zellers, Tina M. Adams, and Katherine Hill. If you only read one handbook on electronic resources management for public and academic librarians, make it this one. Also you should make sure your local library buys a copy. *stares significantly*
All the books I read:
| Author | Title | Genre | Year |
| Adam, David | The Man Who Couldn’t Stop | Memoir | 2014 |
| Anonymous | The Vinland Sagas | History | 1200 |
| Arden, Katherine | The Bear and the Nightingale | Fantasy | 2017 |
| Brennan, Marie | Cold-Forged Flame | Fantasy | 2016 |
| Coates, Ta-Nehisi | The Beautiful Struggle | Memoir | 2008 |
| Doig, Ivan | This House of Sky | Memoir | 1977 |
| Doig, Ivan | Heart Earth | Memoir | 1993 |
| Doughty, Caitlin | Smoke Gets in Your Eyes | Memoir | 2014 |
| French, Tana | The Trespasser | Crime | 2016 |
| Gailey, Sarah | River of Teeth | Alternate History | 2017 |
| Gay, Roxane | Bad Feminist | Cultural Criticism | 2014 |
| Harford, Tim | The Undercover Economist | Economics | 2005 |
| King, Stephen | The Wind Through the Keyhole | Fantasy | 2011 |
| King, Stephen | Song of Susannah | Fantasy | 2004 |
| King, Stephen | The Dark Tower | Fantasy | 2004 |
| King, Stephen | Wolves of the Calla | Fantasy | 2003 |
| King, Stephen | Wizard and Glass | Fantasy | 1997 |
| King, Stephen | The Waste Lands | Fantasy | 1991 |
| King, Stephen | The Drawing of the Three | Fantasy | 1985 |
| King, Stephen | The Gunslinger | Fantasy | 1982 |
| King, Stephen and Richard Chizmar | Gwendy’s Button Box | Horror | 2017 |
| Klinenberg, Eric | Going Solo | Social Science | 2012 |
| Knapp, Liza | The Giants of Russian Literature | Literary Criticism | 2006 |
| Kolbert, Elizabeth | The Sixth Extinction | Science | 2014 |
| Kurlansky, Mark | Paper | History | 2016 |
| Kurlansky, Mark | The Basque History of the World | History | 1999 |
| Kurlansky, Mark | Cod | History | 1997 |
| Lamott, Anne | Grace (Eventually) | Spirituality | 2007 |
| Lermontov, Mikhail | A Hero of Our Time | Canon | 1840 |
| Lewis, Matt | Last Man Off | Survival | 2015 |
| Macdonald, Helen | H Is for Hawk | Memoir | 2014 |
| Magary, Drew | The Hike | Fantasy | 2016 |
| Moore, Charles | Plastic Ocean | Science | 2011 |
| Murakami, Haruki | What I Talk About When I Talk About Running | Memoir | 2007 |
| Novik, Naomi | League of Dragons | Fantasy | 2016 |
| Novik, Naomi | Blood of Tyrants | Fantasy | 2013 |
| Novik, Naomi | Crucible of Gold | Fantasy | 2012 |
| Novik, Naomi | Tongues of Serpents | Fantasy | 2010 |
| Novik, Naomi | Victory of Eagles | Fantasy | 2008 |
| Novik, Naomi | Empire of Ivory | Fantasy | 2007 |
| Novik, Naomi | Black Powder War | Fantasy | 2006 |
| Novik, Naomi | His Majesty’s Dragon | Fantasy | 2006 |
| Novik, Naomi | Throne of Jade | Fantasy | 2006 |
| Orwell, George | Down and Out in Paris and London | Memoir | 1933 |
| Patri, Giacomo | White Collar | Historical | 1975 |
| Pollan, Michael | Cooked | Social Science | 2013 |
| Sternbergh, Adam | The Blinds | Thriller | 2017 |
| Sternbergh, Adam | Near Enemy | Thriller | 2015 |
| Vandermeer, Jeff | Borne | SF | 2017 |
| Wilde, Oscar | De Profundis | Letter | 1897 |
| Williams, Margery | The Velveteen Rabbit | Fantasy | 1922 |
| Zellers, Jessica, Tina M. Adams, and Katherine Hill | The ABCs of ERM | Library Science | 2018 |
Previous years:
Book rundown, 2016
So you know what sucks? I haven’t read a book since September. It’s the longest I’ve gone in my life without reading for pleasure.
Depression is an ugly disease. Stay away from it.
But hey, I dutifully recorded all of the books I read. All twenty of them.
Twenty. God.
Addison, Katherine. The Goblin Emperor. Fantasy, 2014.
An adventure story! It was super fun to read, and episodic in nature, so you know you’re going to get some new shenanigans with every turn of the page. The royal family dies in an accident (or was it sabotage?), so the forgotten son living out in the backwaters is hauled in a placed on the throne. Political intrigue ensues.
Ahmed, Saladin. Throne of the Crescent Moon. Fantasy, 2012.
Another rollicking adventure story! A cast of unlikely characters must band together to defeat the ancient evil attempting to infiltrate the court. Though not an Islamic story per se, Islam thoroughly influences the culture, characters, and setting, making this a welcome change from Western fantasy novels. I love my traditional European fantasies (see Hobb, Martin, and Novik below), but if that’s all you read, you’re missing out.
Beukes, Lauren. The Shining Girls. SF, 2013.
A serial killer travels through time to commit his murders. He should be unstoppable, but he meets his match when one of his victims manages not to die. (Disembowelment? Stop your whining. Shrug it off.) Great concept, solid writing: I didn’t fall in love with the book, but I can recommend it without reservations.
Dickinson, Seth. The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Fantasy, 2015.
I wanted to love it but merely liked it. After the evil empire colonizes her home, the brilliant Baru Cormorant decides to play an extremely long game: she decides to take down the bad guys by joining them. Some great stuff going on here with gender roles and sexual orientation, and it got a lot of good press, so it’s worth the read.
French, Tana. The Secret Place. Mystery, 2014.
Can we all agree that Tana French is the best thing going in the mystery genre? Actually I shouldn’t say that, since I don’t read enough mysteries to know the field, but it’s hard to conceive of anyone outwriting her. Every books she writes delivers strong characters, engrossing plots, and tight prose, all drenched in a moody atmosphere. This is the fifth book in her series, but they’re only very loosely linked so you could start here with no problems.
Hamilton, Gabrielle. Blood, Bones and Butter. Nonfiction: Memoir, 2011.
If you enjoyed Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, this is… maybe a good choice? It doesn’t give you as much insight as to what it’s like to work in the food industry; that element is definitely there, but it’s not the only thing going on. But if you mainly liked Bourdain because he’s such a damn good writer, then Hamilton is absolutely for you. This was a joy to listen to as an audiobook.
Hobb, Robin. Assassin’s Apprentice. Fantasy, 1995.
This is one of those… not classics, it doesn’t inevitably show up on the lists of best fantasy novels, but it’s a mainstay in the genre. And now I can hardly remember the story. It was good, I guess? Enough so that I read to the end? Bastard son of the king makes himself relevant by learning to kill political enemies. I seem to recall the prose being a bit clunky. I dunno, it was a good enough debut that I’m open to reading Hobb’s Liveship Traders trilogy.
King, Stephen. End of Watch. Crime, 2016.
A satisfying conclusion to the trilogy featuring a crusty old retired cop and his nemesis, the mass-murderer from the first book, Mr. Mercedes. Due to a severe brain injury, the bad guy is a vegetable for life…or is he? Though some elements verge on the supernatural, this is a straightforward thriller, palatable for people who dislike science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
Lu, Marie. Legend. Young Adult SF, 2011.
One of the standouts in the YA dystopian scene, I found it to be forgettable. Lots of people love it, and I can see why (dazzling characters, love story, fighting the good fight against the oppressive regime), but it was all very meh for me.
Martin, George R. R. A Dance with Dragons. Fantasy, 2011.
If I ever learn to tell a story half as well as Martin, I will be invincible.
North, Claire. Touch. Fantasy, 2015.
This didn’t quite match the brilliance of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but I’m hooked on Claire North for good. She’s an extremely competent writer with a gift for prose, and her concepts are riveting; in this case, our hero can possess new bodies just by touching them.
Novik, Naomi. Uprooted. Fantasy, 2015.
Total crack for a Russophile like me, this fairy tale-esque story pits our awkward heroine against a dragon–or rather, The Dragon, the title adopted by the jackass who whisks her away to his tower. Shades of Beauty and the Beast here. Man, I’ve got to read Temeraire.
Parker, K. J. The Last Witness. Fantasy, 2015.
Is K.J. Parker my favorite living fantasy writer? Depends on what day you ask me… but yeah, sometimes. His writing is dark and his characters are morally corrupt. In this story, the hero–and I use that word loosely–has the ability to completely remove unwanted memories from other people. What’s astonishing is that someone else out there seems to have the same gift, too… and she doesn’t like our hero very much.
Scalzi, John. Lock In. SF, 2014.
Variation on a theme of zombies: a virus locks people into their own bodies, trapping them in a waking coma hell. I enjoyed the novella prequel (freely available from tor.com) but found the novel to be underwhelming. It was fine; I don’t regret the time spent reading it; but when Scalzi does it right, he is on fire, as was the case with…
Scalzi, John. Redshirts. SF, 2012.
So in the original Star Trek television show, you know how Spock and Kirk and company always survived, but the miscellaneous crew in their spiffy red shirts always died horribly? This is their story.
Stevenson, Noelle. Nimona. Young Adult Fantasy Graphic Novel, 2015.
Young girl with shapeshifting abilities and wide hips offers her services as sidekick to the evil Lord Blackheart, who practices his villainy against Sir Goldenloin. It should be obvious that the story is silly and fun, but there are moments of genuine pathos and melancholy. Also: very strong hints of a gay romance.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. Classic/Adventure, 1883.
Oh hell this was fun. The nineteenth-century prose is a bit overblown, but nowhere near as bad as some of those guys got, and anyway who cares because BURIED TREASURE AND PIRATES.
Tweedy, Damon. Black Man in a White Coat. Nonfiction: Memoir, 2015.
Damon Tweedy is a black physician, which is still something of an anomaly. He doesn’t have the writing skill of fellow memoirist Gabrielle Hamilton, above, but I listened to the whole audiobook because I wanted to know more about the health and healthcare of black Americans.
Wallace, Matt. Sin du Jour. Fantasy/Comedic Horror, 2015.
So back when I had a literary agent–a story for another time–Matt Wallace was one of my agent siblings. I really enjoyed following him on Twitter, so I tried his novella and… and it wasn’t for me. I’m sorry, Matt. The prose was not my cuppa. That said, the book has received a lot of flattering press, and you can’t help but love the premise: a couple of down-on-their-luck cooks sign on to help a restaurant with a special project, the preparation of a heavenly angel to be served to a horde of demons.
Wells, Dan. I Am Not a Serial Killer. Young Adult Horror, 2010.
So back when I had a literary agent–excuse me, gonna go weep in the corner now–he suggested I read I Am Not a Serial Killer to get insight into lead characters doing unpleasant things. Which, yeah: the main character loves his job as assistant undertaker to his mother, and also he’s a sociopath and he’s really worried he’s going to turn into a killer, even though he knows it’s wrong. This kid is definitely not your typical protagonist. I liked the book well enough, so… I dunno, I get impatient with the prose stylings in most YA novels, so I’m not a great judge, but if you like horror or YA or trivia about serial killers then this book is for you.
Previous years:
Drifting
What gets overlooked, when people complain about the internet and modern life destroying our capacity to read books, is that we are writing more than we ever used to. We spoke into telephones rather than emailing or texting; before phones, we wrote letters, if we had the desire and the education. Most people didn’t.
Now we socialize by typing at one another. I made the mistake today–I don’t know what I was thinking–of reading the comments section of an article on gun control, and I was reminded again that lots of people are writing. It made me miss the good old days.
But it’s not all internet trolls. I’ve had to wean myself away from the wealth of wonderful essays freely available online. Who would have imagined that the essay would enjoy a resurgence? And there’s some fine journalism out there, sometimes from the established sources, frequently from smaller and newer enterprises that most of us would never have heard of, in other times.
The blog seems to be dying, though. Not so long ago it was common for people to post their essays and thought-pieces on blogs, but now the microblog is the heir apparent.
This blog mirrors the trend. I’m not going to kill it–it’s free, and not taking up physical space, and it’s a nice way to publicize my annual reading list–but I’m not going to tend it very often.
But since I am here:
Lois Duncan died today. She was one of the better Young Adult novelists when I was growing up, but I remember her best for her memoir, Who Killed My Daughter? You can guess from the title that it’s one of the saddest true crime books you’ll ever read.
I have been in a reading slump for…. five years, if we’re being honest, and acutely for the past two. I keep resolving to fix it. It is a struggle. The internet and modern life have destroyed my capacity to read books.
It’s a quality-of-life concern. I don’t know that I can be happy; I do know that I certainly cannot be happy if I’m not reading, regularly, daily.
It’s like having pets. I can muddle through without them, but I don’t see the point.
Though I cannot properly read if I’m letting the damn dog in every other minute. I may need to investigate dog doors.
Anyway. Lois Duncan. I hope there’s an afterlife and you get to ask your daughter what happened.
BookOuroboros 