What I Read in 2018: 118 Books
This is the fifth edition of my end-of-the-year book list, and the upward trend continues unabated with this year just barely beating last year’s record 115 books. As usual, this counts both traditional paper books and audio books. A handful of unfinished books I have marked with an asterisk. Although I read very little for almost the first two months of the year, I made up the pace with a very productive summer in which I also did a lot of writing. While I greatly enjoyed the vast majority of this year’s list, I underlined ten or so of my favorite and most memorable books of the year. After some reflection, I will give the top honors to Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman’s epic novel of the Battle of Stalingrad and its aftermath.
I continued to try to read more books by women (28) after realizing a few years ago that I was falling embarrassingly short on that front. I continued with my interest in books by African and African-American authors (16) for the third year in a row. This year I read a much greater quantity of short stories than usual in preparation for my attendance at the International Conference on the Short Story in June. I’ve included the collections here, but omitted mention of most of the individual stories.
Paper or E-Books (80):
The Longest Night by Andria Williams
The Shawl and Other Stories by Cynthia Ozick
Selected Stories by Cynthia Ozick
Quarrel and Quandary by Cynthia Ozick
Philosophy and Social Hope by Richard Rorty
Achieving our Country by Richard Rorty
Rorty and His Critics by Robert Brandom (editor)
Here’s a podcast in which I discuss Rorty.
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
Levels of Life by Julian Barnes
Barn Burning by William Faulkner
Barn Burning by Haruki Murakami
Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
Drown by Junot Diaz
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Amok and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
Collected Stories by Stefan Zweig
Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
Beward of Pity by Stefan Zweig
The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig
Shooting Stars by Stefan Zweig
The Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig
Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Memoirs of Antisemite by Gregory von Rezzori
Snows of Yesteryear by Gregory von Rezzori
The Antichrist by Joseph Roth
Leviathan by Joseph Roth
I wrote an essay about the above Austrian authors here.
Good Soldier Sveyk by Jaroslav Hasek
My Life at the Limit by Reinhold Messner
Here’s my essay comparing Messner with Nietzsche’s Overman.
Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold
Training for the New Alpinism by Steve House
Beyond the Mountain by Steve House
Solo Faces by James Salter
Snow Blind by Nolan Peterson
Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
The Inheritors by William Golding
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
Lord of Delusion by Garry Craig Powell
The Joke by Milan Kundera
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
Jump and Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer
Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black by Nadine Gordimer
July’s People by Nadine Gordimer
Rock Spring by Richard Ford
Gods and Soldiers by Rob Spillman (editor)
Reptile House by Robin McLean
Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Transit by Rachel Cusk
Kudos by Rachel Cusk
A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk
Aftermath by Rachel Cusk
The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk
A Week in the Airport by Alain de Botton
Spoils by Brian van Reet
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Russian Revolution* by Leon Trotsky
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
I awarded this author my 2018 Alternate Nobel Prize.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Selected Stories by John Cheever
Koba the Dread by Martin Amis
I reviewed a book about Stalin in another essay before I had read this one.
The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen
A Place on Earth* by Wendell Berry
Stay Illusion! by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster
The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing
A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
The Bell* by Iris Murdoch
The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
A Dance to Music of Time: Volume One by Anthony Powell
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Kintu* by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Audio Books (38):
A History of The Thirty Years’ War by Friedrich Schiller
The History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Macaulay
The History of England: Volumes 1-6 by David Hume
Elective Affinities* by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Lost Illusions* by Honore de Balzac
Hunger by Knut Hamsen
Selected Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Childhood by Leo Tolstoy
Boyhood by Leo Tolstoy
Youth by Leo Tolstoy
Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
The Warden* by Anthony Trollope
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
The Gentleman from San Francisco and other Stories by Ivan Bunin
A Hero of our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
The Steppe by Anton Chekhov
The Duel by Anton Chekhov
An Anonymous Story by Anton Chekhov
Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
Winds of Doctrine by George Santayana
Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling
Mabinogion by Unknown
Lusiads* by Unknown
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Conjure Woman and Other Stories by Charles Chesnutt
The House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chesnutt
The Colonel’s Dream by Charles Chesnutt
The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories by Charles Chesnutt
The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Chesnutt
Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
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