Brent's Top 10 of 2018

Another year, another 50+ books, another embarassing review shortage--but what a great year of reading! I think 2018 might be the most exciting set of books I've tackled yet, and I attribute a lot of that to my decision at the end of last year to read at least half books by women. I also made a concious effort to read less mainstream "classics", and branched a little--into biography, economics, politics, history. But, as usual, the most illuminating works were fiction. So without further ado, the 10 best books I read this year, in no particular order.

Middlemarch - George Eliot

I've read a lot of the classic  doorstops, but Middlemarch sits right at the top of the list  alongside The Brothers Karamazov and Don Quixote. A wonderfully written pastoral with plenty of drama, humor, and fantastic characters, Middlemarch is really in this spot because it was the warmest, most human book I read this year. In spite of its scope, the action takes place on the ground, in kitchens, libraries, chilly estates, taverns, and the people--Dorothea, Casuabon, Lydgate, Rosamund--whose lives revolve around these seemingly mundane things.

The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead

If Middlemarch was the warmest book I read this year, The Man Who Loved Children was probably the second chilliest (Anna Kavan's excellent but inscrutable Ice was the first). In addition to the incredibly dysfunctional family at its center, Stead's dialog is both prevalent and cryptic--the book teaches you how to read it but it never goes down smooth. I don't even know if I entirely liked it. But it's so singular and so true somehow, so cruel and unsettling, it deserves to read.

The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Stories - Leo Tolstoy, trans. Pevear/Volkhonsky

My wife Liz read Anna Karenina this year, and it inspired me to pick up this collection fo Tolstoy's short stories and novellas. And boy, were they (mostly) bleak. This collection was laregly composed in the twilight of Tolstoy's life, and, having read War and Peace (an optimistic, early work) and Anna Karenina (a later, mixed bag on the optimism front), I felt I could see Tolstoy's faith in humanity dying. But almost every story ends with a burst of something ineffable, and those bursts--and Tolstoy's unfailing sense of how people act--make everything he wrote worthwhile.

Lives of Girls and Women - Alice Munro

This is, I believe, the fourth collection I've read of Munro's, and it might be the best overall. It's certainly the most consistent. It's basically a novel where every chapter can be read as a standalone. The average Munro story already feels like a novel waiting to happen--it was nice to read a collection where it did.

The Odyssey - Homer, trans. Emily Wilson

This was a bucket list book for me, and I'm so glad I read it first in Wilson's incredibly readable (but still very elegant) translation. It's much less of a pure hero story than I expected--Odysseus might be the first antihero. But the journey's fantastical and encompasses SO MUCH Greek mythology. It's really a lot of fun. Even if you've read The Odyssey before, it's worth picking up Wilson's translation for her great introduction, where she discusses the challenges of translating such a well-known work.

Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

I don't love reading about landscapes but I DO love reading about priests. And I actually did love reading Cather's landscapes which, like McCarthy's, capture the feeling of the western US like most can't. The most impressive thing about this slim novel though is the way its loose structure comes together at the end to present a beautiful picture of a life well-lived and a death that feels like bliss instead of terror.

Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders

And speaking of death, George Saunders' fictionalization of the death of Abraham Lincoln's son was probably the most moving thing I read this year. I lost an aunt I was very close to unexpectedly in a car accident and the chapter near the end where Willie finally finds peace for himself and the other wandering souls in the Bardo graveyard has come to mind many times. And of course, Saunders is in contention for greatest livign American writer so the prose is inventive and wonderful.

My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante

This book is everywhere and they just made an HBO series about it. But it's still good, a brilliant (see what I did there?) realistic novel about two girls in Italy and their complicated relationship in a time of political and social turmoil in Italy. Really looking forward to reading the other 3 volumes, and Ferrante's other work.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcom X and Alex Haley

What can I say about this? Certainly one of the most influential autobiographies of the 20th century, Malcolm's rags-to-riches story is given extra dramatic weight due to Haley's decision not to allow Malcolm to rewrite the earlier sections of the book after his acrimonious break from his spiritual mentor Elijah Muhammad, and the result is an autobiography with the dramatic structure of a novel. Malcolm touches on everything--religion, race, class, civil rights, Muhammad Ali--and the final chapter, which Haley wrote after Malcom's death, hits like a brick.

Warlock - Oakley Hall

I love a good western. And Warlock is a very good western. I actually reviewed this one so I won't say much about it here, except that it's really a joy to read about cowboys, outlaws, blood feuds, and all the rest, and still find space to be surprised.

And that's a wrap. I could include almost every other book I read this year in my honorable mentions, but instead, I want to mention Current Affairs, the great online magazine that I spent about half my time this year reading on my journey out of American Capitalism. So on that note, please join us for 2019! It's going to be a good year.