Last year I bemoaned my miserable performance (17 books!), which I winnowed down to six books after excluding the lit reviews, business self-help, and re-reads.*
I did much better this years. Though my raw total (21), was only four more than last year's raw total, my modified total was much higher: applying the same exclusions as last year, I read fifteen qualifying books. I also felt like I read much more this year. This was not reflected in my book reviewing (ahem, sorry, Christopher). I violated my solemn oath to review every volume of The Familiar; the only book I did review this year was a re-read. This, I am sad about. Hopefully 2019 is better.
Still, the best-of list is an important (and fun) way for me to engage with my reading for the year, so, reviews notwithstanding, I'm doing a list. For my twenty-one books, a top five feels right.
(5) The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
"a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its greatest gift. It only asks that you are not there."
This is one of Brittany's all-time favorite novels. It's been on my to-do list for as long as we've been dating (Admittedly, it's a little shameful that I did not read it sooner). Brittany's love for this novel is justified: the magical realism was perfect, and the plot had good timing.. Highly recommend.
(4) Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
"It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness."
This is another book that has been on my to-do list for a long time. Legal writing gurus refer to it with great regularity. The general idea is that our brains have two systems: (1) a quick one that makes a lot of mistakes, but is necessary for general processing of information and (2) a slow one that is deliberate and critical, but also harder to keep going. Legal writing scholars like it for the general proposition that lawyers need to think about this in their writing. Though reading the book was not exactly fun, it has affected how I think about lawyering in a big way.
(3) Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
"In a shockingly brief span, the two men had moved to the brink of a duel and were ready to lay down their lives over an adjective."
Biography written as it should be: engaging, fun but not superficial, contextual without being too in the weeds. I had already been listening the soundtrack for a long time, so I had a sense of what I was getting into. I did not appreciate, however, how well Chernow writes. The biography is not interesting only because Hamilton led an interesting life--Chernow brings him to life, and writes character into everyone else the reader encounters.
(2) The Familiar, Volume 5: Redwood
"Darkness braved ceases to be darkness."
Of all the reviews I did not write this year, I have the most regret about Volumes 4 & 5 of The Familiar. This is doubly so, because the series has been discontinued, indefinitely. The cancellation was, perhaps, predictable. If Danielewski could not convince, for example, the readers of this blog to read The Familiar, who was reading it? I really don't know. I'm the only person I know who has read any of them (which is not my way of self-congratulating--I know how much of an ask it is to read these books).
The lack of interest in the series is particularly sad in light of how good Volume 4 was, but especially in light of how good Volume 5 was. In Volume 5 we finally got to see Danielewski's vision coming into being. It was beautiful the way House of Leaves was beautiful. I pray someone will pick up the series to continue publishing them.
(1) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"He took her hand in his, both clasped on the table, and between them silence grew, an ancient silence that they both knew. She was inside this silence and she was safe."
Another book that has long been on my to-do list. (And another favorite of Brittany's). I knew from the first sentence that I was going to love it: "Princeton, in the summer, smelled of nothing, and although Ifemelu liked the tranquil greenness of the many trees, the clean streets and stately homes, the delicately overpriced shops, and the quiet abiding air of earned grace, it was this, the lack of a smell, that most appealed to her, perhaps because the other American cities she knew well had all smelled distinctly." She does that throughout the whole novel (write perfect sentences).
Honorable Mention
My list needs a giant asterisk, which I'm fitting into my lone honorable mention of the year. I was doing really well on my raw total for 2018 until I ran headfirst into a wall: Edward Said's Orientalism (insert Great Wall joke here). I have been wanting to read Orientalism for years, but after Isle of Dogs, I decided to make it a goal for 2018. I started in July. I did not finish.
Nonetheless, it kicked off a still-in-progress journey. Orientalism piqued my interest in my own identity as an Asian American and had me asking questions about representations and treatment of Asians and Asian Americans in Western culture. (E.g., What's up with the random references to Chinatowns in film noir? What's up with oriental flavored ramen?). Crazy Rich Asians came out, which led me to a rabbit-hole of Asian American critical theorists. (E.g., here and here).
Unfortunately, Orientalism is dense 1970s academic prose. Needing respite, I picked up Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, and then couldn't put it down (shout-out to the coworker who lent it to me). Yellow is my only honorable mention of the year. It served as my introduction to Asian American identity issues (I somehow had not heard of perpetual foreigner syndrome until reading this book, despite the fact that it explained a number of otherwise puzzling incidents from my childhood). A coworker then recommended Ronald Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. I then spent the rest of the year bouncing between Orientalism and Strangers from a Different Shore; and not finishing either.
Which all a long and roundabout way of saying: after I started reading Orientalism in July, my reading took a hit. And, because I didn't finish Orientalism or Strangers from a Different Shore, my best-of list does not, I feel, show the most important development in my 2018 reading: my newfound interest in Asian American studies. (Watch out, 2019!).
Cheers to the new year, cheers to Fifty Books (or however many). Maybe I'll review more than one book this year.
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