2018 Books - Part 1

[die_traumerei]

I’ve done this every year for the past couple years, and in 2018 I finally reached my goal of reading 50 books! I attribute it to letting my New Yorker subscription lapse, honestly. I usually do little 1- or 2-sentence reviews of each book, for my fun and yours.

I think in 2019 I’ll do this as I read books, to be honest, maybe as part of my weekly roundup for writing? There are a lot of books I have no memory of, so maybe that will help.

The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux. Oh fuck I loved this! It’s his travelogue of taking the train across Asia, and it’s wonderful. He did it again recently, and I’ll have to read that soon. I love Theroux’s travel writing, and he captures a time pretty well now past.
The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert. This book is maybe longer than it needs to be, but I also found I liked it much more than I expected to. I picked it up because it’s basically set in an historic house quite close to where I lived in Philadelphia, and it was neat to know where everything was set. The book is better than that, though, and I loved it very much. The hero is perfectly imperfect.
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons. I’ve been meaning to read this FOREVER, because I love the movie so, so much. It’s a glorious send-up of the Rural Romantic Novel, and it’s bonkers and funny and I very much liked it. It’s got a lot more to it than the film did, I think, and is all the better for it.
City of Illusion, Planet of Exile, Rocannon’s World, Ursula LeGuin. I am determined to learn to love LeGuin. I should love her. I have zero memory of any of these books.
Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado. Er. Well. This is awkward. I and the author have a friend in common. At one point we were introduced. This book has won All the Awards and I haaaaaated it. The title story is fine, but I couldn’t stand the others. They all seem to be about the same person, who felt passive and dull and the whole thing was like walking through porridge.
Just Looking: Essays on Art, John Updike. In which John Updike isn’t nearly as irritating as he could be. I wish I could remember better what he actually touched on, but I was surprised by how much I liked this.
Elmet, Fiona Mozley. In contrast to, er, every other famous book here, this was a Man Booker finalist and I would actually agree it earned that. It’s a creepy, sad, wild, happy story. It’s like the best of weird English stories, and although it’s not explicitly of the Terrifying Landscape genre, it’s not far from that either.
Craeft, Alex Langlands. Well, this is another awkward one. It opened with me basically yelling at the author on Twitter for being ableist. He very graciously responded and put a lot into context, and then followed me on Twitter which I still don’t know what he was thinking but there you go. I liked it! There’s a lot of good meditating on what makes craft, and what it means to be skilled – or to lose those skills, as a population.