What I read in 2018

Reading with ramen in 2018.

Past editions of this list: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008. This list is also available in pictorial format at Pinterest.

It was a good year for reading here! Twenty-eight books finished. I’m a slow reader who likes long books; and this year my time for leisure reading continued to be limited by  carework responsibilities. Also, I stop reading books without guilt; so assume I also didn’t finish a dozen or so titles.

BG=Book Group selection. I’m in two book groups, so a lot of my reading is driven by that. Just because I read a book and listed it here doesn’t mean I liked it or would recommend it.  20/28 authors are female or non-binary this year; there was a long stretch over the summer when I didn’t want to read any more books by white guys, and I’m still not that interested, to be honest. The only even vaguely non-fiction books here are Lawson’s memoir and Satrapi’s graphic novel. I probably started a lot of others; just strongly preferring fiction right now.

These are numbered in chronological order, from January to December.

1. Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things
2. Naomi Alderman, The Power
3. Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy
4. Jac Jemc, The Grip of It
5. Haruki Murakami, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage
6. Richard Kadrey, The Everything Box
7. Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent BG
8. Patricia Park, Re Jane
9. Emily Fridlund, The History of Wolves BG
10. John Scalzi, Head On
11. Sylvain Neuvel, Waking Gods
12. Jennifer McMahan, Winter People
13. Marjane Satrapi, Embroideries
14. Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now
15. Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose BG
16. Yxta Maya Murray, The Conquest
17. Charlie Jane Anders, All The Birds in the Sky
18.Idra Novey, Ways to Disappear
19. Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts
20. Ben H. Winters, The Last Policeman
21. Andrew Sean Greer, Less BG
22. Warren Ellis, Normal
23. Emma Healey, Elizabeth is Missing BG
24. Connie Willis, Belwether
25. Lauren Beukes, Zoo City
26. Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
27. Chloe Benjamin, The Anatomy of Dreams
28. Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea BG

What I read in 2013

Past editions of this list:  2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008.  This list is also available in pictorial format at Pinterest.

It was a good year for reading here!  Thirty-nine books finished.  Some illustrated books, some YA novels–and I counted 1Q84 as THREE books, because it is. 😉 BG=Book Group selection.  I’m in two book groups, so a lot of my reading is driven by that. Also, I’ve been getting a lot of advanced reader copies from Mysterious Galaxy Redondo Beach, so some of these were read in that format (one of the books listed, Annihilation, won’t be published until February 2014, for example).  Finally, this was the first year I read any books on a Kindle (starting with The Age of Miracles).

These are numbered in chronological order, from January to December.

1.  Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus (BG)
2. Jo Walton, Among Others (BG)
3. Rhoda Janzen, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress
4. Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe
5. Lisa Genova, Left Neglected
6. Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins (BG)
7. Cory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
8. Melanie Gideon, Wife 22 (BG)
9. Katy Gardner, Losing Gemma
10.-12. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (three volumes)
13. Cheryl Strayed, Wild (BG)
14. Kirsten Miller, Kiki Strike:  Inside the Shadow City
15. Erik Larson, Thunderstruck (BG)
16. Marisha Pessl, Night Film
17. Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
18. Jim Knipfel, Slackjaw (BG)
19. Kirsten Miller, Kiki Strike:  The Empress’s Tomb
20. Jim Knipfel, Quitting the Nairobi Trio
21.  Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles
22. Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
23.  Molly Peacock, The Paper Garden
24. Susan Nussbaum, Good Kings Bad Kings (BG)
25.  Kirsten Menger-Anderson, Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain
26.  Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (BG)
27.  Nick Bantock, The Forgetting Room
28.  Heidi W. Durrow, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
29.  Amy Gail Hansen, The Butterfly Sister
30. Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation
31. Nick Bantock, The Venetian’s Wife
32. Lisa Brackmann, Hour of the Rat
33. Thrity Umrigar, The Space Between Us (BG)
34.  Tana French, In the Woods
35.  Julian Barnes, England, England
36.  Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog (BG)
37.  John Scalzi, Redshirts
38.  Tana French, The Likeness
39. Ann Patchett, The Patron Saint of Liars (BG)

What I read in 2009

BG=Book Group selection.  I’m in two book groups (and sometimes a third), so a lot of my reading is driven by that.  These are numbered in chronological order, from January to December.  I don’t read very fast, and I don’t read a lot of short books, so 23 books in a year is kinda good for me.

1. April Witch (Majgull Axelsson)

2. People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks) BG

3. Planet of the Blind (Stephen Kuusisto) BG

4. A Fraction of the Whole (Steve Toltz) BG

5. Idiocy: A Cultural History (Patrick McDonagh)

6. Out of Joint (Mary Felstiner) BG

7. The Book Borrower (Alice Mattison) BG

8. The Unheard (Josh Swiller) BG

9. The Diagnosis (Alan Lightman)

10. Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri) BG

11. The Air We Breathe (Andrea Barrett) BG

12. A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (Amy Bloom)

13. When We Were Orphans (Kazuo Ishiguro) BG

14. Black Snake Green (David Mitchell)

15. The Peppered Moth (Margaret Drabble)

16. Franklin Flyer (Nicholas Christopher) BG

17. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Steig Larsson) BG

18. The Monsters of Templeton (Lauren Groff)

19. The Fig Eater (Jody Shields)

20. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows) BG

21. Hippolyte’s Island  (Barbara Hodgson)

22. The Confessions of Madame Psyche (Dorothy Bryant)

23.  Up in the Air (Walter Kirn) BG