My Best Books Read in 2018 List

Fortunately, Goodreads keeps track of my reading over the course of a year. I’ve clocked in 43 books. Of those, my top three novels and top three works of non-fiction that I’ve most appreciated/enjoyed/learned from/been moved by over the year are—in order that I read them, not in order of how I value them (drum roll):

Novels:

Fredrik Backman's Bear Town (2017): I love Backman’s quirky characters and sense of humor. While he typically writes with poignancy and addresses some serious themes, this is his first book that is straight-up serious without much comedy. It’s powerful, riveting, touching, and he wins my award for Best Realistic and Compassionate Portrayal of a Female Rape Survivor by a Male Author. (Actually, it’s the only such portrayal I’ve ever encountered by a male author). I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Sarai Walker’s Dietland (2015): a rageful, thoughtful, and funny kick-in-the-nuts to the patriarchy, written with much artistry and awareness of feminist theory. (In her afterword, Walker calls out feminist philosopher Sandra Bartky—one of my grad school professors—as an influence.) A perfect book for this most recent “moment” of feminist awareness and activism, it follows Alicia “Plum” Kettle as she comes to terms with--and celebrates--who she is, rather than continue to yearn for the acceptance of a fat-shaming, misogynist culture that could never appreciate and love her. Walker also juxtaposes Plum’s story of internal, emotional work and her friends’ cultural projects against the violent anti-rape culture work of the vigilante group Jennifer, raising the question, what is the appropriate response to violent acts against women and a millennia long culture of violent misogyny?

Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers (2018): A beautiful, heart-breaking, and loving story of the early years of the AIDS crisis in Chicago and its effects on those who lived through it, those who died in it, and those who survived it. I became completely immersed in the worlds of the the range of characters who populate this book; Makkai writes with such artistry and compassion that I felt like Yale and Fiona, in particular, were friends. This one will stay with me for a long time.

Non-Fiction:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy (2014): Attorney Stevenson’s compelling memoir of his work on behalf of poor Death Row clients and juvenile clients—many of whom were convicted of crimes they did not commit and were the victims of racism and classism within the U.S. criminal justice system—centers on the case of Walter McMillian, an African-American Alabama man on Death Row for a murder he did not perpetrate. I like reading real-life stories, but the writing styles of many non-fiction authors often slow me down. This book reads like a mystery novel (that’s praise), while it also delves into many of the other cases Stevenson took on—and sometimes took as far as the Supreme Court--as his Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative grew. He does many great things in his pursuit of justice, yet writes with such humility and grace. I can’t praise this book highly enough!

Nina Riggs’ The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying (2017):Writing beautifully with honesty, humor, and wisdom, Riggs doesn’t hide from us her fears, pain, and sadness—what I would expect to find in a book by a woman preparing to die from cancer in her 30s—but also shares her stories of everyday activities and conversations with her children, husband, friends, and parents. She quotes Emerson and Montaigne frequently, as she reads these essayists to glean their approach to facing death. While she learns, we readers learn. While she lives her life, we share her life. I finished the book feeling like I’d been forced to say good-bye too soon to a friend—sad, but also grateful I’d gotten to know her.

Rebecca Solnit’s Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) (2018): Feminist cultural critic and historian Solnit has collected eighteen of her essays from the past few years into this slim volume centered around issues of the importance of language and the stories we tell as we seek to make and re-make our worlds: “key to the work of changing the world is changing the story, the names, and inventing or popularizing new names and new phrases. . . . Precision, accuracy, and clarity matter. . . . Or so it used to be, which is why one of the crises of this moment is linguistic,” as she writes in the forward. Though I typically agree with her, reading this collection has gotten me to expand my frames and think more deeply about issues important to both Solnit and to me. As she writes in her essay “Preaching to the Choir,” on the merits of that enterprise: “In an ideal intellectual exchange, disagreement doesn’t mean tearing down a rival but testing and strengthening the structure of a proposal, an analysis. It is what you do when you agree with people in general but have specifics to work out; and that work can be a joy” (77). I can say the same of this book.