Books I Read in 2018

This is probably the most intense year of reading I've had since I was a book-addicted kid. The total is 150-160 (inexact because of chapbooks and books I didn't finish), or just about three per week. I consider that an awful lot of books for one year.

I was dissatisfied at the lack of year variation in my book diet - it was almost all new releases, very few older books - and that I didn't successfully read a Big Book. I read several books that were ~450 pages, but none of them were classics, even by my very loose standards.

Here's 2017's version of this post, and I think it's worthwhile to repeat the first paragraph of that post:

It's possible that I'm doing this to show off, I'll come out with that up front. But if I can try to step back and use myself as an example: as a writer, you should be prepared to read a LOT. Voraciously and omnivorously. Poetry, nonfiction, avant-garde, pulp, scholarship, everything. Read it all and then get back to me if you still want to be a writer.

The ^ marks a book that I did not read for review, interview, or another kind of research. (There were a lot fewer of them than books I did read for review/research.) The * marks a book I didn't finish.

The bolded books were my favorite books of the year. Very subjective. Others I read were more skillfully written, or more fun, or more memorable, or easier to recommend to readers who are not me. But the bolded ones were the books that ensorcelled me, the ones that made me want to keep reading late into the night or tiptoe out to read them early in the morning.

Poetry

Accardi, Millicent Borges - Only More So

Colburn, Stephanie - Horse Latitudes
Erdrich, Heid E., ed. - New Poets of Native Nations

Malhotra, Mia Ayumi - Isako Isako

Mort, Valzhyna - Factory of Tears^
Muldoon, Paul - The Horse Latitudes
Ostrom, Robert - Ritual and Bit^
Parker, Morgan - There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce^
Pence, Amy - [It] Incandescent

Skillings, Emily - Fort Not^

Tómasdóttir, Kristín Svava  - Stormwarning
Vap, Sarah - Viability

Nonfiction

Altman, Mara - Gross Anatomy
Arment, Jason - Musalaheen
Asem, Mohamed - Stranger in the Pen

Asim, Jabari - We Can't Breathe
Baker, Deborah - The Last Englishmen
Banerjee, Rita et al., eds. - Credo

Biss, Eula - Notes from No Man's Land
Coffelt, Allison - Maps Are Lines We Draw

Conley, Garrard - Boy Erased^
Finkel, Michael - The Stranger in the Woods^
Friedmann, Jessica - Things that Helped

Gaar, Gillian G. - World Domination
Hopper, Jessica - Night Moves
Irby, Samantha - We Are Never Meeting in Real Life^

Kalka, Joachim - Gaslight

Kendrick, Anna - Scrappy Little Nobody^

Kreider, Tim - I Wrote This Book Because I Love You
Lambert, Sandra Gail - A Certain Loneliness

Lorr, Benjamin - Hell-Bent^

Mailhot, Terese Marie - Heart Berries^
Marzano-Lesnevich, Alexandria - The Fact of a Body^

Ortiz, Wendy C. - Excavation^
Priest, Ann-Marie - A Free Flame^
Raffel, Dawn - The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

Rogers, Richard - A Place for All People

Schwartz, Stephen Jay, ed. - Hollywood vs. the Author
Schwenke, Chloe - Self-Ish
Shields, Charles J. - The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel

Sundberg, Kelly - Goodbye, Sweet Girl
Tinsley, Omise'eke - Beyoncé in Formation
Trabold, Erica - Five Plots
Wang, Esme Weijun - The Collected Schizophrenias
Wetherall, Tyler - No Way Home

Cross-Genre/Experimental

Adnan, Etel - Surge
Anderson, E. Kristen ed. - Come as You Are

Arndt, Jess - Large Animals^

Boyer, Anne - A Handbook of Disappointed Fate

Burrows, Jez - Dictionary Stories

Chapman, J'Lyn - Beastlife^

Damm, Johnny - The Science of Things Familiar^

Green, Karen - Frail Sister
Jensen, Becca - Among the Dead: Ah! And Afterward Yes!*^

Koertge, Ron - Olympusville
LaPensée, Elizabeth, et al. - Deer Woman

Mann, Lucas - Captive Audience

Lock, Norman - Land of the Snow Men^

Nagai, Mariko - Irradiated Cities

Novak, JoAnna - Noirmania^

Reverb, Julie - No Moon^

Russo, Emmalea - G
Singer, Natalie - California Calling

Fiction

Adcock, Siobhan - The Completionist*
Antabanez, Wheeler - The Old Asylum*^
Baker, Sybil - While You Were Gone
Barrow, Barbara - The Quelling
Baudoin, Magela - Sleeping Dragons
Bernhard, Thomas - Correction^
Bhuvaneswar, Chaya - White Dancing Elephants
Blakeslee, Vanessa - Perfect Conditions
Bradbury, Jamey - The Wild Inside
Bullwinkel, Rita - Belly Up
Camp, Bryan - The City of Lost Fortunes

Catling, B. - The Cloven
Catling, B. - The Erstwhile
Catling, B. - The Vorrh
Chai, May-Lee - Useful Phrases for Immigrants
Choundas, George - The Making Sense of Things

Dangarembga, Tsitsi - This Mournable Body
Desarthe, Agnés - Hunting Party
Dyer, Thoraiya - Crossroads of Canopy
Dyer, Thoraiya - Echoes of Understorey

Dyer, Thoraiya - Tides of the Titans
Ferrigno, Robert - The Horse Latitudes
Fine, Julie - What Should Be Wild
Finn, Melanie - The Underneath
Flynn, Gillian - Gone Girl^
French, Tana - The Witch Elm
Gentry, Amy - Last Woman Standing
Griffith, Nicola - So Lucky
Hagy, Alyson - Scribe
Harun, Adrianne - Catch, Release
Hatcher - The Wonder That Was Ours
Hobson, Melanie - Summer Cannibals

Immergut, Debra Jo - The Captives

Jackson, Shelley - Riddance
Jemc, Jac - The Grip of It^
Johnson, Daisy - Everything Under
Kamal, Soniah - Unmarriageable
Kasai, Kirsten Imani - The House of Erzulie

Kiesling, Lydia - The Golden State

Korneliussen, Niviaq - Last Night in Nuuk
Kriseman, Eleanor - The Blurry Years

Lange, Norah - People in the Room

Laughlin, Nicholas & Nailah Folami Imoja, eds. - So Many Islands
Mandipour, Shahriah - Moon Brow*

Messud, Claire - The Woman Upstairs^
Morrow, Bethany C. - Mem
Moskovich, Yelena - The Natashas

Moskovich, Yelena - Virtuoso
Nash, Elle - Animals Eat Each Other
Nemett, Adam - We Can Save Us All
Nors, Dorthe - Mirror, Shoulder, Signal

Ólafsson, Bragi - Narrator
Orange, Tommy - There There

Parker, Miriam - The Shortest Way Home*

Parks, Robin - Egg Heaven^

Penn, Sean - Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff

Pietrzyk, Leslie - Silver Girl

Quist, Donald - For Other Ghosts
Readman, Angela - Something Like Breathing
Roanhorse, Rebecca - Trail of Lightning
Rooney, Kathleen - Lilian Boxfish Takes a Walk^
Ryman, Geoff - Was^
Schoffstall, John - Half-Witch
Schwehn, Kaethe - The Rending and the Nest

Sigurðsson, Ófeigur - Öræfi: The Wasteland
Soucy, Gaetan - The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches^

Stenson, Peter - Thirty-Seven
Sullivan, Felicia C. - Follow Me Into the Dark^

Suri, Tasha - Empire of Sand
Sycamore, Mattilda Bernstein - Sketchtasy
Thomson, Rupert - Never Anyone But You
Tiller, Carl Frode - Encircling 2

Wolitzer, Meg - The Ten-Year Nap*^
Wurth, Erika T. - Buckskin Cocaine^
Xue, Can - Love in the New Millennium
Yongo, Micah - Lost Gods
Zink, Nell - The Wallcreeper^
Zumas, Leni - Red Clocks

Chapbooks

4 chapbooks from the Operating System (forgot to write down the titles before I gave some of them away)
Egan, Stacy Austin - You Could Stop It Here
Picard, Caroline - The Strangers Among Us*^

Ruocco, Joanna - The Whitmire Case^ 

Sonenberg, Maya - After the Death of Shostakovich Pére

Washuta, Elissa - Starvation Mode 

Woodward, Maggie - Found Footage^ 

Books I'm likely to finish before January 1:

Jay Merrick - Horse Latitudes
Meg Whiteford - Callbacks


Up next (after the Sunday to-do): New Year's resolutions. See you then.