By the numbers, here’s a recap of the Masthead’s 2018 reading year and, with one last quarter to close out before its second birthday on the 15th, a quick peek into each book read and reviewed over the past three months.
Cheers! Continue reading
Tag Archives: For the love of books!
Year in review: best books of 2018
I’m doing this a little differently than last year. My 2018 reading year was one of five standouts, a handful of good reads and a string of books that, for of the most part, lolled about, neither good nor bad but certainly indifferent to taking a shot at greatness.
I had to do something to add a little year-end spice to the list because the same mentions for everything just isn’t all that fun, is it? I scrapped the 5-4-3-2-1 format of 2017 as well as my separate review of authors. Neither was going to work for the 2018 year-end recap.
Apart from the two disappointments of the year (obv), take each category below as a recommendation. Teaser? 2018 gave me a new all-time favorite novel.
So here goes: what was tops in 2018?
End credits: books read 2018
The Long Valley
John Steinbeck
Orient Express
Graham Greene
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susanna Clarke
Thank You for Smoking
Christopher Buckley
The Fishermen
Chigozie Obioma
The Little Friend
Donna Tartt
The Kreuzer Sonata
Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy
White Teeth
Zadie Smith
Kokoro
Natsume Soseki
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
1984
George Orwell
The Stand
Stephen King
This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Makioka Sisters
Junichirō Tanizaki
Mrs. Rosie and the Priest
Boccaccio
Comemadre
Roque Larraquy
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
Red Sparrow
Jason Matthews
The Giver
Lois Lowry
The Three Theban Plays
Sophocles
The Adolescent
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Still Life with Woodpecker
Tom Robbins
The Essex Serpent
Sarah Perry
Happy New Year!
For the love of books! 2018 year in review
With the sun packed away by half past 4, we’ve nearly paid back our debt and have only its interest left. Though I won’t really feel it ‘til mid-January, when the rays shine for a noticeably longer interval, I can hardly complain: winter, so far, has been kind – and it’s lefse time here in MN!
In just under a week we’ll begin to creep toward spring little by little, but with that renewal comes the year’s end and that means a review of the past 12 months.
What has been new here at the Masthead? For one, I’ve read a great many more first novels than I’d have expected of myself (and just added three more to my shelves this month). I chanced for a spy thriller that wasn’t and a Cain and Abel story whose conflict could hardly justify the outcome. But I also risked a fantasy that endeared itself to me at once and a novel of growing up that told his contemporaries that 24-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald had promise.
There were books that have graced my shelves for years unread only to give me a good time this year: I found my receipt for the plays of Sophocles tucked neatly inside it; I had bought it August 29, 2015. The myth of Oedipus is more than Freud would have us believe. Others I brought home and started almost that same day, like Larraquy’s queer little Comemadre. That’s the beauty of a growing library and buying to my heart’s whims. I’ve amassed a collection whose books hold my interest in an ebb and flow tide. Unread books from three years ago don’t concern me; I’ll read them when the mood strikes and enjoy them all the better.
But, for the love of books, what else was new this year? I laughed through the pulp of Thank You for Smoking, and I felt too keenly the worry inside each of Tanizaki’s Makioka sisters.
I read a book I felt was missing in my younger years, but 1984 didn’t hit me like many will say it hit them. I found it overly didactic and made dull through the years by every amateur politico’s shouting over it.
And I read a bit of sci-fi, but while it was a good diversion, Dick’s electric sheep still felt like a bridging novel – but then, the book before it and the book after it were each so good that maybe I shrugged it off with undue haste. Or maybe I just don’t like sci-fi so much.
Regardless, it’s been a good 12 months, and by the time December is up there should be at least one – and likely two – more reviews before recapping the year in full and making my picks for what was tops in 2018. Come January, the Masthead will blow out the candles on its second year of book reviews with the wish for another year of good reading – just about the time that sunshine sparkles ‘til half past 5.
As always, happy reading.
– EMH
Interlude: end of Q4 at the Masthead
The Masthead will be celebrating its first birthday tomorrow, January 15 – here’s the final breakdown of books read and reviewed in 2017:
Books reviewed: 34
Pages read: 12,487
Longest book: King’s It (1153 pages)
Shortest book: Shakespeare’s Othello (82 pages)
The full breakdown? Here’s a look:
Translated fiction: 13 (from 7 languages: Arabic, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish)
New-to-me authors: 21 (everyone excepting Capote, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, King, Mahfouz, Rushdie, Shakespeare and Vonnegut)
Oldest book: Shakespeare’s Othello (1603)
Newest book: Tóbín’s House of Names (2017; Auster’s 4321 was also published in 2017 but earlier in the year)
And as always, a quick recap of each book read and reviewed here over the past three months (find all of this year’s reviews linked in the review archive):
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
A sound opener to Larsson’s Millenium series: he’s piqued our interest in the non-cheapskate way: the main story of this first novel wraps up by the end; it’s his characters who demand us to pick up the second. Intricate plotting, strong characters and a good mystery (or two: Salandar’s her own mystery really).
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
This one’s a wild read! A little carnival veneer slicks up some good German philosophizing. Hesse had a good bit to say about defining your life, and he said it in an entertaining way.
The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Amateur writing and an insipid story about the loss of some trust fund money combine in this contemporary to make you roll your eyes. That said, this author could probably do some good work if she were to take a risk with her writing; this one’s too conventional to stand out.
2666, Roberto Bolaño
Vulgar in the most pristine way and a real maze of clever writing, this one’s a rough read and all the better for it: its loose plotting and open structure are both to its credit.
Hangover Square, Patrick Hamilton
A modern-sounding novel from the blackout London of WWII, Hamilton writes split-personality perfectly and makes you adore his very messed-up George Harvey Bone.
The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
True Hemingway style for how the story takes shape (i.e. between the lines).This one has a lot to say about love and about being your own person. But know this: it’s a weaker novel than his more major works.
The End of Days, Jenny Erpenbeck
There’s not even the suggestion of cheerfulness in this one: a novel beautifully written and describing through the deaths (yes, multiple) of one girl the havoc of 20th century Central Europe and the East-West divide.
♠
What’s first in the new year? John Steinbeck’s short story collection, The Long Valley (expected publication date for review is January 19 *edit: January 21); Graham Greene’s Orient Express and Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Cheers!
Q1 wrap-up
Q2 wrap-up
Q3 wrap-up
Browse the review archive
Books, books, and more books – what of their writers? Top picks in writing 2017
Books get all the attention. What about those who labored over them? Here are the Masthead’s 2017 top picks by category for writers reviewed.
Well, all right: one of these categories is more negative than positive – read on.
Books, oh my!
For the love of books…what was tops in 2017? Here’s a 5-4-3-2-1 of 2017 at the Masthead. Full reviews available via the review archive.
End credits: books read 2017
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
Shame
Salman Rushdie
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
The Stranger
Albert Camus
The Beggar · The Thief and the Dogs · Autumn Quail
Naguib Mahfouz
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon
Othello
William Shakespeare
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Truman Capote
4321
Paul Auster
Murder on the Orient Express
Agatha Christie
The Enchanted Wanderer (and other stories)
Nikolai Leskov
Twelve Angry Men
Reginald Rose
The Fellowship of the Ring
JRR Tolkien
Snow
Orhan Pamuk
House of Names
Colm Tóbín
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
A Room with a View
EM Forster
Deadeye Dick
Kurt Vonnegut
Where Angels Fear to Tread
EM Forster
City of Thieves
David Benioff
It
Stephen King
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Dai Sijie
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Gabriel García Márquez
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse
The Nest
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
2666
Roberto Bolaño
Hangover Square
Patrick Hamilton
The Garden of Eden
Ernest Hemingway
The End of Days
Jenny Erpenbeck
Happy New Year!
For the love of books!
I started the Masthead in January as a space devoted to reading and writing. I had the aim to broaden my reading to include those areas I’d neglected – mystery, fantasy, contemporary, drama, dystopia, thriller (can you tell I’m not one for genre fiction?) – and authors I’d never read. I had never written a book review; I’d never written out more than marginal notes scrimped onto 3×6 notepaper that could double as a bookmark.
But the books never did stick with me for very long, no matter how much I loved them (I wrote a little about this here). For the love of books I did something more when I started the Masthead, and when I read over those reviews I’ve already written, the whole novel comes back to me effortlessly – the plot, yes, but everything else, too: its characters, its stylistic genius (or stylistic mess), the feelings I felt…I’ve even had an excitement to read it again (or, in two particular cases, strong reasons to purge it from my shelves…)
I started out easy when I wrote “Pity the fool,” a review of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. I’d already read a lot of his work, so writing this one wasn’t much of a stretch.
But I was in new territory with my second review, “Diamond in the rough.” Not only was Anthony Doerr a new-to-me author and All the Light We Cannot See a book much hyped, but when I wrote the review for it I found myself on the other side of popular opinion. Doerr did not regale me as he had so many others.
Doerr aside, I’ve found myself taken with a few new-to-me authors and astounded by feats of ingenuity in prose. I’ve picked up books I may otherwise never have – I saw Hangover Square at another blogger’s site and ended up myself quite taken with it! You won’t find Patrick Hamilton at Barnes & Noble unfortunately, and no length of browsing would have brought him to me.
Sure I’ve read some favorites. This project’s to be a fun one and a year with no Hemingway or Rushdie would be such a sorry thing. So no, not everything’s been new, but I have read more from many of those genres I’d neglected and I’m excited to continue the venture in the New Year.
The Masthead has one more book review for you before its quarter ends (and its first birthday pops) on January 15, and the first two weeks of January will be full of end-of-year reflections, recaps and discussions because after all, we’re all here for the love of books!
– EMH
The Masthead 