2018 started out slow, reading-wise. I’m lucky in the amount of free time I have and unlucky in the amount of commute time I have, so I’m not sure why this year has a lower book count than past years so far. Here are the first ten books I read in 2018:
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong: Technically I read most of this in 2017, but I finished it in January. It was pretty delightful.
Kitchen/“Moonlight Shadow,” by Banana Yoshimoto: My student was reading this for school and had an extra copy. I’ve heard about Banana Yoshimoto for years but had never read her work. I love the specificity of Kitchen and the conceit.
Preparation for the Next Life, by Atticus Lish: At first I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to pull off two perspectives, but he does, though I have to say my favorite sections were towards the beginning of the novel when the main character is still in Northwestern China, a place I have wanted to go for years.
Beauty is a Wound, by Eka Kurniawan: This is so macabre and so full of terrible events, yet amazingly jaunty. The characters are impeccable and it manages to be funny, which doesn’t seem like it should be possible.
Off the Charts, by Ann Hulbert: This is about child prodigies/geniuses through the eras, and is thoroughly enjoyable even if it shook my (inexplicable) belief that Shirley Temple was embittered by her child-size Oscar and caused me to have to excise a reference to her bitterness from an essay of my own.
The Danger Within Us, by Jeanne Lenzer: Surprise! There are massive conflicts of interest in the medical device industry, the FDA, and healthcare in general!
Amen, Amen, Amen, by Abby Sher: Since I’m writing an OCD memoir, I avoided reading this for year–I was afraid I would open it and find the exact book I was hoping to write. Fortunately, I did not, even though I’m still jealous of the title. She’s a great writer and funny, but it’s much more of a straightforward memoir than mine. Phew!
The Odyssey, by Homer, trans. Emily Wilson: I read this with a student. Though I appreciate Wilson’s transparency/unsparingness in acknowledging things like, “these people were Odysseus’s slaves, not ‘servants'” and so forth, I thought it was missing the poetry.
Cure Unknown, by Pamela Weintraub: Lyme disease has long been one of the illnesses I fear the most…it fits in that overlapping zone of “you can have this and not know it/not be routinely tested for it/not even test positive for it” and “can wreak all kinds of permanent damage!” (see also Chagas, Creutzfeldt-Jakob). The author is both a science journalist and someone whose entire family has been affected by Lyme, so she fits in the overlapping zone of “skeptical” and “willing to pursue alternative theories and beliefs.”
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson: This is SO SMUG. I get that he’s going for a lightly facetious tone at all times, but WOW. He doesn’t commit fully enough to the whole “imaginary superpowers” element, and some of the things he says are awfully close to “How great it was to be white and male in the 1950s!”
