Like any year, like any day, like anything, really, 2018 had its good and bad points. I went skiing in Winter (as no year really feels complete without it) and to India with Lou in Spring, which was most definitely and easily the highlight. I finished reading my hundredth book of the year (A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry) in flight from Mumbai to Goa, a book which kept me company for much of the trip, including a 17 hour train journey. I might add that audiobooks were an additional graceful saviour during said journey. I read books aloud to Lou, even as she fell asleep and later swore she was enjoying it. Perhaps she was, so on those grounds I continued. I finished working at the bookshop for a full time job at the library – something I’m still figuring out and impatient to feel competent in. Three weeks in and I’ve not burnt the library to cinders, which I’m chalking up as a small victory. I’m still all about achievable goals. One of my brothers got married, and I’m to become an aunty in 2019. With this pleasing news, I’ve been entrusted a child’s literary upbringing. Which is just as well, as it’s the only branch of adult guidance I feel naturally inclined toward and rather think I’m a good choice for the job. Any tips on auntying are otherwise welcome, if you please.
It hasn’t all been the fun of expansive travel horizons and career progression, and even my reading habits took a hit after Luke died. I think I said all I needed to for cathartic release in the previous post, so I’ll say no more about it here. I was happily distracted while in India but on my return picked up books I would ordinarily probably quite enjoy, then put them down for inability to focus. I turned instead to the comforting familiarity of Harry Potter rereads and even a Marian Keyes. Achievable goals, once again.
On balance, I think I’ve come out ahead. I read more books than ever in previous years. Highlights were Normal People by Sally Rooney, Take Nothing With You by Patrick Gale, and Lethal White by Robert Galbraith. I don’t tend to finish books I’m not enjoying, since there are so many good books out there that it just seems like a waste of time. I’m not sure why I stuck with Katerina by James Frey, since I didn’t enjoy it or find it well-written, and it’s not one of those literary buzz titles that I thought I needed a professional opinion on. I’m naming it as my least favourite book of the year, so I guess that’s something.
Without further ado, this is what I read in 2018:
- A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- The Dry by Jane Harper
- Two Steps Forward by Graeme Simsion & Annie Buist
- My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
- The Simple Act of Reading edited by Debra Adelaide
- Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
- One Day We’ll All be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
- Indian Takeaway: One Man’s Attempt to Cook his Way Home by Hardeep Singh Kohli
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
- The Power by Naomi Alderman
- The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
- The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
- This House of Grief by Helen Garner
- The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben
- The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta by Kushanava Choudhury
- Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice
- The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
- Travelling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor
- The Midnight Assassin by Skip Hollandsworth
- The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane (Scots Edition) by J.K. Rowling, translaitit intae Scots by Matthew Fitt
- An Almond for a Parrot by Wray Delaney
- Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders by Stuart Kells
- Room by Emma Donoghue
- The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser
- Denial: Holocaust History on Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt
- One Life One Chance: A Story of Adrenaline and Adventures in the Most Unforgiving Places on Earth by Luke Richmond
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland
- Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
- Saga Land by Richard Fidler & Kari Gislason
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
- Circe by Madeline Miller
- The Moth edited by Catherine Burns
- Couchsurfing in Iran: Revealing a Hidden World by Stephan Orth
- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
- The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman
- An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
- An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
- Extinctions by Josephine Wilson
- Nine Lives by William Dalrymple
- Lovesome by Sally Seltmann
- Staying by Jessie Cole
- Transcription by Kate Atkinson
- Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller
- How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
- Sinning Across Spain by Ailsa Piper
- Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
- Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaur by Steve Brusatte
- Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
- Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
- Broken Republic by Arundhati Roy
- We are all Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (this one was a reread)
- The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
- Cedar Valley by Holly Throsby
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
- My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
- Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh
- Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
- The End of the Moment We Had by Toshiki Okada
- Christopher Robin by Elizabeth Rudnick
- Shock for the Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
- Danger Music by Eddie Ayres
- A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman (reread)
- The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth by William Boyd
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (reread)
- Take Nothing With You by Patrick Gale
- Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson
- Snap by Belinda Bauer
- You’re Just Too Good to be True: A Love Story about Lonely Hearts and Internet Scams by Sofija Stefanovic
- Less by Andrew Sean Greer
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
- Pretend I’m Dead by Jen Beagin
- Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
- Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist by David Attenborough
- The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker
- Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
- The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures by Louis Theroux
- How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran
- Katerina by James Frey
- Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith
- Ignorance by Milan Kundera (reread)
- The Women in Black by Madeleine St John
- Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (reread)
- Hippie by Paulo Coelho
- Normal People by Sally Rooney
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
- Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
- People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
- Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers by Alexander McCall Smith
- Milkman by Anna Burns
- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
- Every Word is a Bird we Teach to Sing by Daniel Tammet
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling (reread)
- Enid Blyton: the Biography by Barbara Stoney
- Making it Up as I go Along: Notes from a Small Woman by Marian Keyes
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
- The Children Act by Ian McEwan
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (reread)
- Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
- Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald – the Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling
- Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrik Backman
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling (reread)
- The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
- Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (reread)