My Year in Books: 2018

According to Goodreads, I read 97 books in 2018. By my own count, about 15 of those titles were re-reads, which I think is a little higher number than usual. For whatever reason I find myself often wanting to revisit books I’ve already read these days. Sometimes it’s for a comfortable sense of something familiar; other times—especially with hefty classics that I read when quite young—I find it interesting to re-read books I haven’t read in years and see how I like them now at a different age, and hopefully a different level of maturity.

If you’re interested in the full list of what I read, you can click here to see it; but here’s some of the highlights. I’m going to repeat what I did last year and include the titles from my top-ten list in this roundup as well. Links go to my review where there is one.

Most, but not all of my re-reads were classics. I read through Jane Austen’s complete novels for a book discussion club that my mother and sisters and I held as part of my youngest sister’s senior-year literature studies (and oh my, was that fun!). On my own, I revisited Gaskell’s North and South and Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, both of which I liked as much or better than I remembered from years ago; Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, which I had more mixed feelings about; and Dickens’ Great Expectations (ditto). I found my ambivalence toward Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April remained unchanged, and her Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther to be a mix of charming and exasperating; but happily Helen MacInnes’ Rest and Be Thankful rewarded a second reading as well as it did the first a couple years ago.

New-to-me classics were represented by two Anthony Trollope novels: The Last Chronicle of Barset, which was a grand wrap-up to the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, and Can You Forgive Her? I wanted to put all my thoughts about the former into a review, but I never did get around to it—frankly, there are more than half a dozen books that I wanted to review this year, but just didn’t have the mental energy to do so. Can You Forgive Her? was unfortunately the first Trollope book that I can say I didn’t really care for. I just had a hard time liking or sympathizing with most of the characters.

Another hefty tome that I read most of in 2017, but finished up and reviewed early in 2018, was The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk.

I read a lot of nonfiction this year; not surprisingly, most of it history. (Take a deep breath; lots of long subtitles incoming!) The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish by Linda Przybyszewski, Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West by Christopher Knowlton, and A Short History of Germany by Ernest F. Henderson all made my top-ten list. I had the distinction of being the only person on all of Goodreads to read Troy’s One Hundred Years: 1789 – 1889 by Arthur James Weise—understandable, since it’s almost purely of local interest to natives of a once-flourishing industrial city whose significance is now just a memory; but intriguing stuff to anyone who knows the area. The Affair of the Veiled Murderess: An Antebellum Scandal and Mystery by Jeanne Winston Adler was also rather interesting because of its local connections, but had significant shortcomings as a book.  The Good Years: From 1900 to the First World War by Walter Lord was also something of a disappointment.

Also enjoyed two interesting historical biographies: For the Glory: Eric Liddell’s Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr by Duncan Hamilton, and Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist by Karen Swallow Prior; and a couple of memoirs about homesteading in Montana: Homesteading: A Montana Family Album by Percy Wollaston, and Up On the Rim by Dale Eunson.

In theology, standouts were Revival by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (also on my top-ten list), The Book of Revelation Made Easy by Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., and If Ye Shall Ask by Oswald Chambers. The highlight of general nonfiction reading was undoubtedly The Anatomy of Story by John Truby, probably the most unique book on writing that I’ve ever read and another top-ten pick. I also gleaned some useful ideas from Be A Free-Range Human by Marianne Cantwell, a book that I admittedly speed-read a bit but can definitely see myself referring back to when dealing with the nitty-gritty of entrepreneurship.

Westerns were rather thin on the ground this year. The Cherokee Trail by Louis L’Amour was unfortunately a flat dud; the short story collection All the Long Years by Bill Pronzini was quality writing, but too violent and profane for me to really enjoy. Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson, a young-adult novel about a girl holding down a homestead claim in Montana, was nice if not brilliant. I did enjoy two more good cavalry Westerns by Charles King, The Colonel’s Daughter and Marion’s Faith.

I always seem to read a good amount of mysteries! Standouts from this year included Death and the Joyful Woman by Ellis Peters (which made my top-ten list), The Girl at Central by Geraldine Bonner, Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey, and She Faded Into Air by Ethel Lina White. The Dead Letter by Seeley Regester was a Victorian mystery-melodrama that had its good and bad points; The Case of Jennie Brice by Mary Roberts Rinehart and The Studio Crime by Ianthe Jerrold were both pretty good. I also came to the end of Mary Stewart’s romantic-suspense oeuvre this year with Thunder On the Right, which felt so much like an author’s first attempt that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t one. (For fun, after finishing it I did a personal ranking of the Stewarts on Twitter.)

I don’t care who knows it, two of the books I most enjoyed reading this year were children’s literature: Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright made my top-ten list, and The Saturdays by the same author was also so delightful I was almost tempted to squeeze them both onto the list as one item. I also enjoyed a refreshingly wholesome and upbeat young-adult book from the 1950s, Blueberry Summer by Elisabeth Ogilvie (hello, fellow Elisabeth with an S!).

I always look for a few new Christmas stories to enjoy around the holiday season, and this year I found Christmas Eve and Christmas Day by Edward Everett Hale, a mixed but entertaining short story collection from the mid-19th century. It was also fun to read the original story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann and trace the origins of the beloved ballet, even though the ending did have me sort of laughing in bemusement. But my favorite Christmas discovery this year was a lovely little novelette/novella called The Little City of Hope by Francis Marion Crawford.

I’m not in the habit of handing out an award for worst read of the year, but all I can say is that I had better not read any more Anton Chekhov or he’ll be a shoo-in every year. (Though The Cherokee Trail and Bob, Son of Battle did give him a run for his money this year.) I only picked up The Cherry Orchard because of John Truby’s using it as an illustration in The Anatomy of Story, but frankly found Truby’s summary of the character conflict better than anything in the play itself.

And last, but certainly not least, novels and novellas of varying genres. Meet Me in St. Louis by Sally Benson, The Story Book Girls by Christina Gowans Whyte, and The City Beyond the Glass by Suzannah Rowntree were all top-ten picks. Island in the Sky by Ernest K. Gann, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, and A Summer in Bath by Meredith Allady were in the nature of runners-up; and I also enjoyed The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes and Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by D.E. Stevenson.

Previous years’ reading roundups: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.

image: pixabay