Minneapolis, MN

Another year of books in the books. This time I started out in Bogotá reading novels on my phone. I spent December-June running around in South America without much access to English literature. But that didn't stop me!

In the summer I returned to the states and was reunited with my dog Lucius. Sadly Lucius passed away in October just shy of his 14th birthday.

Lucius was a great dog and an avid reader. I often made jokes about him in which he exhibited human talents. I loved him hard. I will forever miss his wordly philosophies, his smile, and his cuddles.

And now the books I read in 2018, from worst to first:

19. To Have And Have Not (1937) - Ernest Hemingway

I've long defended Hemingway when people call him a chauvinist. But his novels feature strong female characters! Just because you write about an old man fishing doesn't make you a sexist!

Turns out I was wrong on that one. Not only is this novel chauvinistic, it's also rabidly racist and kind of boring. Supposedly it's about a blue collar guy who gets beaten down by harsh realities. As a side note he also kills brown people and loathes rich gays. Pass.

18. Foe (1986) - J.M. Coetzee

This is some highbrow dude's reimagining of Robinson Crusoe from the perspective of a woman stranded on the island with him. Reading it was about as exciting as returning to office life after a year abroad.

17. Seveneves (2015) - Neal Stephenson

Most people seem to like this novel. I found it pretty outlandish myself.

The initial premise is that the moon has been destroyed and humanity has a couple years to flee Earth. There's a Neil deGrasse Tyson character. Not much else I can say without giving away spoilers.

5,000 years and 10,000 pages later much outlandish drama has occurred. If you made it through The Last Jedi without groaning you'll probably like it.

16. Jurassic Park (1990) - Michael Chrichton

There are so many good books in the world that there's usually no need to read a mediocre one. Unless you're in South America and Jurassic Park is the best book in English you can find.

You know the story. It's aight. I liked it better when I was in 7th grade.

15. The Patchwork Girl Of Oz (1913) - L. Frank Baum

I've always had a soft spot for the Oz books. They go full on freak flag at times.

This installment famously had a chapter in which a vegetable people grew human children's heads in their garden, which they then ate. The publisher apparently made him take it out.

Probably would have been cooler with it. Not my favorite Oz book.

14. El Caballero De Los Siete Reinos (2013) - George R.R. Martin

I've been doing these book reviews for 4 years now, and I still haven't had a chance to review a new Song of Fire and Ice novel. Damn you George R.R. Martin!

He did apparently find time to write some side quests though. This is a lighthearted prequel featuring an oafish commoner Dunk who rises to knighthood under dubious circumstances. He acquires as his squire a young Targaryen who goes by Egg (short for Aegon).

I slogged through this at a clip of 2 pages a day en español. Much more challenging than Coraline. I probably would have enjoyed it more in English. It was like reading a book for school.

13. Molly's Game (2017) - Molly Bloom

This is poorly written but it's a trashy poker story so it's pretty much up my alley. The author is a woman seemingly without morals or shame who ran high stakes poker games for Hollywood celebrities and hedge fund managers. After getting in bed with the Russian mafia and then having all her assets seized by the FBI, she wrote this "tell-all" to raise money for her legal defense.

It's not really a tell-all. She doesn't mention anything illegal that's not public record. It doesn't come off as especially true either. From the 2/3 I saw of it on a plane, the movie is better.

12. The Sellout (2015) - Paul Beatty

This was a fun one. It's an absurdist story about a black man in a forgotten neighborhood of Los Angeles who decides to bring back segregation and slavery as a means of improving his community. He's also a fruit farmer who rides a horse for transportation. And he's in a love with a married bus driver.

11. Kafka On The Shore (2006) - Haruki Murakami

Kinda hard to sum this one up in 3 sentences. The principal characters are an adolescent boy in Japan who runs away from home and a mentally disabled old man who survived a bizarre phenomenon as a child during World War II.

It's a surrealist journey written in beautiful prose. I enjoyed it but felt disappointed with the ending.

10. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1971) - Hunter S. Thompson

I had decided that after a year in Latin America I'd fly into Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker. To prepare for that eventuality I immersed myself in HST's classic tale of debauchery in Sin City. Nothing puts me in a mood for drinking and gambling like an HST book.

9. Broken Harbor (2013) - Tana French

This was nowhere near as good as In The Woods, but so far I've torn through the two Tana French books I've read. Guess I better read the rest of them.

It's another murder mystery set in Dublin. This one centers around a gruesome triple-murder in a quiet residential neighborhood. The "chilling" factor is about on par with the real life double murder and subsequent kidnapping of Jamie Closs that happened in Wisconsin this past year.

8. The Dept. Of Speculation (2014) - Jenny Offill

This novel is clever, funny, upbeat, and sad all at the same time. The premise is simple - woman in love, woman with baby, marriage in trouble, etc. But the prose cuts sharp and rings of truth.

7. This Is How You Lose Her (2012) - Junot Díaz

Similar in spirit to Dept. Of Speculation, this is a collection of short stories about how love is dumb and so are lovers.

My love life in 2018 was a thing but not a great thing. Relationships you could measure in weeks or days. Some former lovers became friends. Most are now married or dating unremarkable other guys. So I tell myself.

6. Red Country (2012) - Joe Abercrombie

One afternoon in Medellín, Colombia, I found myself daydrunk and having a heart to heart with a massive American vet who was living abroad and receiving disability checks from the military. In years past I would have had a hard time empathizing with him. But I guess I'm coming around to the idea that people who have done horrible things are still worthy of compassion.

This is a subject that Abercrombie loves to treat in his fiction. In this novel we have a gritty frontierswoman Shy and her tough old farmhand Lamb who head out west after Shy's kidnapped children. Throughout the novel we come to learn that Shy has a bloody past. And Lamb's is bloodier.

Never read an Abercrombie book I didn't devour. This one's no different.

5. Cat's Cradle (1963) - Kurt Vonnegut

After returning to Minneapolis and my minimal social life here, I decided to check out a meetup.com sci-fi book club. The first book I read was Cat's Cradle, which I had once read decades ago as a teenager.

The good news is, it still holds up. It's a hilarious and brilliantly structured nihilistic romp to the apocalypse. At least that's my view on it.

The majority of the book club preferred Seveneves. I never went back to the book club.

4. The Year Of The Flood (2009) - Margaret Atwood

I finally got around to reading the 2nd installment of the MaddAddam universe. It's of course fantastic. The main characters in this one are two women who belong to an environmentalist cult in the years preceding the plague that wipes out humanity.

For Christmas this year my mom bought me a year's subscription to masterclass.com, and I've been working through Margaret Atwood's Masterclass on writing. Turns out she's the coolest person ever to live.

3. Station Eleven (2014) - Emily St. John Mandel

This book actually feels a lot like a Margaret Atwood novel. It jumps around in time before, during, an after a plague that wipes out humanity.

In the present a nomadic band travels around the Midwest performing theater. In the past an actor from Toronto becomes a Hollywood star. His wife becomes an afterthought and begins work on the never-published graphic novels titled Station Eleven, about a people living on a space station who dream of returning to their home.

Well-structured and beautifully imaginative.

2. The Broken Earth Trilogy (2015 - 2017) - N.K. Jemisin

If you haven't read the Broken Earth trilogy yet, then what are you waiting for? These books are so hot right now that I won't spend too much time describing them.

One note I'll make is that though the main characters in this book are a badass woman and her daughter, a powerful gay man, and a trans woman (also a 10,000-year-old straight man made out of stone, I suppose), Jemisin never preaches or dwells on her characters' sexuality. It's not the point of the story, and queerness is just treated as normal.

Anyway, so badass! I don't know how anyone will adapt the first novel The Fifth Season for TV or film, but I'm sure it won't be long before somebody tries to cash in on it.

1. Shantaram (2004) - Gregory David Roberts

And finally, something completely different, Shantaram!

A story about a man from New Zealand who escapes prison and runs away to Bombay, where he lives in the slums and eventually becomes involved in organized crime. Written by an escaped con from New Zealand who ran away to Bombay, where he lived in the slums...

This novel covers a lot of ground - squalor in a Bombay shantytown, war in Afghanistan, life and death in an Indian prison. But at its core it's about love. Romantic love, loving friends, and loving life.

It was recommended to me by an Australian I met in Mexico. Cheers to you mate! And to all the free spirits I met on the road this past year!

That's all for 2018. I'm back in Minneapolis reading books on my lunch break again. But I think there's a reasonable chance I'll be reading books in some other city this time next year. I'll keep you posted.

Cheers and happy reading in 2019!