It’s time for 2018′s reading review! I know, I’m sure you’re all really excited. This is a long post, which you can press J to skip.
This year, I initially set myself the goal to read things which challenged me. For the first few months, I read quite a few books with a political bent, including some which I knew I would disagree with. I read some obscure fiction in translation, which I found really enlightening. Then, A Bad Personal Thing happened and I suddenly didn’t feel able to challenge myself all the time. I stopped reading for a while, because the thought of picking up a book was just a bit much. So, I changed my goal. Instead, I decided to enjoy reading. Not to pay any thought to how ‘worthy’ or ‘literary’ a book was; to choose my reading material solely by how much fun it would be to read, or how much I wanted to read it.
Hence, the majority of my reading in 2018 was queer erotica or books about mountaineering, or historical romps with female leads. Reading this way helped me immensely this year, and I was a much happier person for it.
Side goals this year were to read more books by Welsh authors or published by Welsh presses, and to read more books by authors of colour and queer authors.
The books I read were as follows, complete with a rating and a quote that I most enjoyed or felt best summed up the book:
Pop Idle - George Sandifer-Smith, 4/5
The tremendous desire to throw yourself off and become so much matter for someone else to clean up.
Passing - Nella Larsen, 4/5
In that second she saw that she could bear anything, but only if no-one knew that she had anything to bear.
The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, volume 1 - Harriette Wilson, 5/5
The soul’s fire is partly kept alive by dinner.
The Visitor - Katherine Stansfield, 5/5
It must take longer than this. There needs to be more of a leave-taking when the loss is so great.
Eileen - Ottessa Mosfegh, 3/5
People died all the time. Why couldn’t I?
The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf, 4/5
Once the heart is swollen with grief, it can find words no longer.
Horses of God - Mahi Binebine, 4/5
As for us, we were dead, just dead. And I’m still waiting for the angels.
Behold the Dreamers - Imbolo Mbue, 5/5
“A man can find a home anywhere, sir.”
Ways of Going Home - Alejandro Zambo, 3/5
To read is to cover one’s face, I thought. To read is to cover one’s face. And to write is to show it.
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood - Trevor Noah, 5/5
“He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”
The Good Father - Marion Husband, 4/5
People who loved their parents speak a different language from those of us who didn’t.
The Pearl that Broke its Shell - Nadia Hashimi, 2/5
I was a mother, and then I wasn’t.
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 4/5
If God meant only that which is good, and Satan that which is evil, then both were in me.
The Girl who Escaped ISIS - Farida Khalaf, 4/5
Sometimes people need to experience the greater evil to understand which the lesser is.
Trail of Broken Wings - Sejal Badani, 5/5
Who am I when I can’t even remember the night that defined my life?
A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea - Masaji Ishikawa, 4/5
A life of ‘not living’. That seems to be my curse.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Ann Jacobs, 4/5
There are wrongs which even the grave does not bury.
Nowhere to be Found - Bae Suah, 2/5
Memory finds it way back through blood, through body heat.
Pantheon: The True Story of the Egyptian Deities - Hamish Steele, 5/5
(Graphic novel)
Winters’ Snow - Carrie Hope Fletcher, 1/5
This is a memory. This is how I remember it.
Pounded In The Butt By My Irrational Bigoted Fear Of Humans Who Were Born As Unicorns Using A Human Restroom - Chuck Tingle, 2/5
“My life is a mess, and it’s so much easier to deal with if I’m trying to project that darkness onto someone else.”
Looking for JJ - Anne Cassidy, 4/5
It wasn’t possible to have people, to own them, as though they were possessions.
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge, 4/5
Forget politician-speak about Britain being a tolerant country. Being constantly looked at like an alien in the country you were born in requires true tolerance.
Not Thomas - Sara Gethin, 5/5
I am nearly not here at all.
Love, Hate & Other Filters - Samira Ahmed, 3/5
Some taboos cross oceans, packed tightly into the corners of immigrant baggage, tucked away with packets of masala and memories of home.
Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions - Valeria Luiselli, 5/5
It’s strange how concepts can erode so easily, how words we once used lightly can alchemize abruptly into something toxic.
Peach - Emma Glass, 3/5
I stare at the blank wall and I could be looking in a mirror.
Juniper Lane - Dylan Morrison, 4/5
She could never have imagined the strange beauty of this world on the cusp of becoming.
Dark Days - James Baldwin, 4/5
(Borrowed book, so no access to quotes)
Africa’s Tarnished Name - Chinua Abeche, 5/5
(Borrowed book, so no access to quotes)
Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening - Manal Al-Sharif, 4/5
The problems flowed together like drops of water until they became indistinguishable from one another; all that remained was the fast-moving river that formed in their wake.
The Princess Diarist - Carrie Fisher, 4/5
You see I thought I was only seeing half the man, but that was all there was to you.
Here, the World Entire - Anwen Kya Hayward, no rating (I don’t rate my own work!)
(The most popular highlighted passage on Kindle:) I want to tell him that I know too well the burden of being a beautiful woman in a world full of angry men, but I don’t. I want to tell him a great many things, but I don’t.
In the Nucleus - Marisa G. Doherty, 5/5
She never believed in ghosts until she had one of her own.
Inside the O’Briens - Lisa Genova, 4/5
I don’t want to spend one more minute on this earth knowing two of my children are buried beneath it.
Ghost Boy - Martin Pistorius, 3/5
It is disorienting when your world becomes a different place almost overnight.
Country Dance - Margiad Evans, 4/5
On her temple was a great wound that cried aloud for justice.
Eunoia - Christian Bök, 3/5
Her descent seems endless; nevertheless, she lets herself be swept wherever the gentle breeze sweeps her.
Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture - ed. Roxane Gay, 5/5
She had learned, somewhere in the interim, to do more than simply reveal what had happened to her; she had learned to tell the story of it so that it didn’t become her only story.
Cocky Romance Author - C.J. Douglass, 2/5
This asshole didn’t have a leg to stand on. As far as his argument went, at least. His actual legs seemed more than sturdy enough to keep him upright, in any activity.
Annabel vs the Internet: The time I infiltrated Google HQ and other adventures - Annabel Port, 5/5
I’m a new Furry and feeling yiffy. Here’s what I look like. I look like a hamster. A grey one that can fit all sorts in my cheeks. A mangetout and a whole floret of broccoli.
The Moor - Sam Haysom, 3/5
That strange elastic property that time has.
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion - Margaret Killjoy, 4/5
However sure you are that your side is right, keep in mind the other side is just as sure.
The Wife Between Us - Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen, 3/5
My regret is an open wound.
Cat Person - Kristen Roupenian, 3/5
Look at this beautiful girl, she imagined him thinking. She’s so perfect, her body is perfect, everything about her is perfect, she’s only twenty years old, her skin is flawless, I want her so badly, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, I want her so bad I might die.
Yellow Crocus - Laila Ibrahim, 4/5
She thought the air would feel different in freedom land, but it didn’t. It was still hard to breathe.
Repeal the 8th - ed. Una Mullally, 5/5
This agony of water in order to hold agency over our bodies
Panty - Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, 3/5
“You’ve spent all your life running away from death,” it told her, “now try to understand it.”
Into Thin Air - John Krakauer, 4/5
No-one intended harm for one another. No-one wanted to die.
Into the Mountains - Pedro Algorta, 4/5
I was prepared for something to happen with my life.
One - Sarah Crossan, 5/5
I read all these books, so many words, but I don’t own any.
Things We Haven’t Said: Sexual Violence Survivors Speak Out - ed. Erin E. Moulton, 4/5
You are more valuable than anything that has ever happened to you.
No Way Down: Life and Death on K2 - Graham Bowley, 4/5
Some had emerged from the ordeal; others had perished. All had burned brightly in their lives.
Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival in the Amazon - Yossi Ghinsberg, 4/5
Please, God, help me. I’m afraid of dying.
Unfit to Print - K.J. Charles, 4/5
I need to scrape him off my shoes. I should have done that a long time ago.
An Unseen Attraction - K.J. Charles, 4/5
There are no degrees with life. You are or you’re not, and once it’s gone it doesn’t return.
The Kiss Quotient - Helen Hoang, 3/5
There was something novel and wonderful about being in a crowd and not feeling alone.
Salt - Nayyirah Waheed, 4/5
my mother was my first country, the first place i ever lived
An Unnatural Vice - K.J. Charles, 5/5
I’m so jealous of a dead man I could die myself.
An Unsuitable Heir - K.J. Charles, 4/5
“Either everyone in this house is called Jane, or nobody is.”
Think of England - K.J. Charles, 5/5
“I abhor violence, particularly when it’s directed at me.”
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung, 5/5
I wonder where the gods go now that their homes have been destroyed.
Left Neglected - Lisa Genova, 3/5
I’m missing a whole continent of experience, and I’m not even aware of it.
Spectred Isle - K.J. Charles, 4/5
We invent gods and monsters and gods that might as well be monsters.
Whisper of the Moon Moth - Lindsay Jayne Ashford, 4/5
“I suppose we all wish we could edit our lives. Do a few more takes and make it perfect.”
Wanted, A Gentleman - K.J. Charles, 5/5
“You’ve the world before you. It’s quite a big place, once you can raise your head and see it.”
The Magpie Lord - K.J. Charles - 4/5
This house wasn’t a dead thing moving, it was a live thing dying.
The Only Harmless Great Thing - Brooke Bolander, 5/5
They killed their own just to see time pass. That’s how it started.
Achilles - Elizabeth Cook, 5/5
What persists most is what is least alive.
A Case of Possession - K.J. Charles, 4/5
“I’ll have ideas anywhere I damned well please.”
Flight of Magpies - K.J. Charles, 4/5
“I like the way he says ‘furthermore’,” Merrick observed quietly, “cos you can tell he means ‘wankers’.”
Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie, 4/5
Do you even know the man you’re mourning?
Peter Darling - Austin Chant, 4/5
All around him, the world was still and dead, as if he were the last thing left alive.
Binti - Nnedi Okorafor, 3/5
Our ancestral land is life; move away from it and you diminish.
Ten Days in a Mad-House - Nelly Bly, 4/5
They always said God made hell, but he didn’t.
The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins - Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Carey Pietsch, 5/5
I’m sorry I started this whole thing.
Medea - Euripides (tr. John Harrison), 5/5
You will never lay hands on me again.
My Purple Scented Novel - Ian McEwan, 4/5
It had moments of joy and terrible grief. His prose sang more beautifully than ever.
War - Janne Teller, 3/5
Now you have nothing. You are nothing.
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death - Maggie O’Farrell, 4/5
My death felt like a person standing there next to me.
The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder - Sarah J. Harris, 4/5
Leave or stay. Stay or leave.
The Wicked Cometh - Laura Carlin, 4/5
And, at this time of the night, when noises are culled and lights are extinguished, my day is not ending; my life is just beginning.
The Illumination of Ursula Flight - Anna-Marie Crowhurst, 5/5
I laid my head down and wept there for the loss of him, and for the loss, too, of my whole childhood, for I knew now I must go and be a grown-up, and I did not know how I would do it.
That Could Be Enough - Alyssa Cole, 4/5
You’re too cowardly to ever show your love and then you wonder why no-one gives it to you in return.
Home - Salman Rushdie, 5/5
He took the westward road and ceased to be who he might have been if he had stayed at home.
Your Life In My Hands: a Junior Doctor’s Story - Rachel Clarke, 4/5
Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away.
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë, 4/5
The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!
The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir - Alexandra Marzano-Lesnevich, 4/5
What I fell in love with about the law so many years ago was the way that in making a story, in making a neat narrative of events, it finds a beginning, and therefore cause. But I didn’t understand then that the law doesn’t find the beginning any more than it finds the truth. It creates a story. That story has a beginning. That story simplifies, and we call it truth.
Band Sinister - K.J. Charles, 5/5
I have not sacrificed my comfort in any way, except for my arm, which does feel just a little as though I will never use it again.
A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky Chambers, 5/5
You were good and brave and you tried.
The Autobiography of Cassandra, Princess & Prophetess of Troy - Ursule Molinaro, 4/5
Injustice has an independent life and does not always die together with its victims.
A Fashionable Indulgence - K.J. Charles, 3/5
Because I love you. And you were so beautiful when you let me love you.
The Good People - Hannah Kent, 5/5
Nora Leahy, what have you done? You drowned your daughter’s only son! The lad could neither speak nor stand. Did fairies take him, hand in hand? Or did you take him to the water, the only son of your only daughter?
I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree: A Memoir of a Schindler’s List Survivor - Laura Hillman, 4/5
“God, what have we done that you have forsaken us?”
The Henchmen of Zenda - K.J. Charles, 5/5
Love. Love. There’s a reason tennis players use that when they mean to say ‘nothing’.
The Tip of My Tongue - Trezza Azzopardi, 4/5
The people in the town all stood in their houses because they could see the sunlight flashing off the guardsmen’s blades and it looked like the sky was crying silvery tears, and they could hear the swish, swish, swish as their scythes cut through poor Nettle’s body and it sounded like the wind was wailing in sorrow. And all because one silly Lady from London thought it would be nice if she picked Nettle for her flower arrangement.
Odd Spirits - S.T. Gibson, 3/5
I think God knows better than us to separate the living from the dead.
The Green Hollow - Owen Sheers, 5/5
The way I see it, more and more, is that we’re all carbon, aren’t we?
Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum, 2/5
Your life has been wasted in this corner of the world. And now it’s too late, no boat will take you anywhere else.
The Craft of Love - E.E. Ottoman, 4/5
I have missed you so. I think of you always.
Hansen’s Children - Ognjen Spahić, 5/5
The world went still. The earth was covered by the death of one man.
Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung - Min Kym, 4/5
There was a world outside the violin, and a world inside the violin.
Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited - Elyse Schein & Paula Bernstein, 4/5
Why am I me and not someone else?
Women & Power: A Manifesto - Mary Beard, 5/5
When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.
Finding Baba Yaga - Jane Yolen, 3/5
Stories retold are stories remade.
Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident - Donnie Eichar, 4/5
There’s nothing new in dying now.
The Housekeeper - Suellen Dainty, 4/5
“I’m not a thing,” I said. “Last time I looked, I was still a person.”
Wreckage - Emily Bleeker, 3/5
She didn’t know yet that sometimes life makes different choices than you do.
Hush Little Baby - Joanna Barnard, 4/5
There’s a singular sort of pain that comes with loving someone in such a way that you know they can never return it.
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece - Annabel Pitcher, 4/5
Imagine a shadow without a person.
Incidents of Trespass - A.J. McKenna, 2/5
I am moved; I am shaken; the world stays as it was.
Warhorses of Letters - Robert Hudson & Marie Phillips, 4/5
On the subject of animal rights, I am forward thinking, because I am gay.
The Missing Girl - Jenny Quintana, 4/5
Grief is an unwelcome guest. The only thing you can do is let it live alongside.
The Woman in the Strongbox - Maureen O’Hagan, 3/5
Every year, another birthday, another choice not to call home.
Only Child - Rhiannon Navin, 4/5
The gap between when I was last with him and now keeps getting bigger, and I can’t stop it from happening.
Bury What We Cannot Take - Kirstin Chen, 5/5
What if a mistake was too grave to live with?
A Breath of Fresh Air - Amulya Malladi, 4/5
I didn’t know how I would live knowing this.
Cassandra’s Secret - Frances Garrood, 5/5
So quiet for such a dramatic thing. The end of someone’s life.
The Witch of Willow Hall - Hester Fox, 4/5
I am here, because it is where you are.
I Hope This Reaches Her in Time - R.H. Sin, 1/5
you were the emptiness i felt
The Story Keeper - Anna Mazzola, 5/5
When he looked into her eyes, he seemed to like what was there. She knew now that he had been looking only at himself, reflected.
A Land So Wild - Elyssa Warkentin, 5/5
I was wrong about writing our own story. We are not writing at all, but rather learning to read it in the darkness.
The No You Never Listened To - Meggie Royer, 3/5
Please know: Your skin was not a yes.
The Medium - Bonnie Dee, 3/5
All my life is a very long time to deny the truth.
The First Men in the Moon - H.G. Wells, 4/5
Sitting there in the midst of that useless moon gold, amidst the things of another world, I took count of all my life.
Something Human - A.J. Demas, 4/5
But it didn’t feel as if he had stopped being something, rather as if he had begun to be something else.
Mr Dickens and His Carol - Samantha Silva, 4/5
There was a knowing beyond thinking, beneath words.
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens, 5/5
“Why show me this, if I am past all hope?”
The Trauma Cleaner - Sarah Krasnostein, 4/5
Absence is a presence like dark matter and black holes.
Harry’s Last Stand - Harry Leslie Smith, 4/5
Before we are no more, we should aspire to do something that makes us a better human being.
Were I asked to pick a top ten, it would be as follows (in no particular order):
The Only Harmless Great Thing - Brooke Bolander
A Land So Wild - Elyssa Warkentin
The Illumination of Ursula Flight - Anna-Marie Crowhurst
Hansen’s Children - Ognjen Spahić
The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, volume 1 - Harriette Wilson
Trail of Broken Wings - Sejal Badani
Think of England - K.J. Charles
The Good People - Hannah Kent
Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture - ed. Roxane Gay
Next year, my aim is to focus less on quantity (i.e. I don’t need to read 140 to beat this year…) and try to read more weighty books; not necessarily in terms of page count, but in terms of subject matter and influence. I’d also like to read more works in translation and keep trying to read more works by Welsh authors. Let’s see how it goes.
