I read roughly 7,850 pages across 21 books this year. I hoped to read 25 books before the calendar turned over, but a couple of the books I picked up moved quite slowly, which reduced my final count. Oh well.
Anyway, here’s a series of short reviews for each of the books that made it on my list in 2018.
The Master & Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
A Russian writer, doctor, and playwright, Mikhail Bulgakov started writing this novel in 1928, but it wouldn’t be published until 1966, twenty-six years after his death. It’s supposed to be a 20th-century classic of Russian literature, one that depicts the greed, corruption, and paranoia of Soviet culture while also philosophizing about Jesus Christ, the Devil, and more.
A friend recommended the book to me when I mentioned wanting to read Russian literature without having to dig into Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Between the subject matter, the philosophizing, the seemingly illogical structure, and the highly lyrical writing style, the book should have been everything I wanted in a Russian novel.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. About halfway through the book, I realized I didn’t care about a single character in the novel and I had no real grip on what the author was trying to achieve. I wasn’t only lost in the plot, but I was completely apathetic as to what happened next.
I’m not going to suggest that this was a bad book. It’s respected by way too many people for me to suggest that. What I will say is that this book didn’t work for me. Your mileage may vary.
(As a quick aside, a recent article in The New Yorker confirmed that Bulgakov used morphine while drafting and redrafting The Master & Margarita, which would help to explain the hallucinogenic atmosphere of the novel).
God In Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, by Abraham Joshua Heschel
This was perhaps my favorite book of the year, and it is definitely my favorite religious book since The Jew in the Lotus, which I read in 2013.
This book, God in Search of Man, is a classic of Jewish theology, and it did more for my understanding of God than any book before it. I really want to sit down and do a deep dive on this book, but I don’t know if I’m worthy of it.
For the moment, let me just include a partial list of some the passages I highlighted while reading it:
“Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.”
“The Western man has to choose between the worship of God and the worship of nature…. [The Biblical Man] is more concerned to know the will of God who governed nature than to know the order of nature herself… To the Biblical mind in its radical amazement nature, order are not an answer but a problem: why is there order, being, at all?”
“The history of Western thought consists in the attempted fusion of ideas which in their origin are predominantly Hellenic, with ideas which in their origin are predominantly Semitic. … Plato lets Socrates ask: What is good? But Moses’ question was: What does God require of thee?”
“Doubt is an act in which the mind inspects its own ideas; wonder is an act in which the mind confronts the universe.”
“This…is the prophet’s thesis: there is a way of asking the great question which can only elicit an affirmative answer. What is the way?”
“God is not a scientific problem, and scientific methods are not capable of solving it… It is a problem that refers to what surpasses nature, to what lies beyond all things and all concepts.”
“Awe is the awareness of transcendental meaning.”
And there is so much more. Chapter titles such as “The Art of Being,” “The Problem of Evil,” “The Principle of Revelation,” “Freedom,” and “The Spirit of Judaism” give just a few hints into the kinds of thinking this book engenders. If you have any interest in the philosophy of religion or the deep meanings of Judaism, I can’t recommend this one enough.
God & Golem, Inc., by Norbert Weiner
This essay collection (roughly 100 pages) investigates the overlapping territory of cybernetics (a scientific field invented by the author) and religion, asking questions about the self-consciousness of machines, the ability of machines to create machines, and the ethical relationship between humanity and machines. The essays are based on some lectures Weiner gave at Yale and at other educational institutions.
As someone who has read widely on the topics of religion and artificial intelligence (at least from a lay-audience standpoint), let me save you some trouble: no one needs to read this book.
The general questions that Wiener investigates are relatively interesting, but his answers are muddy and his language is unattractive. You’re better off reading something written in the 21st century, when both the problems and the powers of artificial intelligence are better understood.
The Field Manual of the First Earth Battalion, by Jim Channon
“Any living thing (individual or aggregate) that’s not adapting, adjusting, learning, changing…is either dying or it’s dead.” Thus ends the opening memo in Jim Channon’s manifesto for a new kind of soldier and a new kind of army, one that is dedicated not to the nation, but to the Earth as a whole, where warrior monks and guerrilla gurus protect humanity and the planet using the force of their hearts, the force of their spirits, and the force of their arms.
If you’ve ever seen The Men Who Stare at Goats with George Clooney, then you’ve heard much of the wisdom you could find in the First Earth Battalion’s field manual, since the movie (and the book it was based on) investigates the reality of the battalion.
I read the manual because I taught a class in it this fall, and I needed to know of what I spoke. It’s a fast but fun read, and it inspires a lot of interesting thinking.
The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin
I loved this series! Written by a powerful African-American woman who is “so fucking sick” of genre fiction’s “white supremacist, neo-feudalist fantasies,” the Broken Earth trilogy imagines the events that will lead to the real, true end of the world (as in…the end of the planet itself). It’s a world with more than one species of people on it, and some of those species possess powers that can only be described as geological (as in…the science of the Earth’s physical structure).
I don’t want to give anything away because you really should read them, but I will say that as high-concept as the fiction might be, the fun of Jemisin’s novels come from the relationships between the characters and the deep dives she does on the themes of power, motherhood, fatherhood, and the wounds of generational trauma.
You should definitely pick them up.
Burr, by Gore Vidal
Like most Americans, I fell in love with Lin Manuel-Miranda’s interpretation of the life and times of Alexander Hamilton, but I also found myself curious about the life and times of the man who shot Alexander Hamilton, a man who also happened to become the only Vice President in history charged with treason.
Maybe it was true, as Manuel-Miranda wrote, that Aaron Burr believed in keeping his mouth shut — “Talk less,” he sings in Hamilton, “Smile more. Don’t let them know what you’re against or for” — but in Gore Vidal’s historical fiction about his life, Burr can’t help but talk.
The book tells the story of Burr’s official biographer, a young journalist who looks up to Burr but who has also been tasked by one of the Vice President’s enemies with discovering the truth behind a rumor: Did Burr father the up and coming presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, and if so, how can that information be used to stop Van Buren’s candidacy?
To solve the problem, the young journalist becomes Burr’s confidant, allowing him to write the true story of “the Colonel’s” life, one that will serve as a rejoinder against his legion of enemies.
Vidal’s works of historical fiction impressed me before, and this one was no different. He doesn’t always stick to the facts, but he provides an interesting perspective on some of the most important people in our country’s history. If you liked Hamilton, I think you owe it to yourself to read Burr.
Interpreting the Prophetic Word: An Introduction to the Prophetic Literature of the Old Testament, by Willem A. Van Gemeran
This book was as dry as its title would suggest. The author looks at “God’s Word [as it was] addressed to his people in a culturally and historically conditioned context.” He tries to place the prophets into the social world of Israel and to interpret their messages for both their historical meanings within their temporal context and for their ahistorical meanings across all of human time.
The first part of the book lays down its foundational principles and argues for its theoretical methods. The second part applies those principles and methods to each and every prophet in the Bible, from the minor prophets such Obadiah and Habakkuk to the major prophets of Isaiah and Ezekiel.
I ended up reading a lot of the Old Testament in support of this book. The author explains the basic premise of each prophet’s section of the Old Testament, but I found the need to read the Scripture directly if I wanted to have any real sense of what the author was talking about. The process made for a very dry, but ultimately rewarding reading experience.
Gorbachev: His Life & Times, by William Taubman
I picked up this book because I’d read so much about the times before and during the creation of the Soviet Union (Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky), but I’d read very little about the post-Stalin order. As the last leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev seemed the right person to focus on if I wanted to better understand the overall trajectory of the Community Party in Soviet Russia.
I learned that Premiere Gorbachev played the long game as a relatively progressive politician trying to make a career in a politically reactionary environment. He pushed when he could push, and he refrained from pushing when he needed to survive. I also learned that the post-Stalin Communist Party was a dangerous organization for building a career, especially if you were someone who wanted to change things.
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Written by the same women who wrote Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, this book is a memoir of growing up as a person whose mystical experiences inspired them to pursue “the truth about everything,” but only while doing so as a second-generation nonbeliever.
That paradox — being a nonbeliever who is searching for the object of belief — fuels the memoir, taking the reader on a philosophical retrospective through a young woman’s life.
It’s important to note that Ehrenreich wrote the memoir as an older woman. She discovered her journals from when she was a young girl and uses the occasion to look back on some of the unspoken motivations of her life.
I picked up the book because of some mystical experiences I had as an atheist, and it seemed to me that Ehrenreich asked herself many of the same questions I did. While I enjoyed reading the book, I can’t say it furthered my own journey. Such a great title though.
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins
Tom Robbins is my O.G. when it comes to my favorite writers. A friend of mine lent me one of his books when I was in ninth grade — I can still remember standing in the second-floor hallway of my high school as she leaned into her locker and retrieved the book for me; it was Skinny Legs & All, and she told me that as she looked through it, all she could think about was how much I would love it…and she was absolutely right.
There are certain people in our lives who make us into the adults we are. Our parents play a significant role, of course (hopefully for the good), as do our siblings, friends, neighbors, and teachers. But there’s also the people out there in the culture: the musicians, the film directors, the writers — artists who shape our way of seeing and being.
I’ve had many influences in my life, as we all have, but in terms of the influences that come from out there, few made as significant an impact as Tom Robbins. He showed me what it means to love language, to love radical freedom, and to encounter the unknown with a sense of curiosity rather than fear.
Because of my relationship with Mr. Robbins, I try to revisit his works every couple of years. I’m happy to say that this year, he didn’t disappoint.
Doc, by Mary Doria Russell
After reading Fierce Invalids…, I needed another piece of fiction to keep my palate cleansed as I continued to chew on the very dry, but very interesting Interpreting the Prophetic Word. I decided I didn’t want a science-fiction or fantasy novel, but I also didn’t want another contemporary story. I thought, “How about a Western?” and then went off looking for something good.
Somehow, I stumbled across Doc. I’d read a duology by Mary Doria Russell a few years back, a two books series — The Sparrow and Children of God — that examined the existence of alien life through a religious lens, and I thoroughly enjoyed her writing. And now here she was with a piece of historical fiction focused on Doc Holiday, one of my favorite characters in America’s western mythologies.
Like most people my age, about all I knew of Doc Holiday I learned from Val Kilmer’s incredible performance in Tombstone, but that was enough to get me hooked. Russell’s Holiday fit that depiction well, but it deepened my understanding of how he became who he became. I can’t speak to the accuracy of the portrayal, but I can say that I enjoyed the book. If you like Westerns (and I usually don’t), this one will do you well.
Apparently, there’s a sequel entitled Epitaph that focuses more on Wyatt Earp and the events at the O.K. Corral. I haven’t read that one yet, but now that I know it exists, I’ve added it to my list of “to reads.”
Jung for Beginners, by Joe Platania
I read this introductory book to help prepare for a class I’m teaching this quarter on the psychologist, Carl Jung. I’d read several of Jung’s essays, as well as many second- and third-hand discussions of Jung’s theories, but if I was going to introduce him to my high school students, I wanted to have a better sense of who he was, what he believed, and how he influenced the culture as we know it today.
If you have some of the same curiosities about Mr. Jung, let me say clearly: this book is not the one for you.
I’ve read a bunch from the “for beginners” series of books, and while all of them naturally dumb down the subject, some of them (such as this one) don’t dumb them down enough, creating a reading experience that makes the beginner want to run away from all the things they were originally curious about.
If you want an introduction to Jung, you’re better off reading Joseph Campbell.
Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century, by Robert Charles Wilson
This book is all about the premise: something happens, and instantaneously, the entire continent of Europe transforms into an unpeopled wilderness with flora and fauna that have clearly evolved over millennia, suggesting an alternate dimension has somehow come into contact with our own.
Meanwhile, all the people and cities and everything else that had existed in Europe is now…gone, leading to a twentieth-century land grab that rivals anything from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.
The story itself — the characters, the plot, the internal and external conflicts — they were enjoyable enough, but this one, this was all about the premise.
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros, by George R.R. Martin, Elio Garcia, Jr., and Linda Antonsson
Have you ever sat down to read a history an entire world? This was my second. The first was Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. Outside of The Bible, there’s no other book to compare this to.
Built around the conceit that one of the maesters is compiling a history of the world to give to King Tommen, The World of Ice & Fire covers the history of Westeros and Essos from the Dawn Age to the openings events depicted in A Game of Thrones. It pays special attention to the Targaryens, covering the entire history of their reign, from their survival of the Doom of Valyria to their seeming end after Robert’s Rebellion, but it also provides an overview of every major house in Westeros, a scattered history of the First Men and the Children, and a collection of rumors and myths about the forgotten places of the world, the lands where Martin’s main narrative fails to take the reader.
I’ll only recommend this one for the die hard fans of A Song of Ice & Fire, but I do, in fact, recommend it.
Half A King, by Joe Abercrombie
In 2016, I read and enjoyed Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy. It felt like George R.R. Martin, without the weight of an entire world resting on its shoulders. Like Martin’s, Abercrombie’s characters were entertaining, the plot moved fast, and the action and violence felt real and visceral.
Having finished The World of Ice & Fire, I wanted to get lost in another fantasy world but not one as all-pervasive as Westeros. I figured I’d give another of Abercrombie’s trilogies a try.
Half A King tells the story of a young boy, the second born son of a hyper-masculine king. The boy doesn’t like to fight or hunt, so he’s been given over to what amounts to a society of academic monks who serve as advisors to the various leaders of the world. Unfortunately for him, his father and brother are killed at the start of the novel, and the fate of the kingdom lies with him.
Hijinks ensue.
This is a full-on young adult novel, and while that isn’t always a turn off for me, it was in this case. While I enjoyed it enough to finish the book, I did not (and will not) pick up the second book in the trilogy.
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
If you read books, then you’ve probably heard of this one. It won the 2017 Man Booker Prize, as well as a bunch of other literary prizes.
I tend to avoid prizewinning novels (it’s the curmudgeon in me), but I’m glad I picked this one up because it is downright fantastic.
Everything about it impressed me: the structure, the research, the themes, the historical depiction of Abraham Lincoln, the spiritual investigations, everything.
The book (I hesitate to call it a novel) tells the story of the death of Lincoln’s third son, Willie. Most of the book takes place during one evening when the President comes to visit his son’s tomb. The narrators are the spirits that “haunt” the cemetery, all of them caught in the realm between death and rebirth, a state the Buddhists call “the bardo.”
The mystical setting for the novel makes it that much greater, giving the reader the opportunity to experience the lives of close to a dozen of the characters who haunt the bardo, some of whom were slaves, some of whom were rich, and some of whom can position themselves in such a way as to read the President’s soul.
It really is a great book.
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And that’s it. Those are the twenty-one books I read in 2018. All told, we’re talking roughly 7,850 pages worth of fantasy, history, psychology, and religion.
Not to mention way too many articles about Donald Trump’s dumpster fire of a presidency.
God damn it, 2018.