I finished 34 books in 2018, which is better than I did in 2017, but still nowhere near the 51 books (and more than 17,000 pages) I read in 2016. I do love the annual stats you get from Goodreads, though I always need to add some additional stats. I read books from 18 countries besides the US last year (Senegal, Mauritius, Spain, Lebanon, Belgium, Equatorial Guinea, Australia, Italy, Portugal, England, the Netherlands, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Sudan, Scotland, Korea, Canada, and Japan), as well as two books that are sort of nationless: a Catalan novel and a novel set on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. I read 16 books written by women, which is quite possibly the closest I've come to a 50/50 ratio in my reading life. With that, here is the list:
Your Face Tomorrow, Volume III, by Javier Marías
Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegg
Ties, by Domenico Starnone
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Sweetbitter, by Stephanie Danler
A Broken Mirror, by Mercè Rodoreda
Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner
The Wedding Date, by Jasmine Guillory
About Grace, by Anthony Doerr
Perma Red, by Debra Magpie Earling
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
Spring Snow, by Yukio Mishima
Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin
Still Life, by Louise Penny
Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih
The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks
In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez
Loquela, by Carlos Labbé
The Consequences, by Niña Weijers
The Golden Spur, by Dawn Powell
Sepharad, by Antonio Muñoz Molina
The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones
Loving, by Henry Green
Siracusa, by Delia Ephron
The Stone Raft, by José Saramago
Christ Stopped at Eboli, by Carlo Levi
Involuntary Witness, by Gianrico Carofiglio
City of Crows, by Chris Womersly
By Night the Mountain Burns, by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
War and Turpentine, by Stefan Hertmans
An Unnecessary Woman, by Rabih Alameddine
The Last Brother, by Nathacha Appanah
God's Bits of Wood, by Ousmane Sembène
As longtime readers (ha) know, I always pick a favorite. For 2018, I'm not sure I can settle on just one. I read A Broken Mirror early in the year and when I had finished it, I thought: "That was the one; I won't read a better book this year." But then, over the summer, I picked up a copy of Sepharad at a thrift store in LA. I had never heard of it or its author, but I read the first paragraph (my usual method of deciding whether to read a book) and it passed the test. I read it soon after and it was so beautiful, and comprehensive, and it moved me to tears on the subway more than once.
The third contender for my favorite book of 2018 is Christ Stopped at Eboli. I bought and read this in preparation for a trip I took to Calabria and Basilicata in October. I wrote about it here after reading it, but before taking my trip. I had no idea then how glad I would be that I had read it when I got to Basilicata. The morning after I arrived in Lamezia Terme, I plugged Aliano into the GPS in my car and drove straight to the town where Carlo Levi was a prisoner of the fascist government in 1935. I visited Levi's tomb and the many sights in the town dedicated to him and had a wonderful lunch. After lunch, assuming the Carlo Levi tourism portion of my trip was over, I drove on to Matera, where I had booked a room for two nights. As it turned out, Carlo Levi was all over Matera. It started when I checked into my hotel and mentioned to the woman at reception that I had read his book. She was surprised and delighted, and directed me to the Palazzo Lanfranchi, where she told me they had a painting of Levi's. I visited the museum that evening and, as it turned out, it is home to a very large painting he did called Lucania '61, as well as the photos of the people in Matera that were used as source material. In addition, the museum had a whole room of Levi's paintings some from before his captivity and several from his time as a prisoner in Aliano, and which he described painting in Christ Stopped at Eboli. There were paintings of children from the village and of his housekeeper and of the Fossa del Bersagliere, the canyon in Aliano I had visited that same morning. The next day, I went to the Casa Noha, a cave home that was turned into a center for the history of Matera. The exhibit at Casa Noha consists of a series of films and after the film covered the ancient history of the town and conditions in the early 20th century, it said something to the effect of, "Everything changed for Matera when Carlo Levi published Christ Stopped at Eboli..." and went on to talk about him and the book at length. It turns out that Levi's book is what initially draw widespread attention to the poor living conditions of the people in Matera and he has since become something of a local hero. (There is also a major street named after him in town.) Seeing how Levi was turning out not to be one small stop but rather a recurring theme of my trip, I decided to take a detour on the day I was leaving Matera and visit Grassano, the other town where he was held captive. Grassano is bigger than Aliano, and less quaint, and it has none of the magic of Matera (few places do). It felt like a regular, somewhat run down and not very prosperous, town. They have a small center devoted to Levi (which was unfortunately closed when I arrived) and a plaque in a nearby square dedicated to him. After stopping to see these two sights, I asked some friendly locals for directions to the post office (I was happy that some of my friends received postcards postmarked from Grassano), stopped in at the town's indoor market, and then proceeded on my drive to the stunning twin villages of Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa. Grassano was unremarkable, but I was actually all the more glad I went there for that reason.
If three favorite books are not enough, I also recommend By Night the Mountain Burns (which probably performed best on the "first paragraph test" of any book I read this year and which really made me want to visit the remote Annobón island of Equatorial Guinea), The Consequences (maybe not for everyone, but a particular must-read for any fans of Bas Jan Ader), The Stone Raft, War and Turpentine, In the Time of the Butterflies, and Pachinko.
