2018 Books
| Title | Author | Date Finished | Rating | Publisher | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wild Seed (Patternmaster, #1) | Octavia E. Butler | 2018/12/30 | 5 | Warner Books, 2001 | Read My Notes |
| Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment | Yanis Varoufakis | 2018/12/21 | 4 | Vintage Digital, 2017 | Read My Notes |
| The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories | Edited by Ann VanderMeer, Jeff VanderMeer, Various Authors | 2018/12/09 | 5 | Corvus, 2010 | Read My Notes |
| It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics | David Faris | 2018/11/05 | 5 | Melville House, 2018 | Read My Notes |
| Saga, Volume 9 | Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples | 2018/11/03 | 4 | Image Comics, 2018 | A good, but not great continuation of the series, but featuring some shocking character deaths that make it pretty essential. Why did Ponk Konk have to die? |
| Come Closer | Sara Gran | 2018/10/04 | 4 | Berkley Trade, 2006 | Read My Notes |
| The Shining Girls | Lauren Beukes | 2018/10/01 | 4 | Mulholland Books, 2013 | Read My Notes |
| Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World, #1) | Rebecca Roanhorse | 2018/09/17 | 4 | Saga Press, 2018 | Read My Notes |
| Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory | Mike Davis | 2018/08/13 | 5 | Verso, 2018 | Read My Notes |
| Akata Witch (The Nsibidi Scripts, #1) | Nnedi Okorafor | 2018/08/03 | 4 | Viking Children’s, 2011 | Read My Notes |
| The Lathe of Heaven | Ursula K. Le Guin | 2018/07/23 | 4 | Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2003 | A strange and contemplative novel about dreams, power, and human connection. I found myself thinking about the conversations between Orr and Haber. They talk about changing the world, even for the better, and whether or not it’s possible, realistic, or healthy to plan a new world from scratch. There’s a complex, nuanced politics here that as with the rest of Leguin’s writing, forces us to confront ourselves both as actors in the world, and also people caught up in social networks that we didn’t create but have to respond to. |
| Newton’s Wake | Ken MacLeod | 2018/07/09 | 4 | Tor Science Fiction, 2005 | Read My Notes |
| Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment (City Lights Open Media) | Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz | 2018/06/24 | 3 | City Lights Publishers, 2018 | Read My Notes |
| Howard the Duck, Vol. 1: Duck Hunt | Chip Zdarsky, Joe Quiñones | 2018/06/23 | 4 | Marvel, 2016 | Funny, pomo, and self-consciously weird. The only problem I had is that I purchased Vol. 1, but it seems that Vol. 0 is where the story starts, so you kind of jump right into something already in progress. Still, Chip Zdarsky’s art and dialog are wonderfully engaging, silly, and laugh-out-loud funny, so even with half the story missing, I still had a great old time. |
| The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Danielle Cain, #1) | Margaret Killjoy | 2018/06/20 | 4 | Tor.com, 2017 | Man, was this fun. A salty piece of anarchist weird-fiction, addressing issues of power, gender, magic, and freedom. Danielle is traveler and anarchist wandering in the United States. She comes to a squat-town called Freedom, Iowa, where an anarchist community has been operating for a while. She’s seeking information about the death of her friend Clay, but what she finds is a community that brought for a monster to stop another one. This is a short book, but beautifully written, and generally well paced–though it has a very heavy third act. I was also really taken with the combination of joy and dystopia that Killjoy has painted. She has given us a tour of a fascinating world and is clearly planning to show us more of it in subsequent books. |
| Winter Tide (The Innsmouth Legacy, #1) | Ruthanna Emrys | 2018/06/17 | 4 | Tordotcom, 2017 | Read My Notes |
| Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 | W.E.B. Du Bois, David Levering Lewis | 2018/06/08 | 5 | Free Press, 1998 | Read My Notes |
| Bitch Planet, Vol. 2: President Bitch | Kelly Sue DeConnick, Taki Soma, Valentine De Landro | 2018/05/22 | 5 | Image Comics, 2017 | For some reason, I found the writing and art much more engaging that the first volume, and the first volume was already pretty great. |
| I Kill Giants | J.M. Ken Niimura, Joe Kelly | 2018/05/09 | 5 | Image Comics, 2009 | A strange, sweet, and moving Graphic Novel about tragedy, imagination, and the bravery of children. Also magical hammers and legendary giants. I audibly laughed and cheered more than once, and by the end had tears in my eyes. It’s a really great piece of literature that can bring out such a wide range of deep emotion. |
| A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home | Jason Arnopp | 2018/05/04 | 2 | Retribution Books, 2012 | An epistolary ghost story with some genuinely creepy moments, but ultimately poorly paced, organized and written. |
| The Book of Jhereg (Vlad Taltos, #1-3) | Steven Brust | 2018/04/16 | 4 | Ace, 1999 | Read My Notes |
| Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums | Franklin D. Vagnone, Deborah E. Ryan, Gretchen Sorin | 2018/04/11 | 4 | Left Coast Press, 2015 | Read My Notes |
| Unseaming | Mike Allen, Laird Barron | 2018/03/29 | 3 | Antimatter Press, 2014 | A good collection of creepy short stories, where the author is trying on a lot of different styles. Lovecraft is an obvious reference point, but Button Bin and Monster echo Clive Barker’s interest in sensations, bodies and flesh, and there are other stories that draw on Ligottian philosophizing. Her acres of pastoral playground is a standout–a Lovecraftian story of love and sacrifice buried underneath a seemingly mundane but weird story of domestic life. Condolences, though not particularly scary, has a really affecting quality, focusing as it does on a person in the aftermath of the death of a loved one, and how horror and monstrosity can become personifications of despair. |
| Citizen Jack | Sam Humphries, Tommy Patterson | 2018/03/27 | 4 | Image Comics, 2016 | “This book would be funny as hell if it weren’t exactly what just happened in the United States in 2016. Actually, it’s still incredibly funny. The plot is simple: A shlubby loser living in Minnesota makes a deal with a demon to become the President of the United States. But what makes this book so great are the little bizarre touches–the silly media horse-race jargon; an animate, talking dolphin pundit; a major political campaign devoted to going to war with children. The whole book is a fractured mirror of American politics, where the media cares more about flash than substance, candidates focus on ““electability”” instead of issues, and violence and coarseness win out over reason and logic. The art is wild and almost hallucinogenic in nature, and perfectly compliments the surreal and creepy story. " |
| Into the Drowning Deep (Rolling in the Deep, #1) | Mira Grant | 2018/03/21 | 3 | Orbit, 2017 | Read My Notes |
| The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness | Michelle Alexander | 2018/03/08 | 5 | The New Press Inc., 2010 | A brilliant, unsparing book about the civil rights challenge of our time–ending racially structured Mass incarceration.What I loved most about the book was how clearly and unequivocally Alexander made her case. Unlike lots of contemporary writing about race, the prose is not dense or complex. Instead, Alexander lays out the case for de-carceration with facts, historical context, and unadorned prose. Her conclusion becomes unavoidable. |
| The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance, #1) | N.K. Jemisin | 2018/02/26 | 5 | Hachette Book Group Orbit, 2010 | A smart, moving novel about old gods, slavery, family, and love. |
| Straight: The Surprisingly Short History Of Heterosexuality | Hanne Blank | 2018/02/22 | 4 | Beacon Press, 2012 | Read My Notes |
| All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) | Martha Wells | 2018/02/09 | 5 | Tor.com, 2017 | Read My Notes |
| Annihilation | Jeff VanderMeer | 2018/02/02 | 5 | Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014 | Read My Notes |
| How to Teach Adults - Supporter Edition | Dan Spalding | 2018/02/01 | 5 | Teachrdan, 2013 | A clarion call for active and activist teaching and learning, and though pitched at teaching adults, is actually useful in lots of different scenarios (college teaching, workshops, planning sessions, etc…)It’s very much a practical book, but with lots of good ideas, some of which I knew and have tried, others of which are completely new and very exciting, if a bit scary. A really great for anyone interested in making education, and making education better. |
| The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares | Joyce Carol Oates | 2018/01/27 | 4 | Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2011 | An unsettling collection of short fiction, largely themed around how people behave when faced with evil. Many of the stories focused around individuals who face evil in others, while a few center attention on evil people as characters and explore how they change and warp the world around them. Oates is writing on the edges of weird fiction, with some stories (nobody knows my name, a hole in the head) referencing some bizarre or supernatural force. Other stories are about the evil that men do (especially Beersheeba and Death Cup), and still others are just about people in crisis (Corn Maiden, helping hands) and how they respond under pressure. However, Oates' lyrical prose and almost claustrophobic focus on peoples minds and thoughts makes even the most materialist stories feel strange, alien, and disturbing. I really enjoyed the collection. |
| Home (Binti, #2) | Nnedi Okorafor, Carla Battaller Estruch | 2018/01/22 | 4 | Tor.com, 2017 | Read My Notes |
| All Yesterdays' Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print, 1966-1971 | Clinton Heylin | 2018/01/16 | 4 | Da Capo Press, 2006 | Read My Notes |
| Blindsight (Firefall, #1) | Peter Watts | 2018/01/08 | 5 | Tor Books, 2006 | Read My Notes |
| The Other Side of the Mountain | Michel Bernanos, Elaine P. Halperin | 2018/12/10 | 5 | Cherokee Publishing Company (GA), 2007 | |
| Tainaron: Mail from Another City | Leena Krohn, Hildi Hawkins, Inari Krohn | 2018/12/04 | 4 | Prime Books, 2006 |
Previous years' lists:
currently reading, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2000s, 1990s
