I'm a bit out of practice when it comes to book blogging. This has been a hard year; lots of illness, a surgery... so I thought it best to let my writing lie fallow for a little while. So, while snow recrusts in the unexpected March cold, I find myself back at my keys to comment on my favorite books from the year left behind!
1. The Peregrine - lovely, relevant, and certain to make you want to ramble the countryside with your eyes on the sky!
2. The Uncommon Reader - slim, quick, and a nice reminder that reading may well turn a woman's mind!
3. Dept. of Speculation - a short tome about a dissolving relationship. I liked it not for the subject but because I could so thoroughly believe in and sympathize with the narrator's thoughts.
4. The Daughter of Time - Who doesn't love a good (very old) mystery? This one makes you feel one with the investigator; he's on his back because of an injury and the reader is on his or her back solving alongside him.
5. The Enchanted - set in a prison, this one got me to sympathize with characters I usually would not have granted sympathy, and I think that was the lesson. There is goodness in the dark and beauty (like golden horses) even in the worst places.
6. The Guest Cat - there is probably a Japanese lesson in temporality in this one (life is fleeting) and I didn't get it, just as I won't eat the foods that help one to live to be 100. What I got from this one was that we need other creatures; they add depth to our lives. Hug your cats, people!
7. The Lightkeepers - one of the bleakest of the lot, but I loved it! I never saw the twists coming and it imposed a naturalist's objectivity on people.
8. Lords and Ladies - My affection for Sir Terry Pratchett grows year by year, but this one makes the list above his other titles because it had so much emotion. I teared up for a bit and not many humorous titles can do that!
9. The Outsider - This one has received a mixed reception among King fans, but it allowed me to experience something my students sometimes talk about. They tell me what it's like (sometimes) to be African American or an immigrant or homosexual and to find yourself represented in a book for the first time. Holly Gibney felt like a representation of me and it was a delight to spend time with her (and Detective Anderson... and even the Outsider). I know I'll be re-reading it for a long time to come.
10. Radioactive - This book was surprising on many levels. It's about the hard sciences, which aren't my area. It gives attention to women in a field where we're still lacking. But it goes beyond that with its illustrations (though illustration seems to small a thing to describe them, really). It's a wonderful, troubling work about the price we pay for knowledge.
11. Soul of the White Ant - Even married to an entomologist, I wouldn't have predicted that one of my favorite books of the year would be about termites. But the writing is beautiful, the author's passion is so evident, and the sad ending to his life makes it all so awful somehow...
12. Unseen Attraction - This one was a fun rainy day read that I picked up when it became .99 on Google Play. The topic was straight out of my dissertation - Victorian taxidermy! - so it became a very cozy read for me, despite the mystery in it.
13. The Wife between Us - Mystery is a newer genre for me and this one made the list because nothing I predicted was correct at all. I had so much fun being wrong that I immediately ordered a copy for my mom so she could read it too!
So, better late than never, these are the gems of 2018! I'll follow up with the books I wish I had avoided!
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