Best of 2018: Favorite Books
After two years of reading not quite as much, I dove back in in 2018, and I read 31 books by the end of the year. My three-year-old Kindle is still serving me well, and I checked out every single one of these books as ebooks from the library– for free! My strategy is to peruse best book lists and solicit recommendations and then put a bunch of books on hold. They then randomly become available over the next several months, and I just do my best to read them as they appear. Keeping the kindle on airplane mode allows you to keep books past their due date (although you can’t get any new books while you’re offline, of course). And I don’t always finish or read every book, but that’s completely alright. The ones I did finish this year are shown above in roughly descending order from favorite to least favorite.
Below are some mini-reviews for a few of my favorites. I always love talking about a good read, so feel free to ask me about any of the books you see above! You can also see my favorite reads from previous years here: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.
Notable Books From 2018
Heartbreaking. Profound. A terminally ill writer meditates on life. She’s only 39 and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you read Paul Kalanathi’s When Breath Becomes Air, this book falls very much in that tradition, although Riggs’ style is different, with more humor and lyricism. In a beautiful twist, I heard a Modern Love podcast episode about how Paul Kalanthi’s wife Lucy and Nina Riggs’ husband John found each other after their spouses passed, and they fell in love with each other. Life is crazy. Riggs is truly a wonderful writer and has an incredible facility for interweaving seemling disparate threads. Think: profound, hearbreaking, beautiful writing.
“I’m terrified. I’m fine. The world is changed and exactly as before.”
“‘How about a ‘fuck-it’ list?’ John suggested at some point. ‘Sort of the opposite. What can we just say ‘fuck it’ to and send splashing off into some sewer and not bother ourselves with anymore?’ The catch is: it turns out not many things. I want all of it—all the things to do with living—and I want them to keep feeling messy and confusing and even sometimes boring.”
2. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes became the darling of Silicon Valley when she was lauded as the next Steve Jobs. So how did they get so incredibly far, raising over a billion dollars from big-name venture capitalists, when it was all built on complete fraud? The depths of their deception and how they got there, step by step, plus the glorious takedown by several key whistleblowers and Carreyrou himself (journalist at the Wall Street Journal). It all makes for a riveting read. Think: Silicon Valley corruption, a satisfying takedown, brilliantly reported.
“A sociopath is often described as someone with little or no conscience. I’ll leave it to the psychologists to decide whether Holmes fits the clinical profile, but there’s no question that her moral compass was badly askew. I’m fairly certain she didn’t initially set out to defraud investors and put patients in harm’s way when she dropped out of Stanford fifteen years ago. By all accounts, she had a vision that she genuinely believed in and threw herself into realizing. But in her all-consuming quest to be the second coming of Steve Jobs amid the gold rush of the “unicorn” boom, there came a point when she stopped listening to sound advice and began to cut corners. Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference. If there was collateral damage on her way to riches and fame, so be it.”
Tim Harford’s writing is what all science writing aspires to be: clear, compelling descriptions of complex concepts. In Messy, Harford extolls the power of a little disorder to bring out creativity and resilience. He offers example after fascinating example of people who are able to harness messiness to extraordinary effect. This isn’t so much about being in a messy environment (so no, this isn’t really meant to fight Marie Kondo) as it is about questioning whether neatness and order is always inherently better. This book has permanently shifted my thinking. Think: eye opening, fascinating, inspiring, human stories.
“It’s human nature to want to improve, and this means that we tend to be instinctive hill-climbers. Whether we’re trying to master a hobby, learn a language, write an essay, or build a business, it’s natural to want every change to be a change for the better. But like the problem-solving algorithms, it’s easy to get stuck if we insist that we will never go downhill.”
“As long as you’re exploring the same old approaches, Brian Eno explains, ‘you get more and more competent at dealing with that place, and your clichés become increasingly clichéd.’ But when we are forced to start from somewhere new, the clichés can be replaced with moments of magic.”
“A third lesson is to constantly remind yourself of the benefits of tension, which can be easy to forget when all you want is a quiet life.”
This was an uplifting book when we all needed it. It was worth reading for the sheer joy of reliving the 2008 election alone. But Michelle Obama did a beautiful job of crafting a vulnerable, bright, and incredibly relatable memoir. Think: reflective, earnest, heartening.
“Almost deliberately, I’d numbed myself somewhat to my ambition, stepping back in moments when I’d normally step forward. I’m not sure anyone around me would have said I wasn’t doing enough, but I was always aware of everything I could have followed through on and didn’t. There were certain small-scale projects I chose not to take on. There were young employees whom I could have mentored better than I did. You hear all the time about the trade-offs of being a working mother. These were mine. If I’d once been someone who threw herself completely into every task, I was now more cautious, protective of my time, knowing I had to maintain enough energy for life at home.”
“Grief and resilience live together. I learned this not just once as First Lady but many times over. “
“He read all of it, seeing it as part of the responsibility that came with the oath. He had a hard and lonely job—the hardest and loneliest in the world, it often seemed to me—but he knew that he had an obligation to stay open, to shut nothing out. While the rest of us slept, he took down the fences and let everything inside.”
5. The Astonishing Color of After. This is a beautiful novel, technically young adult fiction, but I, for one, basked in this world of love and grief. Leigh comes home one day, and her mother has committed suicide. But as she grieves, Leigh realizes that her mother is not gone but is now a bird who brings Leigh gifts and takes her on a journey back to her mother’s homeland in Taiwan. Yes, it is hard to describe, but the mix of magic, mourning, colors, and relationships comes together in this impeccably crafted debut novel. Think: magical realism, teen years, grief, love, Asian American.
“We try so hard to make these little time capsules. Memories strung up just so, like holiday lights, casting the perfect glow in the perfect tones. But that picking and choosing what to look at, what to put on display—that’s not the true nature of remembering. Memory is a mean thing, slicing at you from the harshest angles, dipping your consciousness into the wrong colors again and again.”
“I remember her words: ‘Once you figure out what matters, you’ll figure out how to be brave.’ I think a part of me knew, even back then, that she was talking about you and me.”
Ah yes, the movie of the year, as far as I’m concerned. Knowing the movie was coming out in summer 2018, I read the entire trilogy in the beginning of the year. I had low expectations for Crazy Rich Asians (both the book and movie) and was pleasantly surprised in both cases. You can read my thoughts on the movie here. As for this book, it contains so much more than the movie, as one might expect, although the changes they made for the movie were all very smart ones. Still, it’s worth reading the novel to delve much farther into Astrid’s storyline and to be carried up and down the rollercoaster of Rachel’s journey into Nick’s family. I liked books two and three of the trilogy less and less though. Think: decadent, romantic comedy, Asian American.
“‘Well, Nicky, I hate to point out the obvious, but here’s this tiny bird that’s been trying to get through a huge bulletproof glass wall. A totally impossible situation. You tell me it’s been here every day pecking away persistently for ten minutes. Well, today the glass wall came down.’“
Do you see anything here that you loved or hated? Have you read any great books this year? I’m loading up my library holds with a whole new batch of books and would love to hear your recommendations!
