The Best of 2018

As 2018 gives way to 2019, it's time to take stock of the books that will stay with me into the new year. My resolution a year ago was to read more broadly, of ideas, of cultures, of places, and this I managed to do. From the Palestinian diaspora to America's opioid epidemic, my reading delved into subject matter I previously knew little of. I'll keep the same resolution for 2019.

More than previous years, my reading was also shaped by the contours of life. I read more than one work on neuroscience, and, not unrelated, an equal number on the impacts of the foods we eat on the workings of that most mysterious organ. Tony Danza's I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had, his memoir about teaching for a year at an inner city school, resonated with me in light of our decision to send our son to an urban school, rather than our suburban home district - and the ways in which my eyes, too, have been opened by the circumstances such schools face.

Out of the 70ish books I read this year, here are the ones I loved best:
 
Over the years, some of my favorite memoirs have been those of Edmund Love, the Gilbreths, and James Herriot (all of whom lived lives so rich they cannot be contained in a single volume). Mary MacLeod's Call the Nurse and Nurse, Come You Here! are works of this same, fine tradition. Each is steeped in the time and, especially, the place (the Shetland Islands) where MacLeod lived; these are easily the most delightful memoirs I read this year.

 As regards general non-fiction, three books stand out to me:  
Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island;
The Lost City of the Monkey God;
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates   

Chesapeake Requiem remains the most important, thought-provoking work I have read this year. Earl Swift so captures the culture, contradictions, and history of a people and a place, and in doing so brings to the fore all of the issues dividing this country so deeply today.

In a similar way, Lost City of the Monkey God poses crucial questions about the ownership of culture and history, what we know versus what we think we know, and also the limits of science, knowledge, and medicine in the face of the vast and the unknowable.

As for Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates, it's easily the most important volume on history I've read since Hero, another work that so eloquently lays out how the world's problems are not new and are perhaps more intractable that any currently-powerful individual (whenever "current" may be) would like to believe. This, too, is a story of cultural clash and the limits to reconciling cultures across such a vast schism.

For the first time, the fiction I read surpassed the non-fiction, and the year was rich was soaring, multi-generational works whose characters, plots, and prose captivated me. These five books rose to the top:

Pachinko;
What We Were Promised;
Tai-Pan; 
A Gentleman in Moscow;
Last Bus to Wisdom

The first three are set in Asia, though at varying times and in varying places, from early twentieth century Korea and Japan (Pachinko) to modern-day Shanghai (What We Were Promised), to the founding of Hong Kong (Tai-Pan); given my affinity for both history and Asia, it's not surprising they rose to the top, although plenty of Asian-centered books did not. What sets these apart is the stories they tell, the characters the authors bring to life, and the language that evokes time and place: from beginning to end, these works feel authentic.

A Gentleman in Moscow is more subtle, occurring entirely within the confines of a single hotel across the birth, rise, and decline of the Soviet Union. Through it all, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, Recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club retains his loyalty to the Russia or yore.

Of all the fiction I read, though, it is Last Bus to Wisdom that left the most lasting impression on me, whose characters reached through the pages, whose words I could hear and faces I could see. I am with Donal and Herman the German yet as they ride that last bus.