The best books I read in 2018
My target for 2018 was to read 40 books; in late October I revised this after reading about Stephen King’s reading habits in his book On Writing to a “long target” of 45. In the end I managed to get to 41, which while exceeding the original was definitely not as much as I could’ve conceivable done. My only excuse is that some shorter works I read in late November and early December dragged much more than I had expected, particularly Isherwood’s A Single Man, which I ultimately couldn’t finish despite its mere 152 page length, lucid prose, and a protagonist I genuinely empathised with.
King’s habit of reading some 70–80 books a year (say an average of 75 per year, meaning an average of 6.25 books a month, or one every 4.9 days) is an admirable goal (he describes himself as a “slow reader”), but given that my reading speed is still relatively poor (I’m sure I was better in the past, much better, less distractions, less worries, less pointless introspection taking my eyes off the page), I feel the most achievable target for the coming year is at least 60. I’m also going to divide up the year into books by length: for the first four months I will read books that are 300 pages in length or longer; in the second period, I will aim to read books between 200 and 300 pages in length; and for the final period I will read books under 200 pages. I cannot possibly keep this schedule absolute; something will likely come up that will require reading that is not in the temporal-leaf specifications. But at the very least I hope to make myself read longer works that require more commitment, improving my textual memory in the process.
I also aim only to read classics, that is, books and authors of high critical and popular regard. They could be on the Time 100 Best Novels list or one of the Worlds Without End lists, or nominated for a respected award, but they have to have had some level of cultural influence. Cult classics are acceptable, but nothing obscure. They can be contemporary as well, but they have to have had some impact when published.
This year I read twenty novels (two of them re-reads), nine collections of short stories, five books of poetry, three plays (two in one volume), three books of non-fiction (a record low I think), and one anthology. Bukowski for the second year in a row “won” as the most read with eight books, with only Vonnegut coming anywhere close with four. With this year I have read all of Bukowski’s novels, and all of the short story collections published in his lifetime (with the exception of a couple of mixed poetry/story collections).
However, without any plan in mind, horror and thriller “won” in terms of genre, with twelve works falling into those categories (some like Bloch’s Psycho and Hubbard’s Fear straddling the two, making a “union” of sorts necessary). Given what I want to write myself in terms of fiction, I should have foreseen this bias, but my intent next year is to read one “literary” work for every “genre” work (whether that be speculative, crime, etc.).
Now, on to the “awards”:
Best Novel: The Businessman: A Tale of Terror by Thomas M. Disch.
This was even more difficult than last year’s decision between Mother Night and Ask the Dust (and in fact I may have been wrong), but I ultimately figured it out: Goldman’s Marathan Man and Levin’s The Boys from Brazil, while being great novels that I enjoyed and read smoothly, have structural issues; the former is better written, but has an over-plotted structure (the first hundred pages is something of a blow-out, despite remaining entertaining); the latter has a tighter structure, while simply not having asgood a prose style.
This left Matheson’s I Am Legend and Disch’s The Businessman, which while some people (“scum-snobs” that is) might deride as “genre” novels, had a deeper level of psychological, philosophical, and (particularly in Disch’s case) theological intrigue. The former had a great moment where Robert Neville, the stake-toting vampire hunter of the post-apocalypse, has a deeply Nietzschean observation on the nature of morality early on in the book that stood out for me, while the depictions of his loneliness and existential angst really made their mark. I also liked how Matheson’s universe had its own unique science of biology and pathology to explain the vampirism in believable terms (the guy clearly did his medical research). However, Disch goes over similar and related themes while also bringing in poetry, demonology, free will, desert, psychopathology, religious, sexual, and social satire, and lots and lots of black humour. Disch creates not only a universe, but an entire metaphysics. I’ve already written a review for WWE which goes over the best of it (hopefully without any spoilers).
Of the four, Goldman is definitely the best prose stylist, but it’s Disch’s novel that brings all the best elements together. It’s a smooth and enjoyable read, while not shying away from the unpleasant and disturbing.
Best Non-Fiction Book: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.
You might say it’s unfair to wager this against a fifty year-old book of politico-historical essays by a twenty-five year-dead academic, being the only other non-fiction book on the list, but King’s is a must read for any hopeful writer of fiction.
The best or most enjoyable parts may actually be the memoir in the first section and the appendices at the back where he charts his earliest childhood memories of fear and terror, goes through his discovery of story-telling, writing his first stories, meeting his wife, his first novel, his descent into alcoholism and eventual salvation, and concluding with a detailed account of his 1999 accident (which actually happened as he was composing the book).
The middle section is a “Writer’s Toolbox” that goes through basic elements of composition such as grammar and dialogue construction, but also warns strongly against what he calls “adverbed speech”, and adverbs in general.
The third section goes over more general writing advice, such as how much to write, what your schedule should look like, how you should go about editing (one appendix containing an example of King self-editing that is worth a close look), along with some writing anecdotes.
The best advice includes the formula “Second Draft = First Draft minus 10%” (apparently communicated to him by Algis Budrys), and that you should have a private, isolated area in which to do your daily writing (I’m going to buy a new laptop and put it to good use in the spare room as soon as I can).
The only problem I have with these sections is that there often is not a clear distinction between the descriptive and the prescriptive parts, but if you approach the book with a properly critical mind, you’ll get a great deal out of it. I can’t think of a book which could give you better guidance, and in such a relatively clear way.
Best Poetry Book: Ariel by Sylvia Plath.
I read or listened to a great deal of poetry this year, but only completed five books cover-to-cover. Of those, I can say that Plath’s posthumous volume Ariel definitely had the biggest effect.
Her verses glide along as they deal with the darkest elements of the human psyche. Her imagery is both blunt and yet also surrounded by a fog of confusion, dull rage, fear, and guilt. A sense of injustice at the modern world extends beyond any basic feminist takes on patriarchy (while of course still a huge part of it) towards a lamentation of the existential condition of humanity itself.
Plath often seems to be asking: what are we going to do with ourselves? Her own personal answer was infamously tragic, but in a world of renewed social chaos, she is still extremely relevant in her expression of moods and tones.
Best Short Story Collection: Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison.
Of the nine collections I read this year, six were written by two men, Charles Bukowski and Harlan Ellison (whom we sadly lost this year), two writers who couldn’t be more different from each other, and yet were still deeply intertwined with each other through that great cultural revolution of the mid-to-late 20th century, becoming counter-cultural icons themselves.
But for me, Ellison wins out. Bukowksi in his stories covers the same old ground — sometimes poignantly and hilariously, but often enough it’s becoming a bit of a drag to be honest — whereas Ellison in this collection explores the idea of gods in the modern world, but mainly not religious or traditional gods, but gods of machines, of cities, of conurbs, of highways, of total war, and of galactic-level suffering. Much of the work sits in the horror-fantasy category, but it also extends to science fiction and surrealism, even frequently touching on the forms of ‘dirty realism’ (that link with his contemporary Bukowski). Stand outs include: “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” (a disturbing and graphic story of sexual violence), “O Ye of Little Faith” (a dark tale about faith and lack thereof), “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” (a black comedy about not trusting ghosts), “Corpse” (about not tempting the “new gods” with insincerity), and the title story “The Deathbird” (a bizarrely but ingeniously structured parable drawing on the Genesis creation myth, mixing it up with intelligent reptiles, the apocalypse, a senile Jehovah, a sad dog story, and one man’s search for redemption).
Deathbird Stories could have been the perfect collection of speculative fiction stories only if a few more of the repetitive (“repetitive” too closely in theme and form that is) and less well-written stories had been removed, namely “Bleeding Stones” (amusing, but literally just a means to showcase pollution-enlivened stone gargoyles killing masses of people in inventive ways), “At the Mouse Circus” (although often involving surreality in his works, as a literary surrealist Ellison has much left to be desired), “Ernest and the Machine God” (same themes, done better earlier in the book), and “Rock God” (ditto). But as it stands, it is still a masterpiece, and as defining of our time as it was in 1975, maybe more so.
This belongs proudly in any collection of speculative literature.
*
Here’s the complete list of books I read in 2018, with when I finished it and an infinitely subjective rating:
1. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (06/01/18) [8/10]
2. Harlan Ellison, All the Sounds of Fear (14/01/18) [8/10]
3. George Saunders, CivilWarLand In Bad Decline (18/01/18) [7/10]
4. H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness (18/02/18) [8/10]
5. Harlan Ellison, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World (24/03/18) [8/10]
6. Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (31/03/18) [9/10]
7. Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye (05/04/18) [8/10]
8. Charles Bukowski, Women: A Novel (12/04/18) [8/10]
9. Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music (17/04/18) [6/10]
10. Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (21/04/18) [6/10]
11. David Britton and Michael Butterworth (ed.s.), The Savoy Book (28/04/18) [7/10]
12. Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (07/05/18) [6/10]
13. Charles Bukowski, Pulp (10/05/18) [8/10]
14. John Cooper Clarke, Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt (13/05/18) [9/10]
15. Harlan Ellison, Deathbird Stories (13/06/18) [8/10]
16. Charles Bukowski, Hollywood (22/06/18) [7/10]
17. Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick (06/07/18) [7/10]
18. Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick (18/07/18) [7/10]
19. Charles Bukowski, South of No North (01/08/18) [8/10]
20. Richard Matheson, Button, Button: Uncanny Stories (08/08/18) [6/10]
21. John D. MacDonald, The Executioners (21/08/18) [6/10]
22. Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn (27/08/18) [7/10]
23. Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (07/09/18) [7/10]
24. Simon Armitage, Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (10/09/18) [8/10]
25. Sylvia Plath, Ariel (14/09/18) [9/10]
26. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (22/09/18) [7/10]
27. Robert Bloch, Psycho (14/10/18) [7/10]
28. Ezra Pound, Selected Poems (17/10/18) [5/10]
29. Maya Angelou, Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer (18/10/18) [8/10]
30. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (28/10/18) [9/10]
31. Charles Bukowski, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town (05/11/18) [7/10]
32. Al Alvarez (ed.), The New Poetry (12/11/18) [5/10]
33. Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America (15/11/18) [6/10]
34. William Goldman, Marathon Man (19/11/18) [8/10]
35. Harold Pinter, Celebration & The Room (20/11/18) [7/10]
36. James Herbert, The Rats (23/11/18) [7/10]
37. L. Ron Hubbard, Fear (05/12/18) [6/10]
38. Dean Koontz, Demon Seed (09/12/18) [6/10]
39. Christopher Lasch, The Agony of the American Left (16/12/18) [7/10]
40. Ira Levin, The Boys from Brazil (20/12/18) [8/10]
41. Thomas M. Disch, The Businessman: A Tale of Terror (27/12/18) [9/10]
