2018 BOOK LIST

1. Women of Ice and Fire – edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart
2. Seventeen – Kenzaburo Oe
3. So You Want to Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo**
4. J – Kenzaburo Oe
5. Dark Money – Jane Mayer**
6. Annihilation – Jeff Vandermer
7. The Leftovers – Tom Perotta
8. Educated – Tara Westover
9. Fetch – Nicole Georges
10. Thunderstuck – Erik Larson
11. My Life in Orange – Tim Guest
12. Russian Roulette – Michael Isikoff and David Corn*
13. Inside Iran- Medea Benjamin *
14. Antisocial Media – Siva Vaidhyanthan*
15. Room- Emma Donoghue***
16. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
17. Get in the Van – Henry Rollins
18. Foxfire**- Joyce Carol Oates
19. I Live Inside – Michelle Leon
20. Starvation Mode – Elissa Washuta
21. America’s Dark Theologian – Douglas Cowan
22. Collapsing Empire- Jon Scalzi
23. Open Earth – Sarah Mirk (author) with Eva Cabrera and Claudia Aguirre (artists)
24. Binti – Nnedi Okorafor
25. On A Sunbeam – Tillie Walden
26. Universal Harvester – John Darnielle
27. Sketchtasy-Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore*
28. Fire and Blood- George RR Martin
29. Robopoocalypse – Daniel Wilson
30. Trump University – Steve Gilpin

This year’s gender balance is a bit better than last year, with 14 books out of 30 written by women or genderqueer/gender-nonconforming folks. I started a lot of books that I didn’t finish this year as well, so they will likely end up on next year’s list.

I read roughly 37 graphic novel TPB collections this year as well.

Here are the standouts for the year (both full books and graphic novels/TPBs):

 

• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo is an incredible collection of her thinking on race. Ijeoma is simply one of the most essential writers on race in this current moment, and I value her writing immensely. While this book is to some degree tilted towards deepening the consciousness of folks with little to no racial analysis, it still provides many, many useful distillations of thought for folks with some understanding of race and racism that I’ve found incredibly useful all this past year, and have included in a few talks I’ve given myself on race. One example is her discussion of tone policing as a tactic for maintaining white comfort and supremacy, which I’ve drawn on a lot in my own thinking. Another is how class-based radical solutions to income inequality (living wage campaigns, unionization) frequently fail to include a racial justice-informed lens, and thus, address the impact race (such as well-documented practices of racial discrimination in hiring) has in keeping some workers poorer than others, effectively reinforcing white supremacy. Read this book.
• Dark Money by Jane Mayer is a fascinating look at not just the libertarian Koch family and the network of like-minded wealthy individuals they’ve banded together to fund a free-market fundamentalist agenda, but also the background of some major foundations who try to mask their politics. It was really interesting to be reading this book while working in the foundation fundraising realm at the University of Virginia. It enables all sorts of connections around politics, philanthropy, and corruption to be much more visible, and thus, relevant.
• Inside Iran by Medea Benjamin was a refreshing review of history of the nation/region currently known as the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as the history of US and British interference/imperialism in the same area. It’s a helpful corrective to the mainstream media narrative of Iran, which tends to avoid discussing anything earlier than the revolution of 1979, in that it lays out a long trajectory of historical experience and the wrongs the US and Britain has committed over several decades against the interests of the Iranian people. As such, it provides some valuable context for how we got where we are now, and what the true conflicts are. It also debunks many Islamophobia tropes about the notion of Iran as a monolithic fundamentalist country without any rational interest or concerns driving its politics or culture. A recommended read for anyone who simply wants to understand more about the seemingly unsolvable problems in the Middle East.
• Antisocial Media by Siva Vaidhyanthan makes a powerful and undeniable argument that Facebook (and other social media platforms, but especially Facebook) isn’t being misused by awful folks seeking to spread misogyny, racism, pseudoscience, and fake news, but that it’s functioning precisely as it was designed — and that that’s exactly the problem. Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at UVA, draws on the history of Facebook and numerous interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and other tech developers to examine how the social media juggernaut’s penetration into the lives of billions of people has remade our very understanding of media, truth, and democracy.  He delves into a few crucial elements he sees as fundamental to the challenge of addressing the problems: 1) the general public’s confusion around the platform’s business model as being based not around enabling speech or communication, but around data mining and advertising, 2) the tech world’s general alignment with a libertarianism that pushes back at the idea that there any regulation of tech — particularly media-centric tech — that isn’t a slippery slope towards tyranny, 3) Zuckerberg and other tech moguls’ unshakeable faith in techno-optimism, i.e., the notion that there isn’t any issue that can’t be fixed with code. The result is an ungovernable system, with little to no accountability for its use by those seeking to swing elections through sensationalistic false stories, incite violence against others, or simply misinform the public around policy. Vaidhyanathan’s answer is not simply media literacy (meaning simply learning how to better judge the validity of the media you are consuming), but a more intentional engagement with the platform, aware of its creators’ interests, and bolstered by robust regulation and protections that bring power back to users. This is the approach that the European Union has effectively imposed on all the major tech companies wishing to operate there; Vaidhyanathan argues if these are good enough for Europe, we should push for the same here in the U.S.
• Room by Emma Donoghue was simply enchanting, one of my favorite books read this past year. It’s the story of a woman (kidnapped and held captive for years as a sex slave by a man) and her son, born of her captivity. (FYI: you don’t get any graphic depictions of assault, but instead lots of oblique allusion.) The son, Jack, grows up with his mother in Room, a small soundproofed shed which he believes to be the entire real world. The book is so jarring and fresh, precisely because it is told from Jack’s perspective. And this gets to how the movie adaptation — while good — can’t compete with the book. It simply cannot replicate Jack’s voice, language, and way of seeing the world (both Room and later, a wider one), all essential elements in making this story less sensational and perhaps, differently tragic in many moments.
• Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang by Joyce Carol Oates is the feral recording of an incendiary, wild crew of teen girls as they find each other, their strength, and their power. It’s a raw book, told from the point of view of one of the girls, which makes it seem all the more consuming and dramatic.
• The novel Sketchtasy by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is just, too much, which means of course, exactly right for her. Every time I think Mattilda can’t possibly top her last book, she not only proves me wrong, but knocks me sideways into a whole new world; in this case, it’s mid-1990s Boston, where the main character, Alexa, struggles to navigate gay/queer community still haunted by the lurking ghost of AIDs. I generally think of Mattilda’s work as deeply invested in both anti-nostalgia (or at least, anti-reductive/tidy nostalgia), and the sloppy truths and edges of queer desire and family, with all the hidden promise and peril inherent in each. It’s writing like hers that reveals how safe so many writers (even those considered subversive or transgressive) are when it comes to their work.
• Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, of course, wrecked me again this year, particularly the most recent volume (#9). It’s one of the best pieces of writing ever, filled with gorgeous art, joy, pain, surprise.