I have always been an avid reader, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve also become more interested in honing my physical collection of books into a satisfying and functional library. (Someday I am going to have a designated library in my home, and when that time comes, I will be prepared to fill the shelves!) Other than library summer-reading contests (and the necessary reading for school) though, I did not keep any real record of my reading until 2015.

My collection was already growing faster than I could read, and I found that problem compounded by my growing tendency to choose to futz on my phone, rewatch things I’d already seen, or turn half of my attention to a podcast while I did something else instead of picking up a book in my downtime. And thus I made a new rule: T time (time on the subway) was now to be “book time.” Further, every time I finished a book I was to immediately pick up another and start it. I was not obliged to finish everything I picked up, but by jumping immediately from one book to the next, I hoped I would overcome the inevitable inertia of indecision that comes from trying to select the “perfect” next read. As the experiment progressed (perhaps slightly out of curiosity but mostly out of a desire to hold myself accountable), I decided I would also begin to track what I read.

Thus began my “Read” lists. The first thing I noticed about my lists was that they certainly did keep me accountable. They also kicked my inner achiever into gear, and I began to try to beat my own page counts from month to month and then from year to year. I reached a peak in early 2017. For a couple of months, after I moved in on my own and before the season began and I started dating Dylan, all I did was read and read and read. My page count was understandably less in 2018, but only slightly. Dylan has a wonderful habit of reading every night before bed to wind down, and I’ve enjoyed joining him in that pursuit. Perhaps I can get my page count back up in 2019!

The other thing I’ve begun to really appreciate about my read lists is that I can use them as a kind of map of my year. I tend to remember, at least in the short term, where I was and generally what was going on as I was reading this or that book. I can also follow the trends of my interest in certain topics and see what I’m inspired to reach for at particular times. For example, I’ve noticed I tend to read a lot of fiction at the beginning and the end of the year. I start getting back into history around March, and June seems to have become “personal development month.” I’ve also started tracking which books I physically read and to which I listen. Typically I’ll start with a physical book, and if I’m really enjoying it and want to have it more often with me, I’ll see if I like the narrator and then get it on Audible. Sometimes I just crave the experience of a physical book, and so I’ll go through something in both mediums. Of the thirty-four books I read last year, twenty-three of them I “read” at least partially through Audible. Another of my goals for this year is to figure out how to do voice recording and to see about getting myself into reading audiobooks…

At the bottom of this post, I’ve included my 2018 Read List in its entirety as I keep it for myself. Each book is listed: Title: Author (Date finished, total page count), with a key to the color coding above and the total page count for the year at the bottom.

I started a lot more books than I finished, so if it is on that list it means I enjoyed it enough to get all the way through it. But thirty-four is a lot of books to cover in one post. Some of them are old favorite rereads, and some of them were engaging but didn’t particularly stick with me. For the rest of this post, therefore, I am going to highlight just the ten books I had not read before last year that really struck me and have stuck with me. (With the exception of the double listing, click on the picture of the cover for more information on the book!)

1. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August: Claire North

A friend recommended this to me sometime in 2017, so when I found a stack on the fiction table at the Harvard Book Store winter warehouse sale, I bought a copy. I picked it up as just “the next thing in the stack” in January and couldn’t put it down. I powered through it and recommended it to Dylan and my roommate. To say it is thought-provoking may be an understatement. Harry August lives his life in a loop. Each time he dies, he is immediately born again in the same small town in Britain in the early 1900s remembering everything that happened before. As Harry recounts his first fifteen lives, he raises the question of how we choose to spend our time and explores the ethics of interfering or not in events we know are coming (think: what if someone killed Hitler in the 1920s?). Dylan and I are both still thinking and talking about it a year later. I read Touch, one of Claire North’s later novels, right after Harry August. It was definitely thought-provoking and engaging in a different way but not nearly as gripping as the first.

2/3. Hidden Figures: Margot Lee Shetterly & Code Girls: Liza Mundy

We went down to Houston for my birthday last year to visit my mom and see Garth Brooks at the rodeo! Since Dylan loves space and had never been to Houston, we also took a day to drive down to Space Center Houston. Growing up in Houston, I’d spent a good deal of time there as a kid but had not been as an adult. Going through the exhibits this time (with a little more context and a tour guide as knowledgeable as Dylan) really spiked my interest in the history of the space race. When we got home from Houston therefore, I picked up my grandmother’s copy of Hidden Figures, which I enjoyed so much that I began a search for more books about women and space. That thread eventually led me back to women code breakers in WWII. Of the four books I read on this little binge Hidden Figures and Code Girls were my favorites. They are both well written and elegantly weave the true personal stories of a few specific women into the fabric of the general history.

4. Her Fearful Symmetry: Audrey Niffenegger

I read Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife in high school. I remember being glued to it from the moment I picked it up and finishing it, bawling, locked in a study room before English class one morning. So when I came across Her Fearful Symmetry in Longfellow Books in Portland, Maine, I had to have a look. Dylan found me ten minutes later, cross-legged on the floor in the aisle, immersed. Needless to say, I bought a copy and brought it home and left in on the shelf for a few months before again picking it up and getting completely caught up. The story centers on the inhabitants of a house that shares a wall with London’s Highgate Cemetery. One of them is a Cemetery tour guide (Audrey Niffenegger actually became a Highgate Cemetery guide while writing this book, which endeared me to both her and the novel even more), one is a crossword setter trapped in his apartment by crippling OCD, two are twins, one is a ghost. While the story does take a very dark turn, it is, overall, a deep contemplation of grief and love, belonging and individuality, and the worlds people build within their relationships. It is both haunted and haunting and thoroughly engrossing. My enjoyment of this book also led me to start exploring Cambridge’s historic Mount Auburn Cemetery, which deserves a post all its own.

5. The Rules of Magic: Alice Hoffman

My mom and I went down to New York in November 2017 to see Hello Dolly! with Bette Midler (!!!!!) and treated ourselves to a stay at the Library Hotel. It is a great spot for book lovers in general, but I was extra pleased to be offered the choice of a free book on check-in! For as long as I can remember, I have been a fan of the movie Practical Magic. I read the book on which it is based a few years ago and didn’t really enjoy it, but when it was offered as one of my free book choices, I selected Practical Magic’s new prequel, The Rules of Magic, thinking I’d give it a shot. It sat on the shelf and moldered for almost a year until I was in the mood to watch Practical Magic in September at which point I picked it up and took it with me on our trip to the West Coast. Unlike its predecessor, The Rules of Magic was just what I wanted it to be and more. This is the story of “the aunts” and their fabulous house. These three characters really make the movie but played very minor roles in the first book. Here there is more magic in the story of how Franny and Jet grow up, grapple with what it means to be different and what it means to be human and the same, and ultimately how they come to be the aunts in the strange old house in a small town in Massachusetts. I found it completely engrossing and beautifully simple and profound. When I was done, I shelved it on the special shelf I can see from bed where live my Harry Potter books and the other well-loved favorites.

6. Blood and Ivy: Paul Collins

This one was a surprise gift from Dylan! He found out about it and ordered me a copy to arrive when it was released as, ever since I moved to Boston, I have had a fascination with the story of the 1849 Parkman murder. Part of my fascination stems, I believe, from the fact that I have tried and tried to tell the story on my ghost tours and just can’t get it right to save my life. I don’t know what it is about it. With that in mind, I suppose I was predisposed to enjoy this book, and I certainly did. And then promptly recommended it to all my other tour guide friends and any guests who showed an interest in the story. This is pure history (I learned quite a lot, myself!) but reads like a thriller. Turns out the trial following the murder was a watershed moment in Massachusetts legal history, and that is almost as fascinating as the rest of the story! If you have any interest in historical mysteries, mid-19th-century medical education, Harvard, Boston, or just the Parkman murder in particular, I would recommend this as a highly engrossing and worthwhile read.

7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

This is a slight cheat on this list because I have, indeed, read it before. But it struck me in such a way this time through that I felt it belonged here. The first time I read Guernsey, I was traveling through France and Belgium with my mom to celebrate my graduation from college. I remember really loving it then, but I didn’t feel any great pull to revisit it. Sometime last year a movie came out based on the book, which my mom saw and liked and recommended to me, warning that it was quite different from the book itself. So I went and watched the movie. It was one of those moments where it happened to be exactly the movie I had been wanting to watch, so I was inspired to pick the book back up and loved it just as much. It is written in a collection of letters, and while its WWII history is certainly intriguing, the real joy is watching this disparate group of strangers form themselves into a family over the course of the book. Something as simple as a shared interest in books can create community and family and see people through the darkest of times. It is so endearingly hopeful.

8. The Library Book: Susan Orlean

Speaking of an interest in books, Susan Orlean’s The Library Book came to me on a walk through The Harvard Bookstore. It was a simple browsing trip on an unexpectedly free evening, and the lovely texture of the cover caught my eye. I picked it up, flipped it over, and thought it sounded like just the thing for my mother, who is a librarian. I brought it home, intending to send it along as a gift, when I heard an interview with the author and was inspired to read it myself. This is another history book that reads almost like a novel. I found myself eagerly turning the pages to learn more about the history of the Los Angeles Central Library and the fire that almost completely gutted it in 1986. On the whole, it is a beautiful reflection on what public libraries mean to a community even in today’s increasingly digital world. I did pass it along to my mother after I finished it, and then I went to the Harvard Bookstore’s author visit with Susan Orlean and got a signed copy for myself.

9. The Essex Serpent: Sarah Perry

To finish off the list and the year, The Essex Serpent. I found it at The Owl and Turtle Bookshop in Camden, Maine when we were there in November and picked it up, again, for its cover. I opened it to read the first page and, again, Dylan found me standing in the aisle engrossed about ten minutes later. I bought it and brought it home and had to wait until I had finished the other two books I was reading (physically reading The Library Book and listening to The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir) before I could dive in and savor The Essex Serpent. And savor it I did. This book is beautifully and intoxicatingly written. It is, ultimately, a very simple story, but it is so perfectly told, and the characters are all so richly drawn, that I simply could not put it down, and I finished it feeling quite bereft to be at the end. I picked up and put down several books after finishing this one as everything else seemed flat in comparison. (Happily, I was able to dive back into an old favorite and get reading again eventually, but it took about a month.) The narration on Audible is superb as well, so however you would prefer to enjoy it, I would strongly encourage you to indulge.

And with that, dear friends, I shall end for now. If you are looking for your next read, I hope I’ve been able to offer some good suggestions, and if you have any interest in what else I read in 2018, here’s the complete list for your perusal!

The 2018 Read List

Key:

Nonfiction-History

Nonfiction-‘Self Help’

Harry Potter

Tolkien

Elizabeth Peters

General Fiction