2018 in BOOKS!

This was the year I ducked Proust.

Ducking Proust makes one only slightly less insufferable than reading Proust, so I suppose my dodge  falls somewhere between a black mark and a minor point of pride.

I did intend to read Proust.  I had a fabulous plan, undertaken in 2016, of marching through one volume In Search of Lost Time per year, thus gilding my slog into middle age with a snail's trail of self-satisfaction.

I did try.  I tend to turn to Proust on airplanes: his sumptuous spirals of self-indulgence pair well with airline peanuts.  But I didn't fly as much this year. And when I did, there were so many other things to read!

Goodreads tells me I read 50 books I'll admit to this year (and counting).  I hated a greater share than usual, but I loved more of them, too.  Winnowing the 50 to a handful was unexpectedly painful, like returning your tray table to its upright and locked position.  You've been flying!  Then, all in a rush, the clouds retract and the sky slinks back into itself; the earth slaps your ass and your cell phone wails.

But never mind; here are the books!

Surprise!

In I am, I am, I am, Maggie O'Farrelll chronicles her 17 brushes with death.  I expected snorey literary navel gazing.  I got something utterly alien yet wildly convincing, like a curse word you didn't know you needed.

Short fiction is ALIVE!

A zombie shuffling from its grave, short fiction devoured me this year.  I really do hate short fiction.  It's like being served half a can of tomato juice when you know nobody else will drink the other half.  But two of my very favorite books this year were short story collections, Lauren Groff's stunning Florida and Curtis Sittenfeld's You Think It, I'll Say It.  These are full cans of juice, my friends. FULL CANS OF JUICE.

Soulmates!

I didn't know I had a soulmate!  He is Jay Fitger, professional Crabby Old Man (English professor) and the hero (villain) of Julie Schumacher's epistolary novel Dear Committee Members, which is told entirely through letters of recommendation.  For sheer pleasure, this one took (was?) the cake.

Work!

So I read two really excellent novels about work this year.  One was Aja Gabel's string quartet novel, The Ensemble, which I almost didn't read because I work in music, and working in a field tends to inure you to its beauty, or at least to its poetry. You need ignorance for poetry, and nothing burns off the ineffable faster than filing a Schedule C.  The writing about music in this one wasn't as bad as writing about music usually is, and the novel's treatment of time- more specifically the evolution and devolution of working and romantic relationships over time- feels bang-on.  I also loved Allegra Goodman's The Chalk Artist, which concerns itself deeply with interplay between work and identity, and is much better than I just made it sound.

You must read this!

If you haven't read Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, you should.  Right now.  Trust me, Proust will wait.