Best passing material-book/scribal culture remark: “‘I can read the first few lines and these in the middle of the second page, and one or two at the end. Those are as clear as print,’ said he, ‘but the writing in between is very bad, and there are three places where I cannot read it at all.'” — “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Fictional shacks that are larger than my bedroom: Black Peter’s cabin in “The Adventure of Black Peter,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Something I’d like to go back and tally: The number of bicycles in the second half of The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Don’t ever tell me my line of work is too obscure if a prize-winning, best-selling novel can just casually quote the Mozarab jarchas: Señales de humo by Rafael Reig
Of course a literary manual for cannibals is going to be a two-parter: La cadena trófica also by Rafael Reig
Madrid books: See above — they’ve got a super sense of place.
Italy books: Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd; Venice, an Interior by Javier Marías (which was originally a longish newspaper essay and was only ever published in chapbook form in English and Italian translations); Day after Day by Carlo Lucarelli, translated by Una Stransky, audiobook read by Daniel Philpott
Cambridge/Granchester book: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie
Israel books: The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Sparks; Someone to Run With by David Grossman; Volverse Palestina by Lina Meruane
(Bonus shocker of the year: Nick Hornby was totally right about Muriel Sparks!)
More Cuba books, because I am still haunted: Caviar with Rum, eds. Jacqueline Loss and José Manuel Prieto; Cuba in the Special Period, ed. Ariana Hernández Reguant; Dreaming in Russian by Jacqueline Loss
Michigan books: All-American Yemeni Girls by Loukia Sarroub
Because moving to Ann Arbor marked the first time I had to wrangle my cat onto an airplane: Catwings by Ursula K. LeGuin
Thought I would be okay taking these books on a trip and leaving them behind but definitely wasn’t: The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty; The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Was completely fine leaving this on the airplane when I finished it: Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
Have we met?: The Pedant in the Kitchen by Julian Barnes
Hit too close to home to finish: Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm
Much too much to distill into one pithy comment: Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
Best babushka: Ali’s Russian mother in Ali and His Russian Mother by Alexandra Chetriteh, translated by Michelle Hartman
Ironically, didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know: The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols
And perhaps less ironically, White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, which seems to have been written for people who just haven’t been paying any attention at all
Ironically, written at a pace that made me more anxious: Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig
Because apparently being in a relationship means attempting to share in your partner’s interests, even when those interests are Melville: Billy Budd and Other Stories by Herman Melville
Because it’s hard to be patient when learning a language in which one has much better reading comprehension than ability to generate verbal forms: In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri
Because, 2018: Not All Dead White Men by Donna Zuckerberg; Infidel by Pornsak Pichenshote; Holocaust Tips for Kids by Shalom Auslander
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2018 favorites: The Mandelbaum Gate, Billy Budd, Barracoon, The Library Book
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I have a huge fantasy that I’ll read about six more books before the end of the year, but if it happens, those’ll have to go onto next year’s roundup because reading for pleasure shouldn’t have high-pressure deadlines. Happy reading, all!