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What I read in 2018: Books

What I read in 2018: Books

2018 was a year of … a lot of reading. If you follow me on Twitter / Facebook / The Verge / Wordplay, this likely isn’t news. I write a lot about the genre, and I like the community. But in the last couple of years, I’ve found that I’ve been reading less and less — put off by things like work or Twitter or television, and it’s been frustrating, because there’s been a ton of things that I’ve wanted to get to, but haven’t been able to.

2018 was the year that I made the effort to carve out a lot more reading time, and … I read a lot. 74 books in all — plus a bunch that I started and tossed aside. I don’t know that I have any particular lessons that I’ve drawn out of this year’s crop of books, other than that a) there’s a shitload of good stuff out there right now, b) making it a point to read more diversely gives you a lot of really good stuff that I might not have otherwise picked up, and c) I still have stacks of things that I just didn’t get to this year. I’ve got piles kicking around that I really would like to get to, and hopefully, I’ll knock some of that down in the coming year.

Here’s the complete list of books that I read this year (reviews linked where I wrote them):

  1. The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang
  2. Dark Deeds, by Mike Brooks
  3. The Forever War (Graphic Novel), by Joe Haldeman
  4. Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci
  5. Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate by Zoe Quinn
  6. Buffalo Solider by Maurice Broaddus
  7. Fields of Fire by Marko Kloos
  8. The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
  9. Points of Impact by Marko Kloos
  10. River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
  11. Semiosis by Sue Burke
  12. The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
  13. The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
  14. Gunpowder Moon by David Pedreira
  15. Breach of Containment by Elizabeth Bonesteel
  16. The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies by Ben Fritz
  17. Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
  18. The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud
  19. Head On by John Scalzi
  20. Time Was by Ian McDonald
  21. The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy
  22. The Barrow Will Send What it May by Margaret Killjoy
  23. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
  24. Star Wars: Last Shot by Daniel José Older
  25. Agents of Dreamland by Caitlín R. Kiernan
  26. The Power by Naomi Alderman
  27. Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine
  28. Crooked by Austin Grossman
  29. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
  30. The Long Sunset by Jack McDevitt
  31. Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre
  32. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte (Author Q&A)
  33. The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History by Josh Dean
  34. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
  35. The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
  36. The Book of Extraordinary Deaths: True Accounts of Ill-Fated Lives by Cecilia Ruiz
  37. Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation by Terri Favro
  38. The Old Iron Dream by David Forbes
  39. Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson
  40. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
  41. The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel by Jeffrey Lewis (Author Q&A)
  42. The Future of War: A History by Lawrence Freedman
  43. Side Life by Steve Toutonghi
  44. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
  45. The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal
  46. The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
  47. War Cry by Brian McClellan
  48. Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
  49. Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn
  50. The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
  51. Solo: A Star Wars Story by Mur Lafferty
  52. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
  53. The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant
  54. Ball Lightning by Liu Cixin (translated by Joel Martinsen)
  55. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu)
  56. The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin (translated by Joel Martinsen)
  57. The Queen of Crows by Myke Cole
  58. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
  59. Death’s End by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu)
  60. Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded by Jason Heller
  61. LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson Brooking
  62. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
  63. Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
  64. Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson
  65. It's All a Game: The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan by Tristan Donovan
  66. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
  67. Jack London's To Build a Fire by Christophe Chabouté
  68. Firefly: Big Damn Hero by Nancy Holder / James Lovegrove
  69. Mutiny at Vesta by R.E. Stearns
  70. How Great Science Fiction Works by Gary K. Wolfe
  71. Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar
  72. Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
  73. The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai
  74. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

What’s to come in 2019? Well, there’s a ton of really excellent-looking books hitting shelves next year that I can’t wait to dig into. I’m hoping to read a bit more widely than just SF/F though — there are some histories that I want to get to (this year marks a bunch of Apollo histories hitting bookshelves), as well as some other things, but at the very least, I want to try and hit a comparable number. My minimum is 52, so anything over that is just a bonus.