What I read in 2018: Books
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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):
The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang
Dark Deeds, by Mike Brooks
The Forever War (Graphic Novel), by Joe Haldeman
Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci
Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate by Zoe Quinn
Buffalo Solider by Maurice Broaddus
Fields of Fire by Marko Kloos
The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
Points of Impact by Marko Kloos
River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
Semiosis by Sue Burke
The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
Gunpowder Moon by David Pedreira
Breach of Containment by Elizabeth Bonesteel
The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies by Ben Fritz
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud
Head On by John Scalzi
Time Was by Ian McDonald
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy
The Barrow Will Send What it May by Margaret Killjoy
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
Star Wars: Last Shot by Daniel José Older
Agents of Dreamland by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine
Crooked by Austin Grossman
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
The Long Sunset by Jack McDevitt
Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte (Author Q&A)
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
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
The Book of Extraordinary Deaths: True Accounts of Ill-Fated Lives by Cecilia Ruiz
Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation by Terri Favro
The Old Iron Dream by David Forbes
Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel by Jeffrey Lewis (Author Q&A)
The Future of War: A History by Lawrence Freedman
Side Life by Steve Toutonghi
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
War Cry by Brian McClellan
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn
The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
Solo: A Star Wars Story by Mur Lafferty
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant
Ball Lightning by Liu Cixin (translated by Joel Martinsen)
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu)
The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin (translated by Joel Martinsen)
The Queen of Crows by Myke Cole
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
Death’s End by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu)
Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded by Jason Heller
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson Brooking
On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson
It's All a Game: The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan by Tristan Donovan
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
Jack London's To Build a Fire by Christophe Chabouté
Firefly: Big Damn Hero by Nancy Holder / James Lovegrove
Mutiny at Vesta by R.E. Stearns
How Great Science Fiction Works by Gary K. Wolfe
Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai
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.