2018 — a year in books

This year, I read 30 books. Here are some stats:

• 21 fiction, 9 non-fiction
• 12 read on Kindle (best purchase of 2018!)
• 14 by female authors
• 7 by WOC
• 7 by South Asian authors (Salman Rushdie, Arunadhati Roy, Vikram Chandra, Mindy Kaling, Jhumpa Lahiri)
• 3 Booker prize winners (The Remains of the Day, The God of Small Things, Midnight’s Children)
• 2 Pulitzer award winners (Black Flags, The Goldfinch)
• 6+ unfinished books

Full list at the very bottom.

What worked?

1. The Kindle Paperwhite was a gamechanger with respect to how quickly I was able to consume books. For those who know me, this was a real departure from tradition, as I’ve always been passionate about the value and weight of a real, physical book. While I still get excited about a paperback with pages I can mark, my Kindle has made it possible for me to carry a library of books everywhere: on the Muni, at work, in a park, and on vacation. I have a subscription to the San Francisco Public Library, and usually have holds on 20 e-books at a time, which trickle in pretty consistently.
2. I stopped limiting myself to books I *should* be reading. For a long time, I was solely reading either glib “startup literature” or really, really dense science/history books. This was neither fulfilling nor enjoyable, and soon I would dread sitting down to read, which begat a cycle of procrastination and guilt. This year, I read whatever and whenever I wanted to. I read much more fiction than non-fiction, and I didn’t pressure myself to finish books that I didn’t enjoy. I found that I naturally drifted between different types of reading (I discovered “long read” journalism, subscribe to my favorite, The Guardian’s The Long Read if you’re curious) and that my level of interest in a book was a pretty good indication of its value to me w.r.t. my current state of mind.
3. I had much more time and flexibility having graduated from college and started my job. I was able to unlock more and more hours from my week and create a routine around my reading habit.

What didn’t work?

Since the Kindle made it so easy to be reading more than one book at a time, I would sometimes fall into a trap of overextending. I would have way more books in progress than I could mentally keep up with, and that led to diminished value from each individual reading (not to mention a lot of general anxiety).

Read on for my favorites.

Best…

Overall Fiction:

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch, which tells the story of a boy and the painting that he inadvertently steals, is literally the perfect novel. It is a bildungsroman, a love story, a thriller, and a crime novel that touches on everything from drug abuse to terrorism to art. Having read this, I get a little sad whenever I crave a good novel, knowing that it’s impossible for me to read this again for the first time.

Through this reading, I gained exposure to the extent of casual childhood neglect, and the painful consequences that result from not having adults in your life that you trust. Rampant drug abuse, physical abuse, and alcoholism in children was difficult to read. It was also scary to see how the smallest and most random occurrences can shape a life far more than any conscious effort. Above all, this novel was beautifully-written and a very enjoyable read.

Overall Non-Fiction:

Messy, Tim Harford

I discovered this novel when the author referenced it in a Guardian long read. The premise of Messy is that unwanted disorganization and disorder can actually stimulate greater creativity in the long run. One of my favorite examples is when Harford describes how creating purposefully confusing and unregulated street crossings and intersections actually decreases accidents as drivers are forced to slow down and stop driving on autopilot. Introducing an optimization algorithm, Harford details how a combination of random-point selection combined with hill-climbing is the optimal strategy for finding the maximum point. He likens this to skill development in real life — if you stay in California, you could get really, really good at climbing Mt. Diablo, but you’d never know the true extent of your capabilities until you woke up one morning in the middle of the Himalayas.

This book was a palate-cleanser in a literary world dominated by productivity and organization hacks that stress decluttering, systematic frameworks, and behavior analytics. It was incisive and surprising and often very counterintuitive. It also gets brownie points for referencing an incident from another book in my 2018 reading list.

Honorable Mention: Black Flags, Joby Warrick

Memoir:

Educated, Tara Westover

I read Educated towards the tail-end of the year, squeezing it in during the holiday season. It’s a memoir that describes Westover’s upbringing by survivalist parents who believed that the government was the Devil and everything associated with it (the Medical Establishment, formal education) was satanic. Westover’s journey from the youngest of seven on their farm to a Cambridge PhD is displayed through crisp, well-framed writing, that narrates horrifying accidents on their bipolar father’s junkyard, a cruel, misogynistic older brother, and the lonely journey of deciphering the nature of truth as she confronts two starkly different realities. In a particularly poignant scene, she raises her hand in one of her first college lectures to ask the meaning of a word — Holocaust.

Westover’s writing is calm and concise, which contrasts with the harrowing events that she is describing. Educated was incredibly difficult to read and there were times I had to put the book down because I was shaking in anger. It feels incredibly unfair that I had such a privileged upbringing in a family that believed in questioning and intellectual curiosity and someone had to fight so hard for something that I take for granted every day.

Recommendation from a friend:

Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi

Many of my friends are also big readers, so I get many interesting recommendations through the year. This year, my favorite recommendation was Homegoing, a novel that traces the lineages of two African sisters that were separated at birth — one that married a European colonial officer and one that was shipped into slavery. Each section features a new generation, and focuses on a family member in each branch of the family. Gyasi follows the tribal wars and the Scramble for Africa on the African continent, and slavery, emancipation, and the civil rights movement on the American continent.

Again, I was touched by the casual events that lie behind our decisions, and how despite all this chaos, we cling to the idea that we have any control over our lives. The stories and the characters humanize the tragedies that they lived through, presenting shameful, dark periods of history in a deeply personal light. Homegoing is also the debut novel of a young, powerful WOC author and I’m excited to see what she has in store.

by a South Asian Author:

God of Small Things, Arunadhati Roy

This book made me cry so many times. The story follows twins in India whose life is twisted when a family member violated the rules of love — “Love Laws” that lay down “who should be loved, and how. And how much”. The writing is lush and brings Kerala, India to life; the childhood sections narrated in a child’s voice, and the adult sections narrated wistfully, as if wishing to capture that child’s voice again. It explores the single story against the backdrop of Indian political and social history which is confusing, intricate, and intriguing.

I’ll say that the books by Indian authors had some of the most descriptive, vivid writing I’ve ever read. As an Indian-American, many of the sights, sounds, and smells of India, from 50 years ago to present day, are strangely familiar and nostalgic. The themes — filial dynamics, religion, mythology, communication, societal expectations — are much more readily recognizable than when I read authors of different nationalities and backgrounds. I will be reading more of these in 2019; they bring me home in a unique way.

Honorable Mention: The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

Unexpected Surprise:

Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull

While reading the memoir of Pixar’s founder and long-time president of Pixar + Walt Disney, I knew that there would be some reference to Pixar processes and systems. What I wasn’t expecting, is that this book would change the way that I watch some of my favorite movies. Catmull is relentlessly specific, applying broad concepts to a very specific decision — for example, in an early cut, Mr. Incredible came across as a bully in a scene with Mrs. Incredible due to his sheer size. Catmull breaks down the conversation, decisions, challenges, and turning points that followed this discovery. Given all this information, it’s quite an experience to check out the specified scene in the movie and watch all the result of their creative process come together. I recommend this book as the closest thing to seeing a live-action study on creativity, failure, and collaboration.

Full List:

Non-fiction

• Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick
• Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull
• Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
• Educated, Tara Westover
• The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell
• Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives, Tim Harford
• Deep Work, Cal Newport
• Why Not Me, Mindy Kaling
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, Mindy Kaling

Fiction

• The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
• When Life Gives You Lululemons, Lauren Weisberger
• A Game Of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
• A Clash Of Kings, George R. R. Martin
• Love and Longing in Bombay, Vikram Chandra
• Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
• A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas
• Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
• All We Ever Wanted, Emily Giffen
• The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
• The God of Small Things, Arunadhati Roy
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arunadhati Roy
• Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
• The Marriage Pact, Michelle Richmond
• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
• Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
• Norweigan Wood, Haruki Murakami
• Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
• South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami
• The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie