For the last few years — alas, I wish I’d done this always from a child — I’ve kept a list of every book I’ve read.
Yesterday my list for 2018 hit 50 books, and here they are. I like complete freedom in choosing books, so I don’t make any kind of reading plan, and often bypass my pile of recently purchased books to choose others. I use the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library (for audiobook downloads) a lot. I follow my interests (in the last few years, Russia, pre-and-post revolution), or powerful suggestions, such as the Backlisted Podcast, which brought me to #27, 28, 32, or books mentioned on other podcasts I listen to. I note when I’ve listened to a book instead of reading it on paper, but I consider listening equivalent to reading. In some cases, it’s superior to reading — for instance, hearing the audio of “Purple Hibiscus” gave me the Nigerian accents and pronunciations of names without which the experience would have been much flatter. I also like audiobooks for history, which I’ll happily listen to all the way through instead of getting bogged down in the paper book.
I’m committed to maintaining my ability to concentrate for long bouts of reading, in physical books. I did read a couple of these books on my iPad because e-books were the only format the public library had to lend, but while I don’t condemn it, I’ll still never prefer it.
The books that wowed me the most are in bold.
1 Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets Svetlana Alexievich Audiobook
2 Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine Anne Applebaum Audiobook
3 The Orchid House Phyllis Shand Allfrey
4 The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars Daniel Beer Audiobook
5 Niels Lyhne Jens Peter Jacobsen
6 City of Sedition: The History of New York City During the Civil War John Strausbaugh Audiobook
7 The Adolescent (The Raw Youth) Fyodor Dostoevsky
8 Hotel Savoy Joseph Roth
9 Nothing is True And Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Peter Pomerantsev Audbiobook
10 Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 & How It Changed The World Laura Spinney Audiobook
11 The Shooting Party Anton Chekhov
12 The Girl From the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
13 Notes From Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 The Double Fyodor Dostoevsky Audiobook
15 Caught in the Revolution—Petrograd, Russia, 1917 Helen Rappaport
Audiobook
16 My Cousin Rachel Daphne Du Maurier Audiobook
17 Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: A Essay in Contrast George Steiner
18 Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birdbizhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region Masha Gessen Audiobook
19 Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders
20 The Unpossessed Tess Slesinger
21 Slow Days Fast Company Eve Babitz
22 The Fox in the Attic Richard Hughes
23 The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia Masha Gessen Audiobook
24 L.A. Woman Eve Babitz
25 Eve’s Hollywood Eve Babitz
26 Elmet Fiona Mozley
27 Corregidora Gayl Jones
28 The Lowlife Alexander Baron
29 The Romanovs 1613-1918 Simon Sebag Montefiore Audiobook
30 An Empire On the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America Nick Bunker Audiobook
31 Kudos Rachel Cusk
32 The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives Sebastian Faulks
33 Remember Me Like This Bret Anthony Johnston
34 American Wife Curtis Sittenfeld Audiobook
35 The Turn of the Screw Henry James Reread/Audiobook
36 A Wrinkle in Time Madeline L’Engle Reread/Audiobook
37 Journey into the Mind’s Eye: Fragments of an Autobiography Lesley Blanch

38 Purple Hibiscus Chimananda Ngozi Adichie Audiobook
39 Trotsky in New York 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution Kenneth Ackerman Audiobook
40 The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson: The End of a Beautiful Friendship Alex Beam Audiobook
41 Red Plenty Francis Spufford Audiobook
42 The People’s Act of Love James Meek
43 In A Lonely Place Dorothy Hughes
44 The World Broke in Two: Woolf, Eliot, Forster Lawrence and the Year That Changed Literature Bill Goldstein Audiobook
45 Florida Lauren Groff
46 Asymmetry Lisa Halliday
47 Corpus Christi Bret Anthony Johnston
48 The Rainbow D H Lawrence Audiobook
49 Days of Awe: Short Stories A M Homes
50 The Best American Short Stories 2016 Junot Diaz, editor
The book by Lesley Blanch was so much fun for me, because it hit my reading pleasure center in multiple ways — a lot of romantic tosh about pre-revolution Russia, a transgressive love affair, enthusiasm about books, and evocative descriptions of foreign places — Blanch writes about the origins and experiences of her life-long obsession with Russia, a Russia of fairy tales, wolves chasing sleighs across stony wastes, onion domes, extravagant despots. It’s an absolutely charming book, and it came to me at random — NYRB republished it and sent it to me as part of a subscription; I think I enjoyed it more for not having anticipated it at all.