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This is the fifth in a series of annual book reviews:
I read ~113 books in 2018, and a lot of them wound up on this list. I may be giving out too many five-star ratings, but in the course of writing reviews, I remembered just how good all of these were, so… no regrets.
(My Goodreads account has a rating for every book I remember reading.)
The Best Books
I didn’t choose a cutoff point, but ten books stood out from the rest, either because of their sheer quality or because they were easier to read than competitors of similar quality.
Every link in this section goes to my full review on Goodreads.
Ridiculously good books:
- Black Lamb and Gray Falcon (free online)
- Impro (Keith Johnstone) (free online)
- Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
- Erfworld (free online)
- Understanding Power (free online)
- Stubborn Attachments
- The Structures of Everyday Life (free online)
- George Orwell’s Essays (free online)
- Vinland Saga
- My Name is Asher Lev (free online)
Books that were merely very good:
- Kakukaku Shikajika
- Sex With Shakespeare
- Urne Burial (free online)
- Worth the Candle (free online)
- The Excuse Factory (free online)
- I Capture the Castle (free online)
- Of Human Bondage (free online)
- City of Golden Shadow (Otherland #1)
- Way of the Warrior Kid (and the sequel)
- Transdimensional Brain Chip (free online)
- Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (free online)
- Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (some stories free online)
- I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That
- The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College
- Stealing America’s Future: How For-Profit Colleges Scam Taxpayers and Ruin Students’ Lives
- Two Arms and a Head (free online) (content warning: suicide, and a very bleak perspective on physical disability)
- McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War (I’m linking to Gwern‘s review, because they said everything I would have said)
The Best Other Stuff
Best short stories
- Faith of Our Fathers (Philip K. Dick)
- The stories of Alicorn (Assassin, Masquerade, Strax, Khan)
- The stories of Saki (The Interlopers, The Lumber Room, Sredni Vashtar)
- “Current Affairs‘ “Some Puzzles For Libertarians”, Treated As Writing Prompts For Short Stories” (Scott Alexander)
Best essays
- Models: A Summary (Ozy Frantz)
- Load-Bearing Things (Ozy Frantz)
- Turning a Unicorn Into a Bat (Josh Weed)
- Please Do Not Bite the Newcomers (Wikipedia)
- An Overly Analytical Guide to Camgirling (Aella)
- Rules for History of Philosophy (Peter Adamson)
- Productivity for Precious Snowflakes (Tiago Forte)
- There Is No Case for the Humanities (Justin Stover)
- Review of “Cat Sense: Are We Good Owners?” (Gwern)
- Yale Medical School Graduation Address (Don Berwick)
- The Creepy Guy in the Friend Group, Revisited (Jennifer Peepas)
- “What is the most sophisticated piece of software ever written?” (John Byrd)
- Losing Your Grip: Futility and Dramatic Necessity in Shadow of the Colossus (Nick Fortugno)
Best journalism
I cut back on journalism this year to make more room for books; I’m sure I missed a lot of great work as a result. Also, I’m not sure what counts as “journalism” vs. “an essay”, but I don’t think it really matters in this context.
- Kelsey Piper’s work on Future Perfect
- John Urschel Goes Pro (Jordan Ellenberg)
- Everyone Believed Larry Nassar (Kerry Howley)
- The Corruption of Public Health (John Tierney)
- The Farmer Who Changed China Forever (Ni Dandan)
- The Friendship That Made Google Huge (James Somers)
- Fear and Loathing at Effective Altruism Global 2017 (Scott Alexander)
- The world is much better; the world is awful; the world can be much better (Max Roser)
- Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town (Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn)
- Why (almost) everything reported about the Cambridge Analytica Facebook “hacking” controversy is wrong (Chris Kavanagh)
Best poems
- Pangur Bán (Anonymous)
- The Present Crisis (James Russell Lowell)
- The Envoy of Mr. Cogito (Zbigniew Herbert)
- Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Nightwish; must be heard in song, not just read)
Most educational thing that was not good
The podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein: A very interesting example of how live debates go wrong. Two professional communicators really wanted to communicate and just couldn’t make it happen. This might have worked with Julia Galef as a moderator, but in this version of the universe, it was doomed.
Thanks for making it to the end!
If you wind up reading any of these, I’d love to hear your thoughts.