A list of books I read in 2018

05 Jan 2019

reading-notes    books, ethics, politics, reading-list

Here’s the list of the books I read in 2018. There are 36 in total. At first it seemed like a small number to me. However, that averages to three books per month, which actually feels like a lot. In fact, I’m not sure I could read more than three books each month. There was never a time last year when I wasn’t reading something, and I often read multiple books at once.

There is no particular order. They are grouped roughly by genre/topic and books by the same author are grouped together. There are no links to Amazon (because fuck Amazon) or other major booksellers because I do not want to endorse any of them. The only exception is for small, independent publishers that I think we should support. Like PM Press, which is based in Oakland. Some of these are freely available online, and I’ve linked to them accordingly.

The List

• Who Rules the World?, Noam Chomsky
• Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, Noam Chomsky
• Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Noam Chomsky
• Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, Noam Chomsky
• Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives, Elizabeth Anderson
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Cathy O’Neil
• Lying, Sam Harris
• Free Will, Sam Harris
• Work: Capitalism, Economics, Resistance, CrimethInc (see also: The Mythology of Work zine)
• No Wall They Can Build, CrimethInc (PDF, see also: Designed To Kill zine)

• From Democracy To Freedom, CrimethInc (PDF)

• There There, Tommy Orange (from Oakland)
• The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Go Tell It On The Mountain, James Baldwin
• (H)afrocentric Comics, Volumes 1-4, Jewels Smith, (from Oakland, see also: hafrocentric.com)
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
• This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
• Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah
• Calypso, David Sedaris

• Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, David Sedaris

• The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, Dan Jurafsky
• How to Make Coffee: The Science Behind the Bean, Lani Kingston
• How to Make Tea: The Science Behind the Leaf, Brian R. Keating and Kim Long

• Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough and Michael Braungart

• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
• The Effective Engineer, Edmond Lau
• How To Love, Thích Nhất Hạnh
• How To Sit, Thích Nhất Hạnh
• How To Eat, Thích Nhất Hạnh
• How To Walk, Thích Nhất Hạnh
• How To Relax, Thích Nhất Hạnh
• How To Fight, Thích Nhất Hạnh

The Authors

One of my goals was to read more books by non-male and non-white authors. Of the 36 books, there were 20 unique authors. Here is the breakdown:

• 13 male-identifying (65%)
• 7 female-identifying (35%)
• 1 anonymous (CrimethInc)
• 9 people of color / non-white (45%)

However, I read multiple books by the same author. Here’s the breakdown in terms of the 36 total books:

• 24 male-identifying (66%)
• 12 female-identifying (33%)
• 1 anonymous (CrimethInc)
• 18 people of color / non-white (50%)

What’s next?

For this year, I want to continue reading more diverse authors, more fiction, and more books on radical politics and philosophy.

I recommend all of the books listed above. This is my first post like this. I only started tracking my reading in 2017. I wish I had started keeping these lists and writing these posts sooner. But, you have to start somewhere I suppose. I look forward to writing another one of these at the end of 2019.