Books of '18: Recommendations

It's pretty far into the year to look back at last year, but better late than never.  It was a grand reading year for me, and I have several titles to recommend.

Best of the Year: Non-Fiction

The Long Haul; a Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road, Finn Murphy, 2017

I read this fantastic book in a most unusual fashion for me.  Essentially in one sitting.  We were flying back to Pittsburgh from Washington state, where we'd been on vacation.  I'd just barely started the book - I believe I was still on the introduction - when what was to be a 75-minute layover in Dallas turned into 3.5-hour lightning delay.  At the gate, I set to reading the book and found that I was gobbling up pages quickly.  The infotainment on the flight consisted of free wifi if you downloaded the American Airlines app.  By then, I was well into the book, and I just kept reading.  I finished the book in bed after we arrived home at 2:30 in the morning.  So, sort of one sitting.  It's terrific.  I heard Murphy interviewed on Fresh Air.  He confesses in the book that he's always had a crush on Terri Gross's voice and because she asks interesting guests interesting questions.  He's a long-haul mover of the high-end executive type, and he just describes how he got into that field in the first place, what it's given him, what it's barred him from, and the interesting things that have happened to him over a decades-long career.  He was basically an educated middle-class guy who decided that a job job was not going to be for him and that manual labor wasn't all bad.  I loved it.  It made the whole travel nightmare feel like a boon.  

Honorable Mentions  
Liturgy of the Ordinary; Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, Tish Harrison Warren, 2016
Manchild; My Life Without Adult Supervision, Alan Olifson, 2017
Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, 2011


Best of the Year: Family Reading

The War I Finally Won, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, 2017

Brubaker Bradley does it again.  She followed up The War that Saved My Life, a book we read as a family last year, with The War I Finally Won.  We did the same with the sequel.  This book continues the story of Ada and Jamie, two kids subjected to different levels of abuse by a low-resource barmaid in London.  Ada is the emotional heart of the two books, and I'm very impressed with how Brubaker Bradley depicts the uneven path of a child recovering from trauma and trying to learn how to trust people and situations more.  Her characters surprise the reader in nuanced portraits of evolving behavior.  The books may be accused of anachronistically infusing current social and political mores into World War 2-era England (town and country), but I admit to rooting for that more often than not when it happens in these stories.  And she's not alone.  Exhibit A: Downton Abbey.  If there's a theme in these two books, it is empathy in some people overcoming its lack in others.  Our whole family, with boys aged 15 and 11 at the time, have been completely engaged by the storytelling.

Best of the Year: Fiction 

City of Thieves, David Benioff, 2008 

I heard Brian Koppelman talk about this book on Bill Simmons's podcast, and he said something like he'd given it away to 30 people.  On my list, it went, and I'm glad it did.  Benioff is the opposite of prolific.  This is his third and final book, and it was written ten years ago.  He is now a Game of Thrones show-runner.  City of Thieves throws together unlikely groups of people during the siege of Leningrad in World War II.  Two in particular go on a surprising quest together.  To say more would be to ruin the story, which is prodigiously page-turning.  The setting is educational without feeling like it.  The characters and plot are a little over-the-top and cinematic, but guess what?  I like movies.  A book that reads like a movie is fine by me.  It's a terrific novel.

Honorable Mentions
The Nix, Nathan Hill, 2016
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott,1868