a fever of thyself (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sea_changed) wrote2019-01-07 05:34 pm
sea_changed) wrote2019-01-07 05:34 pm
2018 in books
In 2018 I read 90 books, 23 nonfiction and 67 fiction. I'd had a soft goal of getting to 100 total, but considering the wrench grad school threw into my reading life I'm perfectly content with 90.
Top 5 Nonfiction:
1. The World Only Spins Forward, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois. I have many and extraordinarily strong feelings about Angels in America, so I was predisposed to love this, but on top of that, the interviews included are wide-ranging and wonderful, and they're put together excellently to create a compelling narrative. This is oral history done right, about a play which will always have an outsized place in my heart.
2. American Revolutions, Alan Taylor. I picked this up because it happened to be on the shelf at my library, but I ended up really liking it. It attempts to give a balanced view of the Revolution, both in terms of geography (east/west, north/south) and in terms of the various actors on each side: the British aren't particularly villainized, and the Patriots not lionized in turn. It also emphasizes the lead-up to the war and the huge role that the French and Indian/Seven Years War played in setting up the Revolution, which I always appreciate. I highly recommend it as an overview of the war and its surrounding contexts.
3. Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, Nicholas Frankel. Well-written and tightly focused, this provides a wonderful look at the last part of Wilde's life, post-prison. Frankel has no particular animus against anyone involved in the story, which is refreshing among Wilde biographers, and he gives a complicated, sad, but ultimately not depressing look at Wilde's final years.
4. Denmark Vesey’s Garden, Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts. Looks at the history of Civil War monuments in Charleston, and by doing so gives a historical way in to the monuments debate that's been ongoing for several years now. The history is fascinating, and by the end of the last section the title becomes especially haunting and thought-provoking.
5. Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell. I don't know how I hadn't read this before, but it's extremely enjoyable. Vowell walks the fine line of becoming too chatty and not substantive enough for even pop history, which this very much is, but her musings on especially the emotional weight of historical places and things provides grounding for the book and makes it worth thinking about as well as fun.
Top 5 Series:
I read a ton of great series this year, so I'm separating them out in their own list; the fiction list below is only books which aren't connected to a larger series.
1. The Lord John series, Diana Gabaldon. I rec'd this series here; in short, eighteenth-century mysteries that feature a gay man navigating his life. I love it dearly.
2. A Society of Gentlemen series, K.J. Charles. I read these months ago and haven't managed to shake my obsessions with them; they're romance novels that feature complex emotional and physical relationships between three (four if you count the prequel novella) sets of men in Regency England. The characters and relationships are well-drawn and fascinating; my favorite, as likely anyone reading this already knows, is the second, A Seditious Affair, but I do love them all.
3. The Lynes and Mathey series, Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold. This one is paranormal, which I tend to avoid, but it's wonderful: the two eponymous men investigate paranormal mysteries in Victorian London and navigate their own relationship. Delightful, particularly the second book.
4. The Temeraire series, Naomi Novik. DELIGHTFUL. The Napoleonic War but with dragons; if that doesn't sell you on them, I'm not sure what else I can say that will. But they're wonderfully done, the relationship between the two main characters (a captain and his dragon) funny and touching, which lots of fun alternate-historical details. I've only read the first three, and I'm very much looking forward to continuing on with the series.
5. The Lord Peter Wimsey series, Dorothy L. Sayers. This is last on the list only because I actually didn't start it in 2018, only continued reading; I read all the Harriet Vane books last year and fell completely in love, and then started at the actually beginning of the series this year. I do think they suffer for being Harriet-less, but I loved Whose Body? especially, with all its post-WWI details and its look at Peter's shell shock.
Top 5 Fiction:
1. Life Mask, Emma Donoghue. I rec'd this book here; in short, eighteenth-century lesbians, historical rpf, and wonderful writing. I highly recommend it.
2. The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert. Utterly wonderful; it traces the life of a woman throughout the nineteenth century, as she strives to learn and study and find love and sexual satisfaction. There is something exquisite about this book, and how it captures feelings of longing and love (of people; of things; of places); the writing and overall effect is delicate but sure. I'm still thinking about it, months later, and I very much recommend it.
3. Affinity, Sarah Waters. Absolutely incredible. It traces a wealthy woman's growing obsession with an imprisoned woman she begins visiting as a charitable act; it's clearly but subtly and complicatedly gay, and the emotional intensity is gripping and excellently done.
4. Olivia, Dorothy Strachey. This is such an utter gem of a book. Written in the 1940s and set in the late 1800s, it's about a student at a girls' boarding school who falls in love with her female professor. It's short, but it felt almost (Charlotte) Brontë-esque to me--the boarding school, the writing style, all felt very familiar to me, which made the fairly overt queerness all the more intriguing and wonderful.
5. I told myself I wouldn't include rereads on this list, but I have to mention that some of the books I enjoyed most this year were rereads--Golden Hill, especially, which I'm working on a bigger post about, as my feelings cannot be contained; Arcadia never fails to blow me away utterly, and I enjoyed it more this time around than I ever had before; Hamlet and Measure for Measure were my Shakespeare rereads this year, and they're some of my favorites (Hamlet especially is a text I can sink into and never resurface; my love of Measure is unsurprisingly more complicated, but when it's good it's so good).
- Days Without End, Sebastian Barry
- Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, Nicholas Frankel
- These Possible Lives, Fleur Jaeggy
- Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
- Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, Frances Wilson
- Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
- The Ruin of a Rake, Cat Sebastian
- The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, Mackenzi Lee
- Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice, Paula Byrne
- Measure for Measure, Shakespeare*
- Inventing the Victorians, Matthew Sweet
- Hamlet, Shakespeare*
- The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Johnson’s Heir, Michael Bundock
- At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
- Margaret the First, Danielle Dutton
- Lord John and the Private Matter, Diana Gabaldon
- Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, Diana Gabaldon
- Lord John and the Hand of Devils, Diana Gabaldon
- The Scottish Prisoner, Diana Gabaldon
- Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
- Wildethorn, Jane Eaglund
- Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739, Peter Hoffer
- If We Were Villains, M.L. Rio
- An Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon
- American Revolutions: A Continental History 1750-1804, Alan Taylor
- His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
- Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, Diana Gabaldon
- Felicity series, Valerie Tripp*
- The Lawrence Browne Affair, Cat Sebastian
- Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves, Marie Jenkins Schwartz
- The Gentleman’s House in the British Atlantic World 1680-1780, Stephen Hague
- England’s Wealthiest Son: William Beckford, Boyd Alexander
- Patience & Sarah, Isabel Miller
- A Gentleman’s Position, K.J. Charles
- Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
- Whose Body?, Dorothy L. Sayers
- A Seditious Affair, K.J. Charles
- Summit Avenue, Mary Sharratt
- The Heart’s Invisible Furies, John Boyne
- Earthly Joys, Philippa Gregory
- Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William Blake
- The Absolutist, John Boyne
- Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
- Tell the Wolves I’m Home, Carol Rifka Brunt
- A Fashionable Indulgence, K.J. Charles
- Life Mask, Emma Donoghue
- Silhouette of a Sparrow, Molly Beth Griffin
- Circe, Madeline Miller
- The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
- In Other Lands, Sarah Rees Brennan
- Pembroke Park, Michelle Martin
- Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” Zora Neale Hurston
- Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy, Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts
- Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
- Who Is Very Kelly?, Rosalie Knecht
- See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary, Lorrie Moore
- The Sparsholt Affair, Alan Hollinghurst
- The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert
- The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois
- Quatrefoil, James Barr
- Think of England, K.J. Charles
- Olivia, Dorothy Strachey
- The Invention of Love, Tom Stoppard
- The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater
- The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater
- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Maggie Stiefvater
- Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, James C. Scott
- Incognita, William Congreve
- Oroonoko, Aphra Behn
- Arcadia, Tom Stoppard*
- Provoked, Joanna Chambers
- Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell
- Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi, Timothy R. Pauketat
- The Raven King, Maggie Stiefvater
- Unfit to Print, K.J. Charles
- The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain 1700-1830, Clifford Siskin
- Biography of a Tenement House in New York City: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street, Andrew S. Dolkart
- Beguiled, Joanna Chambers
- Creating Colonial Williamsburg: The Restoration of Virginia’s Eighteenth-Century Capital, Anders Greenspan
- Band Sinister, K.J. Charles
- Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums, Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan
- Death by Silver, Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold
- Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado
- Affinity, Sarah Waters
- R E D, Chase Berggrun
- Clouds of Witness, Dorothy L. Sayers
- Death at the Dionysus Club, Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold
- Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenburg
- Golden Hill, Francis Spufford*
- The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, Imogen Hermes Gowar
Top 5 Nonfiction:
1. The World Only Spins Forward, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois. I have many and extraordinarily strong feelings about Angels in America, so I was predisposed to love this, but on top of that, the interviews included are wide-ranging and wonderful, and they're put together excellently to create a compelling narrative. This is oral history done right, about a play which will always have an outsized place in my heart.
2. American Revolutions, Alan Taylor. I picked this up because it happened to be on the shelf at my library, but I ended up really liking it. It attempts to give a balanced view of the Revolution, both in terms of geography (east/west, north/south) and in terms of the various actors on each side: the British aren't particularly villainized, and the Patriots not lionized in turn. It also emphasizes the lead-up to the war and the huge role that the French and Indian/Seven Years War played in setting up the Revolution, which I always appreciate. I highly recommend it as an overview of the war and its surrounding contexts.
3. Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, Nicholas Frankel. Well-written and tightly focused, this provides a wonderful look at the last part of Wilde's life, post-prison. Frankel has no particular animus against anyone involved in the story, which is refreshing among Wilde biographers, and he gives a complicated, sad, but ultimately not depressing look at Wilde's final years.
4. Denmark Vesey’s Garden, Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts. Looks at the history of Civil War monuments in Charleston, and by doing so gives a historical way in to the monuments debate that's been ongoing for several years now. The history is fascinating, and by the end of the last section the title becomes especially haunting and thought-provoking.
5. Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell. I don't know how I hadn't read this before, but it's extremely enjoyable. Vowell walks the fine line of becoming too chatty and not substantive enough for even pop history, which this very much is, but her musings on especially the emotional weight of historical places and things provides grounding for the book and makes it worth thinking about as well as fun.
Top 5 Series:
I read a ton of great series this year, so I'm separating them out in their own list; the fiction list below is only books which aren't connected to a larger series.
1. The Lord John series, Diana Gabaldon. I rec'd this series here; in short, eighteenth-century mysteries that feature a gay man navigating his life. I love it dearly.
2. A Society of Gentlemen series, K.J. Charles. I read these months ago and haven't managed to shake my obsessions with them; they're romance novels that feature complex emotional and physical relationships between three (four if you count the prequel novella) sets of men in Regency England. The characters and relationships are well-drawn and fascinating; my favorite, as likely anyone reading this already knows, is the second, A Seditious Affair, but I do love them all.
3. The Lynes and Mathey series, Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold. This one is paranormal, which I tend to avoid, but it's wonderful: the two eponymous men investigate paranormal mysteries in Victorian London and navigate their own relationship. Delightful, particularly the second book.
4. The Temeraire series, Naomi Novik. DELIGHTFUL. The Napoleonic War but with dragons; if that doesn't sell you on them, I'm not sure what else I can say that will. But they're wonderfully done, the relationship between the two main characters (a captain and his dragon) funny and touching, which lots of fun alternate-historical details. I've only read the first three, and I'm very much looking forward to continuing on with the series.
5. The Lord Peter Wimsey series, Dorothy L. Sayers. This is last on the list only because I actually didn't start it in 2018, only continued reading; I read all the Harriet Vane books last year and fell completely in love, and then started at the actually beginning of the series this year. I do think they suffer for being Harriet-less, but I loved Whose Body? especially, with all its post-WWI details and its look at Peter's shell shock.
Top 5 Fiction:
1. Life Mask, Emma Donoghue. I rec'd this book here; in short, eighteenth-century lesbians, historical rpf, and wonderful writing. I highly recommend it.
2. The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert. Utterly wonderful; it traces the life of a woman throughout the nineteenth century, as she strives to learn and study and find love and sexual satisfaction. There is something exquisite about this book, and how it captures feelings of longing and love (of people; of things; of places); the writing and overall effect is delicate but sure. I'm still thinking about it, months later, and I very much recommend it.
3. Affinity, Sarah Waters. Absolutely incredible. It traces a wealthy woman's growing obsession with an imprisoned woman she begins visiting as a charitable act; it's clearly but subtly and complicatedly gay, and the emotional intensity is gripping and excellently done.
4. Olivia, Dorothy Strachey. This is such an utter gem of a book. Written in the 1940s and set in the late 1800s, it's about a student at a girls' boarding school who falls in love with her female professor. It's short, but it felt almost (Charlotte) Brontë-esque to me--the boarding school, the writing style, all felt very familiar to me, which made the fairly overt queerness all the more intriguing and wonderful.
5. I told myself I wouldn't include rereads on this list, but I have to mention that some of the books I enjoyed most this year were rereads--Golden Hill, especially, which I'm working on a bigger post about, as my feelings cannot be contained; Arcadia never fails to blow me away utterly, and I enjoyed it more this time around than I ever had before; Hamlet and Measure for Measure were my Shakespeare rereads this year, and they're some of my favorites (Hamlet especially is a text I can sink into and never resurface; my love of Measure is unsurprisingly more complicated, but when it's good it's so good).
no subject
arcadia is just incredible. i think that's the play i'm most desperate to see a production of. in 2017 i saw like three stoppard plays, but there weren't any professional productions of stoppard last year in london that i know of, which made me sad...
i saw an intriguing production of measure for measure last year though, but i've never read the play. the first half of the production was basically an abridged version of the original play, except it ends with isabella screaming instead of her silence; from there the second half is a do-over of the same play, but isabella and angelo swap roles and it's now set in the modern day. to me the second half seems to be some kind of fantasy on isabella's part, where she tries to envision herself with the power in this situation. but ultimately there's something off about it--she still doesn't really have the kind of power a man would have, and it finally ends with her back in her original period garb, implying, i think, that not enough has changed between then and now. the modern-day role reversal in the second half, to me, is intended to seem like a bit of a farce because it's a fantasy that doesn't work; isabella and angelo can't just swap roles and have it play straightforwardly because even today gender dynamics are going to warp those roles into something else. people seem to take away very different things about what exactly that production was trying to say, though. i found an intelligently written negative review that interpreted it completely different to me. to me it was a fairly effective and thought-provoking production, but as someone who hasn't experienced the text separately to this production, i don't know how much of my emotional response to it is down to the original play that shakespeare wrote, and how much is down to the production that i watched. but man, there really are some bloody amazing moments in that text!!!
anyway, in 2018 i also read and LOVED the lynes and mathey series. they are SO GOOD. the second book was absolutely thrilling. thanks for those yuletide recs in your previous post, btw, i will definitely need to check the ned/julian one out (and the bedlam stacks one as well)!!
(do you have a goodreads, btw?)
no subject
That production of Measure sounds fascinating. I love the idea of Isabella screaming in place of her silence in the text, oh my god. And I do take some issue with the review you linked (which is also super fascinating) criticizing the heavy cuts of the text--it's a weird, weird text, and I'm convinced the only way to perform it effectively is to cut it pretty heavily. (I mean, I think all Shakespeare has to be cut to be performed effectively, but Measure to a greater extent than any other.) It's just a mess of a play, but those scenes between Isabella and Angelo make it worth it, or should. I would have loved to see this production, both for Hayley Atwell's Isabella (!!) and because I find both your interpretation and the review's really interesting, not least because you're getting such different messages from the same production.
Lynes and Mathey! I'm so glad other people have read them. So much about them is calibrated to make me care deeply--their history together, their whole friends-with-benefits-but-wanting-something-more setup, queer historical community in the form of the Dionysus Club and Julian's little network of past lovers. They really are wonderful. (And I'm always pleased when my recs lead to more people reading fic I love! Ugh, that Bedlam Stacks one is still killing me.)
(I do! Though I really only use it as a list feature, just to keep everything in one place.)