2018 Reading Review

In 2018, I read 50 books, a mix of fiction and non-fiction, essay collections and fairly thick tomes. My top 10 are listed below. My year of books included the usual emphasis on economics, technology, and baseball, plus a heavy dose of Audible listening — note that the NYT Book Review section has started including reviews of certain audiobooks for their reader's style (I'd in particular recommend Nick Offerman's take on Twain's Feast). Also, I didn’t realize during the year, but upon reviewing my 2018 something that emerged was a heavier than usual focus on books about people and social order: Enlightenment Now, Rational Optimist, To Be a Machine, Evicted, Sapiens, Political Tribes, Skin in the Game, Culture Code, The Fifth Risk, Dear America, and How to Change Your Mind (plus I'm partly through Fukuyama's Identity) and even the fiction books Apex and Foundation.

Long-time friends will recognize this format as my annual reading list post, and I once again used Goodreads to keep track of books. Here are the 10 best books I read last year:

1. Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)

2. How to Change Your Mind (Michael Pollan)

3. Exit West (Mohsin Hamid)

4. Rational Optimist (Matt Ridley)

5. Paul: A Biography (N.T. Wright)

6. The Fifth Risk (Michael Lewis)

7. Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman)

8. Dear America (Jose Antonio Vargas)

9. Asymmetry (Lisa Halliday)

10. Foundation (Issac Asimov)

(honorable mentions: The Gatekeepers, Anatomy of Terror, Evicted, To Be a Machine, Political Tribes, and The Incendiaries)