BALIOC’S READING LIST, 2018 EDITION
This list counts only published books, consumed in published-book format, that I read for the first time and finished. No rereads, nothing abandoned halfway through, no Internet detritus of any kind, etc. I stopped tracking the “short” category, but most things here are “full-length” in the sense of being at least as long as a short novel.
1. The Secret Teachers of the Western World, Gary Lachman
2. The City of Brass, S. A. Chakraborty
3. Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Reshaping the American Family, June Carbone & Naomi Cohn
4. The Girl in the Tower, Katherine Arden
5. The Red Knight, Miles Cameron
6. How Democracy Dies, Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
7. The Fell Sword, Miles Cameron
8. The Dread Wyrm, Miles Cameron
9. The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, Gregory Cochran & Henry Harpending
10. The Plague of Swords, Miles Cameron
11. The Fall of Dragons, Miles Cameron
12. Jade City, Fonda Lee
13. Emperor of the Eight Islands, Lian Hearn
14. Autumn Princess, Dragon Child, Lian Hearn
15. Lord of the Darkwood, Lian Hearn
16. The Tengu’s Game of Go, Lian Hearn
17. The Armored Saint, Myke Cole
18. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, Bart D. Ehrman
19. The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
20. Circe, Madeline Miller
21. Senlin Ascends, Josiah Bancroft
22. Arm of the Sphinx, Josiah Bancroft
23. The Cruel Prince, Holly Black
24. Revolution for Dummies: Laughing Through the Arab Spring, Bassem Youssef
25. The Rhetoric of Reaction, Albert O. Hirschman
26. Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, Amy Chua
27. Speak Easy, Catherynne Valente
28. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave le Bon
29. Space Opera, Catherynne Valente
30. A Time of Dread, John Gwynne
31. The Flowers of Vashnoi, Lois McMaster Bujold
32. Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
33. Ghostwater, Will Wight
34. The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
35. After Virtue, Alasdair McIntyre
36. Age of Myth, Michael J. Sullivan
37. Man and His Symbols, C. G. Jung et al
38. Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It, Richard H. Sander & Stuart Taylor
39. Sword of Justice, Christian Cameron
40. Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik
41. The Shadow of What Was Lost, James Islington
42. An Echo of Things to Come, James Islington
43. On Grand Strategy, John Lewis Gaddis
44. Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher
45. Academ’s Fury, Jim Butcher
46. Cursor’s Fury, Jim Butcher
47. Captain’s Fury, Jim Butcher
48. The Personality Brokers, Merve Emre
49. Princeps’ Fury, Jim Butcher
50. First Lord’s Fury, Jim Butcher
51. Brimstone Angels, Erin M. Evans
52. Lesser Evils, Erin M. Evans
53. The Adversary, Erin M. Evans
54. Notes From the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
55. The Dinosaur Lords, Victor Milan
56. The Dinosaur Knights, Victor Milan
57. Fire & Blood, George R. R. Martin
58. The Bloodprint, Ausma Zehanat Khan
59. Wonders of the Invisible World, Patricia McKillip
60. Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, Michael Zielenziger
61. The Tethered Mage, Melissa Caruso
62. The Defiant Heir, Melissa Caruso
63. In the Eye of Heaven, David Keck
Plausible works of improving nonfiction consumed in 2018: 14
Works consumed in 2018 by women: 25
Works consumed in 2018 by men: 37
Works consumed in 2018 by both men and women: 1
Balioc’s Choice Award, fiction division: Spinning Silver
>>>> Honorable mention: Emperor of the Eight Islands et al.
Balioc’s Choice Award, nonfiction division: Secret Teachers of the Western World
>>>> Honorable mention: The 10,000 Year Explosion
Lifetime Achievement Award For “Yes, This Is a Great Classic, It’s Not Fair to Put It On the Scales With Everything Else”: Notes From the Underground
Cultural Heritage Award For “This Book Is Approximately 2/3 Piercingly Insightful Statements About the Human Mind and 1/3 Statements Like ‘All Crowds Are Essentially Feminine In Their Mentality, But This Is Most True of Crowds Composed of Members of the Latin Races’”: The Crowd
Overall a disappointing year. A lot of books that failed to live up to their promise, and a lot of outright trash where I pretty much knew I was wasting my time going in. The lesson here is probably that I should be reading more old stuff.