Books read in 2018

I didn't really have any reading goals this year, other than, as always, to read more in Portuguese. I could've done better in that regard.


January

-A Macao Narrative, Austin Coates (1.6.18)
A book I've wanted to read for a while. Short and informative, although a little outdated now, it still serves nicely as an introduction to the history of Macau.

-Macau nos Anos da Revolução Portuguesa, 1974-1979, José Eduardo Garcia Leandro (1.20.18)
Garcia Leandro was the governor of Macau from 1974-9, and I found this book about his experiences, and what Macau was like then, quite interesting. A little dry at times (but only barely) and I disagree with some of his assessments of the Portuguese legacy around the world, but I'm glad I finally got to read it.

-Feed, M.T. Anderson (1.21.18)
First sci-fi book club read of the year. I had no idea what to expect, given that it's aimed at young adults, and I really, really liked it. I may recommend it to my nephew.


February

-This is It, and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience, Alan Watts (2.13.18)
I recently played a game called Everything that incorporated lectures by Alan Watts, and it got me thinking. I'd never read his work before, and, like so many other things, it came along when I was meant to find it. A great book, and one I wish I hadn't checked out from the library, because it'd be nice to have on the shelf for what I imagine would be repeated readings.

-Mais Um Dia de Vida, Ryszard Kapuściński (Ana Saldanha, trans.) (2.15.18)
This is the Portuguese translation of a Polish journalist's account of life in Angola during the months leading up to independence from Portugal in 1975. Kapuściński has a good eye, and writes about everyone he meets even-handedly, which isn't to say that everyone comes off well. His prose, at least in translation, is solid, and I hope to read more of his work down the line.

-The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo, Shohaku Okumura and Kosho Uchiyama (2.28.18)
I read a chapter or so of this after sitting zazen each day. I liked it a lot- Okumura and Uchiyama's notes are insightful, and the titular Homeless Kodo expounds the sort of straightforward, everyday Zen that appeals to me and is clearly the result of years of serious practice. Definitely recommended.


March

-The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (3.4.18)
Tracey's pick for the sci-fi book club. The more I read, the more I liked it, and unlike some of the other trilogies/series that the book club has chosen, I'm gonna keep reading this one. Cool worldbuilding, strong characters, nice weird touches. I can see why it and its sequel both won the Hugo.

-The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, Adam Gorightly (3.9.18)
As a long-time Discordian Pope in questionable standing, I've been wanting to read this book since it came out. I finally got around to it, and it was a lot of fun to read. Sad, too, of course, given Thornley's paranoia, but if you're looking for a good history of '60s/'70s counterculture, this is not a bad place to start fnord.

-The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (3.15.18)
Burned through this one, mostly on the plane to Lisbon. Not a lot to add to my comments on The Fifth Season, as this one was good too.

-The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin (3.27.18)
After reading the first two books relatively quickly, I got about 20% of the way through this and got burned out. It wasn't the book, though, just me, and this was a solid ending to the Broken Earth story. Never a masterpiece in the immediately breathtaking sense, these were instead a trio of rich, heartfelt books telling a story that I won't forget anytime soon.

-«Golpe Nito Alves» e outros momentos da história de Angola vistos do Kremlin, José Milhazes (3.31.18)
José Milhazes, a Portuguese journalist specializing in Russia and the USSR, presents archival research and interviews with former Soviet diplomats and soldiers in order to give a broader picture of the Soviet Union's role in Angola, both before and after independence. A pretty interesting look at international relations during African decolonization and the slow winding-down of the Cold War.


April

-The Mescalero Apaches, C.L. Sonnichsen (4.9.18)
I read this before and during a trip to New Mexico, part of which was spent on the Mescalero reservation. For a book written in the '50s, it was a lot more sympathetic and even-handed in its portrayal of the Apaches than I expected. Sonnichsen's style is smooth and approachable, and while there isn't a ton of information about Apache culture included in this history, there's enough to give readers a sense of who the Mescaleros were and are.

-In Search of the Masterless Men of Newfoundland, Seaweed and Ron Sakolsky (4.12.18)
Two essays on the legendary band of men (and probably women) who escaped indentured servitude or jumped ship from the Royal Navy and lived in the wildnerness of Newfoundland. The historical record of the Masterless Men is examined alongside the anarchist/emancipatory aspects of their legend. A neat little book, especially if you believe in the power of myth to influence action.

-As Portas do Cerco, António Rebordão Navarro (4.16.18)
Something about this novel- if you could call it that- beyond its focus on Camilo Pessanha has intrigued me ever since I learned of its existence via the Macau Antigo blog some years back. I read part of it in the Universidade de Macau library, and finally got my own copy last year (which, being a used book, turned out to have an inscription from the author, which is cool). My Portuguese is much better than it was three years ago, but this was still a difficult read given Rebordão Navarro's vast, complex vocabulary and the unorthodox approach to narrative. I'll have to read it again in the future.

-The Night Inspector, Frederick Busch (4.22.18)
I picked this up from the library after hearing, via the Melville society listserv, that it featured Herman Melville as a character. Finely written as it was, and as well as Busch divined Melville's nature, I never found myself eager to settle in and read it. I'm not entirely sure why, which I'll have to mull over for a while.


May

-In the Name of the People: Angola's Forgotten Massacre, Lara Pawson (5.13.18)
This book somehow escaped my notice until recently, and I'm very fortunate to have found it. Pawson's written the only extensive study in English of the events of May 27, 1977 in Angola, and she's done a masterful job of it. I don't like to think what my forthcoming translation of the Sita Valles biography would be like had I not read this before turning in the final manuscript. Highly recommended.

-Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese SF in Translation, Ken Liu (ed. and trans.) (5.15.18)
I chose this for the sci-fi book club. My only concern was that all the authors' voices would end up sounding similar due to there being only one translator, but it turned out fine. Some really good stuff in here, and I look forward to more of it being published in English, as my Chinese is wildly insufficient for reading the originals.

-Between China and Europe: Person, Culture and Emotion in Macao, João de Pina-Cabral (5.28.18)
A mostly anthropological study of Macau's Portuguese, Chinese, and Macanese residents, grounded in various historical episodes, that I happened to find in the Houston Public library catalog. There's a ton of great information here, and despite my not being familiar with anthropological jargon, it was an easy read.

-O essencial sobre Camilo Pessanha, Paulo Franchetti (5.28.18) (reread)
The Camilo Pessanha project is underway, slowly, so where better to begin (other than Pessanha's own work, of course) than with Franchetti's great little book?


June

-The Book of Chocolate Saints, Jeet Thayil (6.4.18)
I devoured Narcopolis when I learned about, and bought, it in Hong Kong a few years ago, so I was stoked to read this. It didn't disappoint. The story of Newton Francis Xavier, a Goan-born poet and painter (composited from several actual Indian poets and painters), it covers, among many other things, the Bombay poetry scene of the '80s and '90s, the Indian experience in NYC around the time of 9/11, alcoholism, and the sidelining of women. Thayil's style can be a bit much, but only rarely; overall, it's a compelling read, even if you don't think as highly of poets as they do themselves.

-Opium: A History, Martin Booth (6.23.18)
A bit dry at times, and the slew of figures toward the end makes for a dull conclusion, but overall pretty good. The scale upon which opium has been commodified and used to fund any imaginable sort of shitty behavior is even greater than I imagined.

-Cultivating Qi: The Root of Energy, Vitality, and Spirit, David W. Clippinger (6.25.18)
I remain skeptical about the idea of qi, even though it's central to the martial arts I've been practicing for the past year and a half or so. Still, like a lot of ideas that claim a concrete existence but offer little proof, it's a useful one. Clippinger's book is a decent, if somewhat dull, treatment of the subject.

-Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon (6.27.18) (reread)
I read this in college and loved it, and loved it ~20 years later. I paid special attention to the weirdness and cruelty inherent in European occupation of America, and the variety and depth of friendships, this time around, and really enjoyed Pynchon's fantastic 18th-century prose pastiche. Everyone should read this. I'm going to read it again for sure.

-Diaspora, Greg Egan (6.29.18)
A sci-fi book club pick. Man, this was not a fun read. The first chapter was a disaster, and Egan's penchant for pages of scientific explanation came across as overbearing didacticism most of the time. The characters were basically afterthoughts, too. That said, I liked what Egan was trying to achieve with this story, and appreciated that the societies he created seemed to live up to their own enlightened standards (i.e., violence was never used to solve problems), but this was not my kind of science fiction novel.


July

Plant Dreaming Deep, May Sarton (7.18.18)
I chose this almost at random at Kaboom last winter. What a great find! I'd never heard of May Sarton before, and now I'm going to have to seek out her poetry and novels. This short memoir of a life of writerly solitude in New Hampshire was an absolute pleasure to read, rich and honest and wise. I looked forward to reading it each night before bed, and I'll miss doing so.

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, Adam Greenfield (7.21.18)
A lucid, no-bullshit explanation of the current technological landscape, and a sharp assessment of how it affects, on nearly every level imaginable, the way we make decisions and live our lives. Greenfield isn't very optimistic about our (already partially arrived) posthuman future, and I agree with him. Anyone interested in the role of modern technology in society should read this immediately.

You, Austin Grossman (7.25.18)
This hit all the right chords. Part nostalgia, part exploration of what games mean to, and do for, us, this novel was a lot of fun to read, but what struck me was how emblematic it was of where a certain segment of American thinking was a few years ago, and how something like this published now might seem trifling to some. (That's not a knock against Grossman—books like these are what make literature what it is—but a sad comment on the state of things now.) I'll have to read Grossman's other books.

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, George Saunders (7.29.18)
My wife is a big George Saunders fan, and recommended this as a quick, fun read, which it was. I tried reading Civilwarland in Bad Decline a few years ago and couldn't get into it, but after reading this I'll have to give one of Saunders' full-length books a chance again.


August

Voltar a Timor, Manuel Costa Alves (8.10.18)
Costa Alves, a meteorologist, developed a strong affinity for Timor after being posted there in the early '70s. This book chronicles his ongoing involvement with the country from that point until the late '90s, laying out the atrocities of the Indonesian invasion and occupation, Portugal's failure to decolonize and properly support its farthest-flung former colony, and the 25-year armed resistance that led (after this book was published) to East Timor's independence. Costa Alves doesn't pull any punches, and his genuine affection for Timor comes through at every turn.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Portugal, Martin Kayman (8.20.18)
A detailed study of Portuguese politics and economics from the late Estado Novo until the mid-'80s. While somewhat dry, this has been the best look into the mechanisms of post-25 April 1974 Portugal that I've found so far.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr. (8.23.18)
Graham's pick for sci-fi book club. I'd always heard good things about it, and it lived up to the hype, though it was nothing like I'd imagined it to be. I can see why it's considered a sci-fi classic, and it gets bonus points for the monastic element.

Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour (8.25.18)
An oral history of HST, built on interviews with dozens of folks who knew the man throughout his life. One of the more interesting aspects was the almost across the board willingness to tolerate Thompson's legendarily awful behavior, either out of respect for his talent or out of genuine affection (or fear, in a good number of cases). I wonder if a different generation would've been so forgiving.

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States, Jeffrey Lewis, PhD (8.28.18)
My brother lent me this last night and I read the whole thing in one day. Horrifying in its plausibility, I hope this isn't a blueprint for the near future. Jesus, what a rough read.

Chinesinha, Maria Pacheco Borges (8.30.18)
A short collection of stories about Chinese women written by a Macanese woman, this wasn't a bad read, but at times it felt like lists of Chinese customs disguised as stories. The faintly orientalist tone wasn't great either, but nor was it surprising, given when the book was published (1974). All in all, worth the five euros I paid for it, and a decent enough addition to Macanese literature.


September

The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963, Barry Miles (9.10.18)
Tracey got me this for my birthday, since we'll be staying in the successor to the (in)famous Beat Hotel in Paris when we go in October. I'm always up for reading about the Beats, particularly Burroughs, so I dug this.

Flâneur: The Art of Wandering the Streets of Paris, Federico Castigliano (9.12.18)
I didn't read this as closely as I should have. Castigliano does a reasonably good, if somewhat academic, job of examining the philosophy of flânerie. I look forward to wandering Paris, and this book whetted my appetite.

Agents of Dreamland, Caitlín R. Kiernan (9.22.18)
Got this from the library this afternoon and finished it this evening. A good rainy day read: creepy and poetic, like the other bits of Kiernan's work I've read, and bleak.

The Spectacle of the Void, David Peak (9.22.18)
A study of the "horror reality" generated by our incomplete understanding of reality and our inability to communicate how weird and extra-human that reality is. Similar to Eugene Thacker's work, generally speaking. Good stuff, as long as you're not looking for a positive take on humanity's place in the universe and in relation to itself.

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (9.27.18)
I haven't read Hemingway in nearly 20 years. I liked this quite a bit, but I'm not rushing off to read more of his work when I've got a thousand other things in the queue.


October

Black Helicopters, Caitlín R. Kiernan (10.12.18)
A companion/sequel to Agents of Dreamland. I didn't like it as much, but it was still a decent read. If it'd been longer, however, it might've gotten a little tiresome.

Corpsepaint, David Peak (10.14.18)
When I found out the author of "The Spectacle of the Void" had written a novel about black metal, I had to read it. It ruled, as much as something so bleak can rule. Grim as hell, knowledgeable about and appreciative of black metal, well-written. Gonna have to read his other fiction.


November

Babel-17, Samuel R. Delany (11.2.18)
A sci-fi book club pick. Some neat stuff in here, and Delany's language always stands apart, but the plot was thin and the protagonist suffered from what I call "Captain Competent" syndrome, i.e., is good at everything (and loved by all). The novella "Empire Star" was included in this edition, but I'm skipping it as I have tons of other things to read as it is.

Purga em Angola, Dalila Cabrita Mateus and Álvaro Mateus (11.6.18)
A study of the events of 27 May 1977 in Angola, read on the recommendation of Leonor Figueiredo. The authors do an admirable job of unraveling the twisted skeins of the fraccionista "coup," which in their estimation seems to have been set up by those in power in order to purge the MPLA, and much of Angolan society, of their enemies. I wonder if a clear answer will ever be found.

The Essence of T'ai Chi Ch'uan: The Literary Tradition, Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo, Martin Inn, Robert Amacker, Susan Foe (trans./ed.) (11.7.18)
One of the things I enjoy about the internal martial arts is trying to figure out how the veiled, rather mystical terminology used in books like this translate into physical applications. There's some good stuff here, but as is often the case with these kinds of books, you have to know—or learn—how to read it in order to make something of it.

The Girl With Ghost Eyes, M.H. Boroson (11.14.18)
I loved this book. Well-paced, well-researched, solid characters, chock full of Daoist lore and kung fu. Boroson's onto something with his turn of the century Chinatown stories- I say stories not only because another book is in the works, but because there's a lot of stories in this one alone.

Portugal and Africa, David Birmingham (11.24.18)
A short collection of essays spanning the late 1960s to the 1990s. Lots of good information, albeit dated in places now, and Birmingham's assessment of the events of 27 May 1977 in Angola seems a bit hasty. The title's somewhat misleading, too, as the book deals with Angola almost exclusively. Worth one's time, all in all.

A Short History of Modern Angola, David Birmingham (11.28.18)
Exactly what it claims to be, and more up to date than the other Birmingham book I read. The author doesn't spare readers the awfulness that was Portuguese colonialism, or the misery that is its legacy. A good little introduction to oil-rich, war-torn Angola.


December

Off to Be the Wizard, Scott Meyer (12.1.18)
Jay's sci-fi book club pick. This was neither good nor my thing.


Crooked, Austin Grossman (12.5.18)
This was good, and totally my thing: Richard Nixon spilling the beans about the occult nature of his presidency, and the American presidency as a whole. Grossman also avoided making it a total Cthulhu mythos pastiche, which was nice. Dig it.

Saudade, Suneeta Peres da Costa (12.9.18)
I recently met Suneeta at GALF 2018, and I was stoked to hear that her novella echoed, in some ways, the translation of Sita Valles' biography I've recently published (minus the revolutionary protagonist). The tale of a Goan girl growing up in Portuguese Angola, this reminded me of all the time I've spent looking at photos of late Portuguese Africa, but with honest, confused, defiant commentary by the photos' subject instead of the rose-tinted nostalgia you usually get. And then there's poetry of the prose, which I loved at every turn. Highly recommended.

Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon (12.11.18) (reread)
I was going to reread Vineland, but didn't want to lug it on the plane to India, so I reread this. Good stuff, man. I noticed that I liked Doc Sportello less this time around, which isn't to say I didn't like him, just that the darker elements of the pulp private eye personality stood out more.

Banaras and the Other, Ashwani Kumar (12.22.18)
Ashwani was another cool writer I met at GALF, and I also had the pleasure of hearing him read a poem from this book. The imagery here is a phantasmagoria of Indian mythology, political and literary figures, animals, gods, and people seeking in sometimes destructive ways to understand their families, their country, themselves. Some people may not dig the cavalcade of weirdness and poem-ness here, but I did.

When You Die You Will Not Be Scared To Die, Lindsay Tunkl (12.29.18)
I heard about this on Erik Davis' Expanding Mind show, read it, and then listened to his interview with the author. A series of meditations on death and our mortal concerns that get snagged on the notion of death, and what those concerns do to us, this was simultaneously pensive, funny, and spot-on. The sort of book you go back to and read bits of when the time is right, which, when it comes to facing mortality, is always.


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