My favourite non-2018 books I read in 2018

It’s hard to do end of year ‘best of’ lists without making arbitrary divisions, so I did my top books that came out in 2018 already, and now it’s time for those I read in 2018 but that came out earlier (how much earlier does vary). Again, didn’t restrict numbers, so have ended up with a top seven.

• Letters Written During A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft – Wollstonecraft’s account of travelling with an infant daughter on the business of a man who was ultimately to desert her, and which famously made her later husband William Godwin say “If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.” It covers varied topics including mocking tourists and lamenting her own mental state, as well as reflections on the self and nature.
• Marriage of a Thousand Lies by S.J. Sindu – A gripping and at times heart-wrenching novel about Lucky and her husband Krishna, who are both gay but married to appease their Sri Lankan-American families. A look at families, truth, and what happens when an illusion needs to be shattered.
• If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho, trans. Anne Carson – One of the perks of working in a university was that I could take this out of the library just for fun. There’s not much to say about it: it’s the fragements of Sappho’s poetry, translated by Anne Carson in a punchy, Anne Carson way.
• A Gothic Soul by Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic – The first of two Czech books on this list (can you tell I went to Prague this year?), A Gothic Soul is a Czech Decadent book that is lyrical, almost without plot, and about a nihilistic protagonist seeing his situation reflected in Prague, which he calls a dead city. Even in translation, the atmosphere comes through incredibly well (and there’s a great little edition of the English translation, which is also true of the following book).
• May by Karel Hynek Mácha (in translation) – I have on good authority Mácha is the Czech Romantic poet, with his dramatic life cut short, epic poetry, and liking for Byron. May (Máj in Czech) is a four canto long narrative poem with an opening that Czech schoolchildren learn to recite and it is very much worth a read for its description and Byronic narrative.
• S.T.A.G.S by M.A. Bennett – I had to have something from my favourite genre, privileged group at a university/school/similar do terrible things, on this list. This is a refreshing YA version, in which a scholarship student uncovers a sinister secret relating to a weekend of shooting and drinking that happens every year at a fancy private school. It has a good dose of mystery solving, teenage angst, and class issues.
• Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson – I didn’t intend to end up with two Anne Carson books on here, but in that case I shouldn’t’ve read multiple Anne Carson books this year. Autobiography of Red is a poem about a modern version of an ancient Greek character, a novel in verse that plays with mythology, love, and sexuality.