books books books

I came in just shy of finishing 100 books in 2018. It wasn't a goal, but I was surprised how much I did read, and some of it took a while, like The Tide, A Perfect Red, and perhaps the longest-running, "great for small increments at bedtime," Cuisine and Empire: Cooking In World History. So far, nothing compares to Moby-Dick for great literature to put me to sleep. (Robinson Crusoe might, but I couldn't get past the first couple paragraphs. Maybe 2019 sees me trying again.)

I started in on audiobooks a bit, for the times when I can't focus my eyes, or I'm doing something else (driving, dog-walking) and need something different than podcasts. The clear winners here were The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft, and various Conan the Barbarian writings by Robert E. Howard. Lovecraft, for all his reputation of writing in the vein of "O, but it is so cosmically horrible I cannot describe it," actually goes ahead and describes it, quite well. The Conan works are also pleasantly surprising, and once you adjust for the era and medium--he was writing in the 30s for pulps like Weird Tales and Oriental Stories, not angling for a Pulitzer--it's easy to see where Howard's avowed feminism shows up. I'm also revisiting Christopher Moore's work as audiobooks, starting with Practical Demonkeeping.

Reading in 2018 was a path for growth, but also an escape from anxiety, and work, and work-provoked anxiety. I've got a lot of stuff to do this year, internally and externally. We'll see what happens.