“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” – Henry David Thoreau

Another year has come and gone. Here are the highlights of my reading and research in 2018:

The General in His Labyrinth – Gabriel García Márquez
Is That Kafka? 99 Finds – Reiner Stach
Miles: The Autobiography – Miles Davis
The Wall – Jean-Paul Sartre
Three Character Classic
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge – Carlos Castaneda
Falling Man – Don DeLillo
Point Omega – Don DeLillo
Zero K – Don DeLillo
Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
Under the Neurotic Hood – Connor Bixby
The Flowers of Evil: A Selection – Charles Baudelaire
A Season in Hell – Arthur Rimbaud
Illuminations – Arthur Rimbaud
The Imperial Alchemist – A.H. Wang
Maldoror – Lautréamont
Poems – Lautréamont
Conspiracy Theory in America – Lance DeHaven-Smith
Shakespeare and Company – Sylvia Beach
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Golden Age – Gore Vidal
The Town – William Faulkner
The Book of Imaginary Beings – Jorge Luis Borges
The Confidence-Man – Herman Melville
Birds in Cages at the Bike Repair Shop – David Wood
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Shadow Government – David Talbot
Hundred Family Surnames
One Thousand Character Classic
The Three Kingdoms: Volume 1: The Sacred Oath - Luo Guanzhong
Great Learning
The Doctrine of the Mean
The Analects
The Double – José Saramago
This Modern Love – Ray Hecht
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
A Cool Million – Nathanael West
The Day of the Locust – Nathanael West
The Dream Life of Balso Snell – Nathanael West