2018: The Year In Books

Another year has come to an end and it is time to take a look back at the 22 books I read over the past year, 6 less than last year.  Of those 22, 7 were non-fiction and, of the 15 novels, only 1 was a TV show tie-in.  Only one of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, and 12 were e-books.  I read over 7,000 pages, my lowest total since at least 2013.

Once again, a majority of the books I read this year were by authors I’ve never read before. The 15 authors that I read for the first this year were:
Mamrie Hart
Dan Harris
Ginger Zee
Krysten Ritter
Karin Slaughter
Michelle West
Paul Ruditis
Michelle McNamara
David Ross
Don Yaeger
Araminta Hall
Amber Tamblyn
Laura Lippman
Lauren Graham
Drew Magary

There was not a single author that I read multiple titles from during 2018.

6 of the books I read were released this year, while 1 of them was released last century, exactly 60 years ago

Finally, the breakdown by month.  My vacation in September certainly helped pad its totals a tad bit.

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Book 13 (of 52) – Teammate

Teammate: My Journey In Baseball And A World Series For The Ages – David Ross and Don Yaeger

When David Ross announced that he would be retiring following the 2016 season, he agreed to keep a journal to use as the basis for a memoir about his career.  Little did he know that the season would end with the Cubs finally breaking their 108 year curse and winning the World Series, or that he would hit a home run in his final at bat in game 7 against the Indians.  Using that magical season as the through line, Ross tells tales of his career and how he learned to become a good teammate.

Ross, alongside co-authot Don Yaeger, does a good job of switching between his personal story and the trip through the 2016 season.  His is one of the surprisingly few books written about the season, and the only one from an insider.  From that perspective, it was well worth the read.