C.S. Lewis wrote, “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths, and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct our characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”
This is a list of the best nonfiction books I read this year, not a list of favorite books published this year. Getting outside of the current year brings context and dimension to current events otherwise impossible to gain.
In addition to finding old books that shed light on current events, each year I prioritize reading titles I come across while following my interests, which this year included Japanese philosophy and food history. These were my favorites.
Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Matthew Arnold
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen
The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
On the Pleasure of Hating by William Hazlitt
The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Milk! by Mark Kurlansky
The Tiger by John Vaillant
As far as fiction, I mostly revisited classics this year – specifically, I read all of Jane Austen’s novels. I did have two favorite fiction reads of the year; Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey -the send up of Gothic tropes was so funny, especially after rereading Wuthering Heights, Dracula and Frankenstein – and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which is one of the most haunting dystopian stories I’ve ever read.
Image by Gerhard Gellinger from Pixabay
