I read a lot of books this year. A lot of great books, on the principle that the older I get, the less time I have for bad books. But since everyone’s time is finite, I thought I’d just list here my ten favorite books that I read this year. Favorite for different reasons. The sheer joy of reading them, page to page (Ernaux and Kempowksi and Wilson). My appreciation of the scholarship and what I learned from them (Battistoni, Reitter). The way they’ve sat with me long after I finished them (Alexievich, Butler). My appreciation of their sheer achievement (McNally, Clark). And some were all of these (Kempowski, Wilson, Reitter, Butler). And, oh, I cheated: I’ve listed eleven books.

Frances Wilson, Electric Spark (biography of Muriel Spark by one of the greatest literary biographers writing today; there’s no one like Wilson who knows how to take a fact of someone and turn into it a moment in a book; the title is what it feels like to read the book)

Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (like Wilson, Alexievich seems to find gold everywhere, I don’t know how she does it)

Elias Canetti, Kafka’s Other Trial (on Kafka’s letters to Felice, a wrenching experience to read but what an experience)

E.M. Butler, The Tyranny of Greece Over Germany (classical scholarship from the 1930s; extremely controversial but, gosh, who does scholarship like this anymore?)

Christopher Clark, Revolutionary Spring (on the revolutions of 1848 and their aftermath)

Walter Kempowski, Swan Song (on four different days at the end of the Second World War, told through memoirs, diaries, letters, memos, and more; the last part, where Hitler’s last testament is interwoven with these various reports of everyday life, is mesmerizing; think Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, but as a descent into hell)

Alyssa Battistoni, Free Gifts (tremendous contemporary political theory on capitalism and nature)

Annie Ernaux, A Man’s Place (like Sebald, Ernaux needs no explanation; she just is)

Annie Ernaux, A Woman’s Story

Paul Reitter, The Anti-Journalist (on Karl Kraus, Germans, Jews, antisemitism, a thrilling ride)

David McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism (on what it sounds like, but just a pure exercise of the best scholarship and argument, what all academic writing should aspire to be but seldom is)