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In a tradition stretching all the way back to 2017, we like to end each year here at Shooting Irrelevance with a look at some of my favorite reads from the last 365. Because life is short, we’ll stretch this back to books published in 2017 that I didn’t quite get around to, but meant to.

Does that seem right authoritative? I think it does. To be clear, this in no way is a list of “the best books of 2018”, since even I’m not arrogant enough to arrogate unto myself that declarative right. It’s just a list of good books published in the last 18 months.

(Some older books that I finally got around to included Day of the Locust/Miss Lonelyhearts, Salvage the Bones, Mama Day, True Grit, All for Nothing, and All the Living. But they don’t get included in this list! This is a regime of rules and Fear! Let no old book cross us.)

There was no clear front-runner this year, unlike last year’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. So let’s say everyone is a winner.

On to the books! (Due to some WordPress wonkiness, you have to scroll down just a titch, under “Related Posts”, to click on Page 2, with the actual content. Sorry)