When I started putting this list together, I realized something striking: I've read very few novels, short stories, or poetry books this year. So, while I could still recommend plenty of fiction/poetry titles that I either have read or that I'm eager to read, I'm actually going to leave that task to my very capable coworkers and stick to what I spent the most time reading: memoir, autofiction, non-fiction, philosophy, criticism, and comics.

Deborah Levy was the discovery of the year for me. The Cost of Living is the follow-up to 2013's Things I Don't Want to Know (which was reissued to coincide with the release of the former), both of which are part of a planned autobiographical trilogy about the writing life. They are simply phenomenal and I've become evangelical about Levy since reading them (along with her equally-excellent Booker Prize-nominated novel, Hot Milk).

I was equally taken with Didier Eribon's wonderful Returning to Reims (initially published in French several years ago and reissued this year by Allen Lane), a memoir that recounts the celebrated queer theorist's return to his working-class roots that is actually, even mostly, about the rightward shift of the working-class population of France -- a topic that resonates worldwide.

Drawn and Quarterly had a truly banner year in 2018, with a Booker Prize nomination (the first-ever for a graphic novel) for Sabrina, Nick Drnaso's masterful, eerily affectless dissection of America's conspiracy-ridden, post-truth mediascape. D&Q also put out the complete version of Jason Lutes' stunning Berlin, a project that took 20 years to complete and yet couldn't be more timely right now, with its propulsive, character-driven examination of the rise of Nazism. Aisha Franz's Shit is Real is also a whimsical, pitch-perfect portrait of a 20-something girl adrift in a surealist, near-future Berlin. Beyond D&Q, Jaakko Pallasvuo's Retreat finally came out (via 2dcloud) after a series of delays. It's my favourite comic book of his (which is saying something, since I adore him). It's also the first book I've ever blurbed, so read my more detailed endorsement right on the book jacket, if you like.

And that's not even all of D&Q's great titles this year! We also released Matthew Thurber's Art Comic, which can't avoid comparison to Walter Scott's Wendy (even in its own pages!) but is a much zanier, more absurdist satire of the art world, bursting with irrepressible energy. Eleanor Davis' Why Art?  (from Fantagraphics) has less to do with "contemporary art" or even "comics" per se -- it's about the human drive to create (full stop) and it's lyrical and beautiful and great.

In terms of art criticism proper, I was hugely impressed by Craig Owens: Portrait of a Young Art Critic, which is actually just a straight transcription of a 1984 video interview with the pioneering critic and editor, though I'm hard-pressed to think of any recent book from which a person could learn more about art criticism. The exhibition catalogue for MCA Chicago's I Was Raised on the Internet is full of heavy-hitters and might be the last (or at least latest) word on post-internet art, such as it was. Chris Kraus' latest collection of personal and critical essays is also (unsurprisingly) fantastic.

And here's my heavy reading! Capitalism without Capital rivals Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century (though it's less comprehensive) in terms of redefining capitalism for our era, in which the major developed countries are investing more in "intangible" assets (design, branding, software, etc.) than in tangible assets like machinery, buildings, and computers; David Golumbia's The Politics of Bitcoin (actually released in 2016) describes the pervasive (yet often invisible) influence of far-right conspiracy theory around the discourse of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain; Jackie Wang's Carceral Capitalism is a wide-ranging critical examination of the political economy of mass incarceration in the USA; and the latest book from French philosopher Bruno Latour is a plea to rethink politics (in the wake of climate crisis) as what "leads toward the Earth and not toward the global or the national."

This anthology of essays by the late British cultural critic Mark Fisher (aka k-punk) is quite possibly my most anticipated release of the year. It collects an extensive selection of his extraordinary writings on politics, activism, precarity, hauntology, mental health and popular modernism for numerous websites and magazines, and also includes his final, unpublished k-punk post, the unfinished introduction to his planned book on “Acid Communism,” and a number of important interviews from the last decade.

Another crucial title that I'm very eager to read is Phil Neel's Hinterland, a work of social science, political economy, and memoir that looks at the politics of non-metropolitan America. Drawing on Neel's direct experience of recent popular unrest, from the Occupy movement to the wave of riots and blockades that began in Ferguson, Missouri, this book provides a close-up view of this landscape in all its grim but captivating detail.