Best reads of 2018

I'd say that 2018 was not a particularly enjoyable year in terms of what I read, definitely worse than 2017 and even worse than 2016.  I'm not even sure I can list 10 books total for the year that I truly enjoyed (rather than enjoyed in fits and starts) and instead of a top 5, I am going with a top 3!  I found that I didn't care for most of what I was reading for several months straight, in some cases including books I decided to reread, which means that my tastes have changed significantly or I am reading books out of obligation, not for enjoyment, which seems peculiar.

Several books felt like a significant waste of time (The Death of My Brother Abel, Adjacentland, Faulkner's A Fable), though in most cases (aside from Burning City) I did soldier on and finish (so that I wouldn't wonder later on if they improved*).  I think for 2019, I will have to seriously rethink this strategy and simply abandon more books earlier.

I had very mixed feelings about Updike's Rabbit novels.  I realize they are a pretty significant achievement, taken as a collective whole (and which a "serious reader" should dip into), but there were so many things I disliked about the main character, to say nothing of his even-more-lousy son, that I can't say I really enjoyed reading them at all, though Rabbit is Rich seems the best of the bunch.  I certainly will never revisit them.

At any rate, the top 3 books from 2018 were:
Arnold Bennett The Old Wives' Tale
Paul Auster Moon Palace
Russell Smith How Insensitive

The best book reread was
Don DeLillo White Noise 

Honorable mention:
Julian Barnes Pulse
Chloe Benjamin The Immortalists
Joan Didion Play It As It Lays (too much ennui to be truly great)
Elizabeth Gaskell North and South
Mieko Kawakami Ms. Ice Sandwich
Adam Langer Crossing California (started strong but wore out its welcome)
Mary McCarthy Birds of America (the sucky ending kept this out of the top list)
Rabindranath Maharaj The Amazing Absorbing Boy
Alice Munro Friend of My Youth
Anthony Trollope The Way We Live Now

Most disappointing is certainly von Rezzori's The Death of My Brother Abel, as I had such hopes for it, though I suppose I more actively disliked Faulkner's A Fable, but I didn't have such high expectations in the first place.

* Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd is a special case, where technically I had read it before (in high school) and so much of the plot was spoiled by the introduction that I was quite confident that I wasn't missing out by bailing halfway through.