Books that captured 2018’s zeitgeist

You could have spent the past year reading incendiary insider accounts of the current White House, moving book to book with barely a pause for lunch or earning a living; a few — Michael Lewis’ “The Fifth Risk,” perhaps, an appreciation of civil servants who can see past their own noses — might even endure beyond the present political cycle.

Or you could have read anything by anyone about anything.

Reading while the world is burning down around you tends to give whatever’s in your hands the contours of apocalypse.

My two most satisfying moments while reading this year? “The Way Home in the Night,” a children’s picture book from Japanese illustrator Akiko Miyakoshi, and “Running With the Devil,” the memoir of a former manager for Van Halen.

Both were from 2017, one about the granular importance of individual lives, the other about entitled, powerful people who take offense whenever anyone tells them no. Somehow both felt unusually meaningful in 2018.

The problem is, so many authors captured the urgency of the times you didn’t have to read old heavy-metal memoirs to feel a part of the zeitgeist. On the other hand, there were not enough hours in the day to even crack this wellspring.

Here’s what I especially adored this year. Terkel paired with the heartbreak of a poet. takes a final headcount of every ghost he never shook, of accomplishments and misunderstandings and failures, and rather than rage against the night, he finds warmth, friends and regret.

And that’s just the first story.