Third entry in full:

Perhaps people don’t notice these glimmering, lyrical moments enough anymore, but the way the moon reflects and leaps across the black water of the ocean at night is surely a sight to behold.

SWEDISH
noun

MÅNGATA
n. The road-like reflection of the moon in the water

This is very easily digestible; a young writer’s collection of fifty words in other languages that she describes as “untranslatable”, while also supplying translations for them. For anyone who speaks more than one language, it’s no surprise that there are ideas that can be expressed more effectively in one language rather than another. In general the ones I already knew raised more of a smile for me than the ones with which I was less familiar. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a woman, my top non-fiction book and my top book acquired in 2018. Next on those piles respectively are Demons and Dreams: the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (1989), eds. Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling; Lenin the Dictator, by Victor Sebastyen; and The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter.