Thoughts on 2016 Reading

Taken from a bookish perspective, 2016 was a good year. A very good year.

It was a year that saw the publication of books by Louise Erdrich, Ann Patchett, Maggie O’Farrell and Colson Whitehead. That’s all I need to say.  A year in which only one of these writers publishes a book is cause for celebration.  Novels from all four authors in a single year make me feel like a six-year-old on Christmas morning.

Yet 2016 was far from finished. There were new novels by Laura Lippman, Tessa Hadley, Helen Simonson, Ian Rankin, Alan Furst, Michael Connelly and Tana French. Plus, I was introduced to the works of Emma Cline, Megan Abbott and Noah Hawley.

Yes, I’m gushing, but in self-defense it was a year that warrants excess emotion (I’m talking about literary output only here).

The books I’d highlight are below, but first a preamble:

1. These are all books published in 2016. I address books published prior to 2016 elsewhere.
2. You can consider it a “best of 2016” if you wish. I think of this list as books that I enjoyed the most — some touched me deeply — and which I am most inclined to recommend.
3. I do not respect genres. A good book is a good book.
4. If a book doesn’t make my list, it doesn’t mean YOU won’t like it. Michael Chabon, Annie Proulx, Jonathan Safran Foer and the Smiths (Zadie and Al), all had books published in 2016. These are authors that I like and admire, but their books this past year left me wanting more.
5. There is more fiction than non-fiction. That’s just how I read.
6. The books are in alphabetical order by author’s last name. I respect these writers too much to try and tell you that someone’s book was better than another writer.
7. There is no arbitrary number . . . the top 5 or top 10. I stopped when the books I liked ran out

Fiction

• You Will Know Me, Megan Abbott
• Hagseed, Margaret Atwood
• The Girls, Emma Cline
• The Wrong Side of Goodbye, Michael Connelly
• LaRose, Louise Erdrich
• The Trespasser, Tana  French
• A Hero of France, Alan Furst
• Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
• The Past, Tessa Hadley
• Before The Fall, Noah Hawley
• The Nix, Nathan Hill
• News of the World, Paulette Jiles
• Wilde Lake, Laura Lippman
• Coffin Road & Runaway, Peter May
• This Must Be the Place, Maggie O’Farrell
• Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
• Rather Be The Devil, Ian Rankin
• The Summer Before The War, Helen Simonson
• My Name Is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout
• Miss Jane, Brad Watson
• The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
• Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson

Non-Fiction

• The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer
• The League of Regrettable Superheroes, Jon Morris
• The Word Detective, John Simpson
• Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
• The Caped Crusade, Batman and the Rise of the Nerd Culture, Glen Weldon
• First Bite, How We Learn To Eat, Bee Wilson

Graphic Novels

• Dark Night, A True Batman Story, Paul Dini & Eduardo Risso
• March Book 3, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell

Children’s

• Thunder Boy Jr., Sherman Alexie & Yuyi Morales
• I Am A Story, Dan Yaccarino
• A Child of Books, Oliver Jeffers & Sam Winston

Books written prior to 2016 or How’d I Miss These The First Time Around?

• About Grace, Anthony Doerr
• Blood, Salt, Water & Still Midnight, Denise Mina
• H Is For Hawk, Helen MacDonald (a damn fine book, read it)
• The Indian Lawyer, & Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians, James Welch
• Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend,  The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay & The Story of the Lost Child. (Take a month and read alll four books in one massive, joyous go.)
• Rick Bass: I read several books by Bass, both fiction and non-fiction. I like his non-fiction the best, but wouldn’t hesitate to recommend his fiction, especially his short stories and novellas.
• Craig Johnson: Thoroughly enjoy the Longmire series.  
• I continue to recommend books by Bernard Cornwell, Jim Harrison, C.J. Box and Patrick O’Brian.

Classics

• I begin every year with a book by Charles Dickens. He is the greatest writer in the English language. Sorry, Will.
• Erdrich’s Love Medicine is a terrific book. No, it’s better than terrific.
• Willa Cather remains one of my favorite authors. 
• I was disapppointed in Brideshead Revisited and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. For Parade Magazine, Ann Patchett identified these two books as among the best 75 books in the past 75 years. Hate to disagree with Ann, but I’m not seeing it.
• Sherri Tepper is a grandmaster of sciene fiction as far as I am concerned and Grass is an awesome book. This was my second reading, and only confirmed by affection for the author and this particular novel.

2016 Reading List

“You always read too many books . . . That can’t lead to any good.”

Classics

January – Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens

February — Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich

March — The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

April — Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller

May — O Pioneers!, Willa Cather

June — The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers

July —  Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner 

August — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

September — Brideshead Revisted, Evelyn Waugh

October — Pal Joey, John O’Hara

November — A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold

December — Grass, Sheri S. Tepper

January

1. First Bite, How We Learn To Eat, Bee Wilson

2. Batman Cover to Cover

3. Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens

4. Solo, The Deluxe Edition

5. Ronald Reagan, Jacob Weisberg

6. The Best of the West 4, ed. James & Denise Thomas

7. LaRose, Louise Erdrich

8. Moonrise, Ben Bova

9. The Past, Tessa Hadley

10. Girl Seven, Hanna Jameson

11. My Name Is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout

12. About Grace, Anthony Doerr

13. Minimum of Two, Tim Winton

14. Warriors of the Storm, Bernard Cornwell

February

15. Wilkie Collins, Peter Ackroyd

16. Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich

17. There But For The, Ali Smith

18. Quarry’s List, Max Allan Collins

19. This Census-Taker, China Miéville

20. Seeds, Richard Horan

21. A Killing In Comics, Max Allan Collins

22. The Road to Little Dribbling, Bill Bryson

23. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

24. Blood, Salt, Water, Denise Mina

25. Shylock Is My Name, Howard Jacobson

26. The Farm, Tom Rob Smith

27. The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes

28. The House of Twenty Thousand Books, Sasha Abramsky

29. The Doctor’s House, Ann Beattie

30. Milt Caniff, Rembrandt of the Comic Strip,

Rick Marschall and John Paul Adams

31. The Life of Elves, Muriel Barbery

32. Moonwar, Ben Bova

March

33. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

34. Runaway, Peter May

35. For A Little While, Rick Bass

36. Killing Custer, The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians,

James Welch

37. The Indian Lawyer, James Welch

38. The Ancient Minstrel, Jim Harrison

39. Quarry’s Deal, Max Allan Collins

40. Coffin Road, Peter May

41. Ragnarok, The End of the Gods, A.S. Byatt

42. Off the Grid, C.J. Box

43. The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante

44. Quantum Night, Robert Sawyer

45. Blue at the Mizzen, Patrick O’Brian

46. Comic Wars, Dan Raviv

47. Patience, Daniel Clowes

48. Cut Me In, Ed McBain

49. Paris Stories, ed. Shuan Whiteside

50. David Boring, Daniel Clowes

April

51. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller

52. H Is For Hawk, Helen Macdonald

53. Schmidt Steps Back, Louis Begley

54. Return to Augie Hobble, Lane Smith

55. The Caped Crusade, Batman and the Rise of the Nerd Culture,

Glen Weldon

56. Return to Mars, Ben Bova

57. In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri

58. A Doubter’s Almanac, Ethan Canin

59. Another Man’s Moccasins, Craig Johnson

60. O Pioneers!, Willa Cather

May

61. Prayer, Philip Kerr

62. Gryphon, Charles Baxter

63. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante

64. A Year to Remember, Jason King

65. Dodgers, Bill Beverly

66. Quarry’s Cut, Max Allan Collins

67. Art Spiegelman, Tom Forget

68. Wilde Lake, Laura Lippman

69. The Dark Horse, Craig Johnson

70. The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen

71. Rescue Missions, Frederick Busch

72. Night Heron, Adam Brookes

73. Stumptown, Vol. 2, Greg Rucka and Matt Southworth

74. The Sport of Kings, C.E. Morgan

75. Dead Man’s Float, Jim Harrison

76. The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness, Rick Bass

77. 1921, Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg.

78. Thunder Boy Jr., Sherman Alexie & Yuyi Morales

79. The Blade Artist, Irvine Welsh

June

80. The League of Regrettable Superheroes, Jon Morris

81. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers

82. Everybody’s Fool, Richard Russo

83. Peter Arno, Michael Maslin

84. A Relative Stranger, Charles Baxter

85. Workingman’s Dead, Buzz Poole

86. The Precipice, Ben Bova

87. Trinity, Matt Wagner

88. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett

89. Caleb’s Crossing, Geraldine Brooks

90. The Little Red Chairs, Edna O’Brien

91. Straight Flush, Ben Mezrich

92. Quarry’s Vote, Max Allan Collins

93. The Girls, Emma Cline

94. Still Midnight, Denise Mina

95. Vinegar Girl, Anne Tyler

96. Understanding Comics, The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud

97. Selected & New Poems, Jim Harrison

July

98. Adventures on the Wine Route, Kermit Lynch

99. Graphic Ink, The DC Comics Art of Darwyn Cooke

100. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner 

101. Scene of the Crime: A Little Piece of Goodnight, Ed Brubaker

& Michael Lark

102. A Hero Of France, Alan Furst

103. Cousin Joseph, Jules Feiffer

104. Junkyard Dogs, Craig Johnson

105. The Summer Before The War, Helen Simonson

106. Parker: Slayground, Darwyn Cooke

107. Hell Is Empty, Craig Johnson

108. The Letter Writer, Dan Fesperman

109. Jupiter, Ben Bova

110. Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons, Gahan Wilson

111. When The Music’s Over, Peter Robinson

112. The View From The Cheap Seats, Neil Gaiman

113. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

August

114. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante

115. Smut, Alan Bennett

116. Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang

117. Charcoal Joe, Walter Mosley

118. Stray Bullets, David Lapham

119. The Cauliflower, Nicola Barker

120. Ninety-nine Stories of God, Joy Williams

121. The Three-Day Affair, Michael Kardos

122. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer

123. Heroes of the Frontier, Dave Eggers

124. You Will Know Me, Megan Abbott

125. Comic Art Propaganda, Fredrik Strömberg

126. Pimp, Ken Bruen & Jason Starr

127. How To Talk To Girls At Parties, Neil Gaiman, Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá

128. Jack Cole and Plastic Man, Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd

129. This Must Be The Place, Maggie O’Farrell

130. March Book Three, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell

131. The 13 Clocks, James Thurber

132. The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll & Chris Riddell

133. What We Become, Arturo Pérez-Reverte

September

134. Brideshead Revisted, Evelyn Waugh

135. The Dead and Those About to Die, John C. McManus

136. The Children in the Woods, Frederick Busch

137. Eternity’s Wheel, Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves & Mallory Reaves

138. Better Dead, Max Allan Collins

139. Makoons, Louise Erdrich

140. Angel Catbird, Margaret Atwood & Johnnie Christmas

141. Dark Night, A True Batman Story, Paul Dini & Eduardo Risso 

142. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead.

143. The Nightmare Stacks, Charles Stross.

144. Thirteen Confessions, David Corbett

145. A Great Reckoning, Louise Penny.

146. Ty Cobb, A Terrible Beauty, Charles Leerhsen.

147. The Mabinogion, trans. Sioned Davis.

146. The Táin, trans. Thomas Kinsella. 

147. Once Upon A River, Bonnie Jo Campbell

October

148. The Throwback Special, Chris Bachelder

149. Pal Joey, John O’Hara

150. Razor Girl, Carl Hiaasen

151. Parker, The Martini Edition, Richard Stark
adapted by Darwyn Cooke

152. A Charlie Brown Religion, Stephen J. Lind

153. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James

154. As The Crow Flies, Craig Johnson

155. The Art of Hellboy, Mike Mignola

156. Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett

157. Before The Fall, Noah Hawley

158. The Best American Non-Required Reading, ed. Dave Eggers

159. News of the World, Paulette Jiles

160. Time Travel, James Gleick

161. A Serpent’s Tooth, Craig Johnson

162. The Nix, Nathan Hill

November

163. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d, Alan Bradley

164. Sorrow Road, Julia Keller

165. Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood

166. The Trespasser, Tana French

167. Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson

168. Miss Jane, Brad Watson

169. A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold

170. The Mothers, Brit Bennett

171. The O’Hara Reader, John O’Hara

172. The Wrong Side of Goodbye, Michael Connelly

173. Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi

174. The Deer Pasture, Rick Bass

175. Autumn, Ali Smith

176. Nutshell, Ian McEwan

177. Barkskins, Annie Proulx

178. Wild to the Heart, Rick Bass

December

179. Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, Brian Fies

180. Grass, Sheri S. Tepper

181. The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, Yann Martel

182. Zero K, Don DeLillo

183. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

184. A Gambler’s Anatomy, Jonathan Lethem

185. Night School, Lee Child

186. The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories, P.D. James

187. The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye, Jonathan Lethem

188. The Flame Bearer, Bernard Cornwell

189. I Am A Story, Dan Yaccarino

190. A Child of Books, Oliver Jeffers & Sam Winston

191. Swing Time, Zadie Smith

192. Moonglow, Michael Chabon

193. Rather Be The Devil, Ian Rankin

194. The Word Detective, John Simpson

195. Here I Am, Jonathan Safran Foer

196. Quarry’s Choice, Max Allan Collins

197. Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell

198. Murder Is My Business, Brett Halliday

199. The Undertaking, Thomas Lynch

200. Si Lewen’s Parade, ed. Art Spiegelman

Summarizing my reading at the 2016 mid-point

We’re only midway through 2016 and already there are four books worthy of a “best of” list, and a five “notables.”

Those “best of” include novels by three of my favorite authors and one debut novel. Here’s the books:

LaRose by Louise Erdrich

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

The Girls by Emma Cline

Erdrich, Patchett and Lippman are accomplished authors, who have written extraordinary books in the past, yet I believe that LaRose, Commonwealth and Wilde Lake represent the best books they have written. 

The Girls, the story of a Manson-like cult, is an extraordinary debut novel. It isn’t perfect, but it manages to be deliciously creepy.

As for those “notable” books, I recommend:

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

The Past by Tessa Hadley

The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan

Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien

Not to be missed, are Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, a quartet of delightful books. I’ve read three of the four: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name and Those Who Love and Those Who Stay.

I discovered Denise Mina’s Alex Morrow series this year. I’ve read Blood, Salt and Water and the first book in the series, Still Midnight. It’s clear that Mina is going to provide me with many hours of pleasurable reading.

I also recommend Craig Johnson’s Longmire series. I am making my way through these books now. Like Mina, Johnson is a superb writer. Don’t overlook these books because they carry the stigma of the mystery genre. Some of our finest writers are working in genre fiction. Among those writers is Peter May. I read both Runaway and Coffin Road this year. He’s good. Very good.

Two older works of fiction that I especially liked: The Indian Lawyer by the late James Welch and a collection of novellas by Rick Bass, The Sky, The Stars, The  Wilderness.

I continue to read historical fiction by Bernard Cornwell, work my way through Ben Bova’s Grand Tour novels (science fiction) and devour the darkly comic noir fiction of Max Alan Collins. I’ve only a few Quarry novels left to read.

I read fewer works of non-fiction, but there were three “best of” published in that genre in 2016 (and one carry over from 2015):

H Is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald

First Bite, How We Learn To Eat by Bee Wilson

The Caped Crusade Batman and the Rise of the Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon

The League of Regrettable Superheroes by Jon Morris

H Is For Hawk is one of those books that you put in people’s hands and demand they read. It is difficult to convey how good it is without resorting to hyberole. Trust me on this one — read it.

The League of Regrettable Superheroes was the most entertaining book I’ve read this year. Unless you’re a comic book afficiando like me, you might not enjoy it, but then again it may connect with your inner nerd. (And, in complete transparency, I am also especially found of the book because I bought it at Shakespeare & Company, while on vacation in Paris.)

It was published a few years back, but I also recommend Killing Custer by James Welch. 

Two books of non-fiction I would avoid: The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson and Straight Flush by Ben Mezrich. Bryson is mean-spirited and Mezrich is lazy. To quote Ben Grimm, “Nuff Said.”