My Favorite Reads in 2016

At the risk of sounding smug, I surpassed my Goodreads goal of 70 titles this year.  I have friends who can match me title for title, but I mention my statistic to give you a sense of how much better the following books were than 60 others that I read.  To make my top list, a book had to be very engaging and fairly well written.  While most of these titles will not go on to become literary classics, they were all satisfying and worthy reads.  In no particular order:

NOVELS

Under The Harrow by Flynn Berry

A mighty fine first novel that is a literary mystery that starts with a woman’s discovery of her sister – dead – when she arrives for a weekend visit – and her attempt to solve the crime, discovering much about her sibling – and closest friend - that she did not know.

Ready, Player One by Ernest Kline

A futuristic, sci-fi novel, the story is told through the eyes of a teenage boy whose virtual reality self is more real than the actual world he inhabits.

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Frederik Backman

This is one of a trio of books by Backman that I read this year (including A Man Called Ove and Britte-Marie Was Here), and they were all good. The novels all take place in the author’s native Sweden (and are translated) and there is definitely a European feel about them.  The protagonists are all charming and despite some dark moments, there’s also a good deal of humor.  My favorite might be “My Grandmother,” told through the eyes of a little girl, but I just finished "Britte-Marie" and it was great too.  

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

While I think this author’s best work is Big, Little Lies, I enjoy everything she does.  The pivotal event surrounds something that occurs at a neighborhood barbecue.  The narrative jumps back and forth in time and the reader doesn’t know what actually happened until two-thirds of the way through.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

This is a novel that is wildly popular with high school kids as the two protagonists are teenagers, but the issues are very adult and Rowell creates both realistic voices and poignant moments.

LaRose by Louise Erdich

Erdich almost always writes about Native Americans, reflecting her own heritage, and this latest from her is no exception.  I thought her book from a few years ago, The Round House, was one of the best books that I have ever read – a hard act to follow – but LaRose proves to be equally intriguing and complex.  Erdich weaves together the contemporary story of a man who, because he mistakenly shoots the son of his best friend while hunting, gives his own son to the family, with flashback sections to several decades earlier, and to a story that appears in infrequent fragments about an Indian girl and a white trader in the 1800’s. 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This is an earlier title by the author of the prize-winning The Goldfinch, and I liked this one better.  It is the story of a group of friends at a small New England college whose secret leads to more secrets and hard choices.

The Mare by Mary Gaitskill

I wrote about this title several times this year.  It’s a very literary book told in alternating points of view about a teenager from the Bronx who escapes to the countryside for a few weeks in the summer through a program designed to expose disadvantaged children to a different life.  The woman who takes her in and who introduces her to horses turns out to be as needy in her own way as the child.

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

A modern re-telling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Sittenfeld does the original justice as she transplants her story to modern-day Cincinnati.  If you are familiar with the original, all the more fun to see the parallels, but you don’t have to know Austen to enjoy this novel of family complexity and the search for love. 

Euphoria by Lily King

Based very loosely on a couple years in the life of Margaret Mead, Euphoria tells the story of a dangerous love triangle between an Australian man, a British man and an American woman, all cultural anthropologists, set in 1930’s Papua New Guinea. 

NONFICTION

It’s a short list because I am an unapologetic reader of fiction, however I’d like to recommend two titles:

My Salinger Year by Joanna Radkoff

Radkoff takes you through her first job in New York in publishing in the late 1990’s as the assistant to the woman who represented J.D. Salinger.  The book is not really about the famous author, as the title implies, but rather about a great coming of age story that sheds an interesting light on the publishing business and which captures the aura of NYC.

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

Actually any book by travel writer Bryson is a good time.  Part history and geography lesson, part commentary on his travels, Bryson includes laugh out loud anecdotes and makes dry quips that make you feel like you are there with him.  This title, published in 2001, chronicles several overland treks through Australia, “the most dangerous continent in the world.”

And on my nightstand. . .