It's that time again: my book list for 2016

Without further ado, here are the books I read during the past year, in reverse chronological order. Commentary begins below the list.

* indicates books read as e-books

2016

"The Golden Bough," an oil by Joseph Mallord William Turner, shows the scene from The Aeneid that began Frazer's exploration in The Golden Bough.

 

The Golden Bough, James George Frazer (in progress)*

Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, J. W. N. Sullivan (in progress)

The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector*

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante*

A Most Wanted Man, John le Carre

The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante*

The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante*

The Whole Field Still Moving Inside It, Molly Bashaw

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

Conversations with a Dead Man, Mark Abley

My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante*

Outline, Rachel Cusk

The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit*

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (re-read)

Known and Strange Things, Teju Cole

Ice Mountain, Dave Bonta

Lunch with a Bigot, Amitava Kumar*

The Inugami Mochi, Jessamyn Smyth*

Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber*

Traveling Mercies, Anne LaMott

A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler*

Monster, Jeneva Burroughs Stone

A Strangeness in My Mind, Orhan Pamuk** (dnf)

Poems, Michael Ondaatje

M Train, Patti Smith

Just Kids, Patti Smith*

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Horrors, J. K. Rowling

Thesaurus of Separation, Tim Mayo

Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Cesar Aira*

The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata*

Leaving Berlin, Joseph Kanon*

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano

The Japanese Lover, Isabel Allende*

 

First, the stats: 33 titles, of which 17 were e-books, either from Kindle or downloaded on OverDrive from the Bibliotheque nationale. I'm pleased to see an almost-perfect split between books by female and male authors, too.

There were so many outstanding books this year, that I might be better off to say which ones I don't recommend -- but I'd rather be positive. My vote for best-book/should-last-forever would have to be Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, but I also particularly liked the beautifully written M Train, by Patti Smith, the quirky and detailed Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by Cesar Aira, Murakami's brilliant Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan Quartet, of which I've read three and am anxiously awaiting #4, on hold from the library.

Most of you know that I'm a Murakami fan and have read most of his books; I also know he's not to everyone's taste. Wind-Up Bird held up very well the second time around. Kafka on the Shore, which I also read this year, is a fine novel too but not (for me anyway) on the same level as Bird or IQ84, probably my favorite so far of his novels.

Then, what can I say objectively about books by friends, or books I read in manuscript and then published? Of the former, I greatly enjoyed Jessamyn Smyth's The Inugami Mochi, the story of her dog Gilgamesh and their remarkable relationship. I was privileged to take a long walk with the two of them, some years ago, so I felt like I had already had a small window into the material she wrote about after his passing; it's a beautiful book that challenges many people's assumptions about communication and relationship between humans and animals, but for me it was not a big leap. I've already written about Dave Bonta's Ice Mountain: An Elegy, which I liked enough to want to illustrate and publish. And while many illustrious readers and critics have chosen Teju Cole's Known and Strange Things for their own top-ten-of 2016 book lists, and I totally concur, I'm also quietly proud that a couple of the included essays had their origins here on this blog. Jeneva Burroughs Stone's Monster and Tim Mayo's Thesaurus of Separation round out this paragraph, the first by a poet and essayist I met, like Jessamyn, through qarrtsiluni, and the second by a Vermont poet I had never met, but whose work and friendship I now value very much.

The very best book of poetry I read this year was Molly Bashaw’s The Whole Field Still Moving Inside It (The Word Works, 2014.) I recommended this for Dave's crowd-sourced compendium of favorite poetry books of the year, writing, "The poems, ostensibly about farming and farm life, are of course — as Heaney showed us so convincingly — about life itself, in all its beauty, bewilderment, and violence. I was impressed by Bashaw’s use of language, and deeply moved by her ability to describe but not over-explain, because so much of what she talks about defies explanation or even analysis. She leaves things as they are, but also leaves a great deal of room for the reader. Barhaw grew up on small farms in New England and upstate New York, but graduated from the Eastman School of Music and worked for 12 years in Germany as a professional bass-trombonist — so it’s probably no surprise that her poems resonated with me. She’s young and her work has won a bunch of prizes but that doesn’t matter to me; I certainly wish I had published this first book of hers myself and hope to meet the poet someday so I can tell her."

But it's the Ferrante books that have a real hold on me. She manages that rare feat of writing a gripping  story that seems absolutely true to life, and writing extremely well. There's a conversation between the elusive Ferrante and author Sheila Heti in the latest issue of Brick, in which Heti remarks that these books make her lament the number of unwritten or unknown books by women, about women, throughout the centuries - what a loss this is for literature, and also for our knowledge of ourselves. I have found them absolutely riveting for the same reasons I love Virginia Woolf: her ability and desire to enter into the heads of her characters and bring their thought processes, and therefore themselves, to life.

So, let me know what you think, and also what you've been reading - I always look forward to the annual lists that some of you share with us here, too! And I hope everyone is having some extra time this week to curl up with a book.

 

Comments

[Huw]

Dear Beth,

Thank you, as always, for sharing your eclectic and interesting end-of-year list; the geographical breadth of your reading is always impressive! I don't think I will ever read Ferrante or Murakami, which is undoubtedly my loss.

It's been a very busy year at work (Hendry's Management!), and with no overarching plan for the year (cf. Woolf in 2015) my reading has felt random and undirected. However looking back there has been much pleasure and learning. The Winter's Tale was read before a magical visit to a production at the Globe; modern classics abounded; I finally finished Woolf's Diaries (her Letters are now bedtime reading); and a number of new books delighted: Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent stays with me as a particular highlight.

Best wishes for 2017 to you and Jonathan. I have much less time to spend on the internet these days but always read Cassandra Pages and appreciate your generous and considered writing.

Huw

2016 Book List

The Hog’s Back Mystery, Freeman Wills Croft
Deep Work, Cal Newport
Management: A Very Short Introduction, John Hendry
The Road to Character, David Brooks
The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare
The Way of the Runner, Adharand Finn
In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
The Lonely City, Olivia Laing
Weatherland, Alexandra Harris
Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill
Goat Music, Will Buckingham
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Man Who Planted Trees, Jean Giono
Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Alan Jacobs
The Best Man There Ever Was, Annie Freud
On Looking, Alexandra Horowitz
Supper of the Lamb, Robert F Capon
Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
Flush, Virginia Woolf
What W.H. Auden Can Do For You, Alexander McCall Smith
The Wander Society, Keri Smith
Flow, Mihaly Csikzentamihalyi
The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry
Lost Japan, Alex Kerr
The Housekeep and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa
The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd
Normal, Warren Ellis
Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age, Sven Birkerts
The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
Hinges, Grace Dane Mazur
Utz, Bruce Chatwin
Orfeo, Richard Powers
A Visit to Vanity Fair, Alan Jacobs
The Dark Path, David Schickler
The Other Walk, Sven Birkerts
Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan
Selected Diaries, Virginia Woolf
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
Ajax Penumbra: 1969, Robin Sloan
How to Lose Your Life, Martin Wroe
Known and Strange Things, Teju Cole
Bethany, Adam Roberts
A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler
Poetry Notebook 2006-2014, Clive James
For the Time Being, W. H. Auden

[Beth]

Dear Huw, on the contrary, I think YOUR list is the impressive and eclectic one! I see a bit of overlap with my own but more interestingly, quite a few books I'd like to read in the coming year. Thanks so much for sharing your list with us, and for your kind words about The Cassandra Pages, which I appreciate very much. I'd love to hear what were you own top five or ten on this long list.

[John]

Beth
Gosh people are way better organized than me.Part of the problem as well is that part of my library is on Vancouver Island and not being there now I forget what I read out there unless I actually see the book.So a partial list anyway.
Poetry
Jim Harrison - After Ikkyu and other poems; Dead Man's float.
Good poems ed. Garrison Keillor
Lines of Defence Stephen Dunn
Non fiction
The laws of medicine Siddharta Mukherjee I am a fan after 'The emperor of maladies
The road to character David Brooks
Consider the lobster David Foster Wallace
Lit a memoir Mary Karr.
The art of memoir Mary Karr. Mary Karr was a discovery for me this year. I love her stuff.
A life with words Richard Wright
Boyhood JM Coetzee
The Apache Wars Paul Andrew Hutton. You have to love this type of history as I do.I was hugely impressed by the research.
Warning against myself David Stevenson
Further away Jonathon Franzen
Browse the world in bookshops Ed Henry Hitchings
Novels
The cartel Don Winslow
The power of the dog Don Winslow
There is a novel on the island about a French guy who sells books out of his boat then throws it away to find out what happened to a long ago love. I liked ghost book whose title escapes me right now
The sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen in progress
On deck. Do not say we have nothing Madeline Thien

[Sharyn]

I also read the Elena Ferrante and loved them. One of my friends could not get into My Brilliant Friend because of the long list of characters. I should try to keep track of my reading, maybe this year. My reading consists of mysteries, books on writing, New England history and natural history.
Currently reading Dialogue by Robert Mckee and just finished The Trespasser by Tana French. I read fiction at close to the speed of light and slow down for anything else.

[Frances/Materfamilias]

Thanks for posting this -- I'll have to pluck some titles for 2017. I read Ferrante last year, but then reread MBF (and hosted a readalong on my blog) -- so much to F's writing that it repaid that reread and I'm debating whether to go through the rest of the series again so soon or hold off a bit. Very keen now to read that conversation with Heti (Frantumaglia, so far, is just confirming what Ferrante herself says about the value of an author interview vs. simply reading the work itself).
As for rereading, I may have already mentioned this here earlier in the year, but I'm not sure I'm ready yet -- and it's been at least 15 years! -- to read The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, but I have such a clear sense of "the island of shitty monkeys" -- such a grand and occasionallly useful analogy.
Happy New Year to you! It was lovely to meet you last summer -- I hope that might happen again sometime.