2016 in Books

Last year turned out to be quite a good reading year for me. I read more books than I ever have before in a single year, 51 being the final count. I read 22 books by women, which is probably a better percentage for me than in most years. Those 22 books only represent 14 distinct authors, which isn't great. I read just one book of nonfiction. I read two books from before 1900, one of which was a reread.

My "reading project" was the main guiding principle for my reading last year, and I have to say I did pretty great in that regard. I read books from 25 countries this year. Fifteen of these (shown in bold) were countries from which I had not previously read anything. Aside from the United States, I read books from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, Cuba, Dominica, El Salvador, England, Finland, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Libya, Martinique, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, and Spain. To see other fun stats, you can check out my year in books on Goodreads.

The list:

• How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Infatuations by Javier Marías
• Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau
• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
• The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
• Home by Marilynne Robinson
• My Michael by Amos Oz
• Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco
• The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier
• The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso
• The Ruined Map by Kobo Abe
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (reread)
• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
• In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• The City and the City by China Miéville
• Stoner by John Williams
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
• The Whites by Richard Price
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
• Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness
• The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness
• Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
• The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox
• Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
• The Dream of My Return by Horacio Castellanos Moya
• Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters by Louis Begley
• John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
• In the Dutch Mountains by Cees Nooteboom
• The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago
• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• The Story of a Child by Pierre Loti
• The Fortress by Meša Selimović
• Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
• The Marshal and the Madwoman by Magdalen Nabb
• Blood Rain by Michael Dibdin
• The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo by Germano Almeida
• Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
• They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie
• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

I'm surprised by how easy it is for me to pick a favorite book from the year, but here we are: my favorite book was The Dream of My Return. For reasons I find hard to pinpoint, this book just felt like it was for me. My other top books from the year include The Infatuations, Station Eleven, All the Light We Cannot See, They Came to Baghdad, Story of a Child, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, The Long Goodbye, Stoner, and Life After Life.