So it goes.: 2016 Books.

Well, 2016 was a huge success for me reading-wise. It kind of sucked in a lot of other ways but I don't think I've ever read more than 50 books in a year before. My final total was 52. One book for each week. I was a bit worried I might not make it when I went from working part-time and living in a tiny isolated cabin by myself to working 10 hour days with an hour of travel time each way and living around people and places again. My reading definitely slowed down with that transition, but I still made it.

Some of the books have had whole blog posts devoted to them. If you want to read any of those you can check them out in the list at the bottom of this post. If you click on any of the underlined titles it will take you to those posts. I also did brief summaries each month. Sometimes I did a few months together. If you want to check out those they are at the bottom of the post under the book list.

The only book that was a reread this year was The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Other than that one they were all new. Some of them were books that had been sitting on my shelf unread for ages. It was very nice to finally finish those ones.

Okay. Now onto my recommendations. I think there was only one book I read this year that I did NOT enjoy at all. That would be As I Lay Dying by William Faulker. I found it boring, hard to understand, and painful to read. I know it is a classic but that does not necessarily mean it is a good book. At least I didn't think so. No judgement if you have read it and liked it. But I did not.

I guess there was one more that I wasn't crazy about. I really thought I was going to love The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I had it very highly recommended to me. However, it was not my genre and I found a few scenes rather traumatizing. I think I might enjoy it more on a second read. I spent most of the first read being super paranoid that something terrible was going to happen and that the boy and his father were going to get locked in a basement and slowly eaten.

There was also one book I started but did not finish. It was a collection of short stories called Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson. The title short story, Rust and Bone, was AMAZING. However I only made it through one or two more before I gave up. The stories were hard to read. I found the subject matter difficult in a lot of them. However, the final straw came in a story about a whale trainer getting his leg bit off by an orca. Now if you know me at all, you probably know about my weird orca fear so you are probably thinking that is why I stopped reading. But actually my problem came when he described the whale biting off the leg above the knee and then TWICE referred to the bone you could see as the tibia. Come on Craig. That is an easy one to fact check.

For my favourites I thought I would do them by category.

FICTION

If you haven't read any Kevin Brockmeier, you really should. I also read The Illumination this year. Both were good. This one was better. This is the blurb from the back of the book: "The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory." If that doesn't get you on board, I don't know what will.

This book took me a long time to read and at first I wasn't super into it. But it sort of became one of those books that feels like a friend because you spend so long reading it. And then you miss it when you're done. There is one pretty painful chapter where a character describes in detail how a mob kills all the facists in a village by throwing them off a cliff. It was almost enough to make me stop reading. I don't do well at all with any sort of torture or detailed violence. But somehow, despite that chapter, I am still recommending it as one of my top books of the year. It felt significant. It was beautiful. And I wish that chapter had not been in it, but it was not enough to destroy the rest of it. Or the rest of it was so good it cancelled it out. Anyways. I found it to be kind of a slow read, but so worth it.

I was not expecting to enjoy this book. It is about a butler who drives across the English countryside. I thought it sounded hella boring. But a friend gave me the book so I tried to read it. The first couple chapters were exactly what I was expecting. But then somewhere around chapter three something weird happened and I got super invested in the character and the story. I couldn't put it down. Turns out that is what happened to my friend as well. So I know it sounds boring, but maybe you also will get weirdly into it and end up really enjoying it.

I really really enjoyed this one. I found it super relatable and a lot more hopeful than I was expecting.

This one will make you feel. I think I am including it not because I loved the story and found it relatable and happy. I am including it because it dealt with real things and it made me feel a lot of things. It felt important that way.

I think I am also including this one because it felt important and not because I absolutely loved it. I read this one quite early in the year and I can still vividly remember a LOT of it. I can play the final scene in my head and hear the one character's last line. So I think that means something. I remember that I really liked some of it and some of it I wasn't sure about. It was a good read. I just mean that I am not sure I entirely agree with exactly what the author was trying to say.

It is kind of funny that I am putting this one on the recommendations list and not on the 'I hated it' list. This book absolutely infuriated me while I was reading it. This is why: "Many events in the book are repeatedly described from differing points of view, so the reader learns more about each event from each iteration, with the new information often completing a joke, the punchline of which was told several chapters previously. The narrative's events are out of sequence, but the events are referred to as if the reader is already familiar with them, so that the reader must ultimately piece together a timeline of events." And also this: "Much of Heller's prose in Catch-22 is circular and repetitive, exemplifying in its form the structure of a Catch-22. Circular reasoning is widely used by some characters to justify their actions and opinions"(excerpts are from Wikipedia). But I have to admit it is well written and worth reading, even if you want to tear your hair out and set the book on fire while doing so.

NON FICTION

Okay, so this one was a bit of a slog. It was a bit boring in some parts, unless of course you think you would enjoy reading a detailed description of the cost of each nail used to build a house, or how to determine the depth of a pond using a rope and rocks, or how to hoe beans. But there was good stuff mixed into all the boring. I think I did like eleven different blog posts where I shared excerpts from the book. I am so glad I read it. It was a long read, but I feel like it was worth it. You gotta just embrace the descriptions of mundane life tasks to find the wisdom mixed into it.

I think this was my favourite Everest book I read this year. I found it to be the most informative and it felt the least biased. Anatoli spent little to no time describing what he thought other people were feeling or trying to tell us why people acted the way they did (*cough Jon Krakauer) and he simply laid out what he saw first hand and what he did. If you are looking to read just one book about the 1996 climbing season, I would recommend this one. I haven't read all of the accounts of that year, but of the ones I have read, this one stands out as a clear winner in my mind.

This one is also about 1996, but it is totally different. Lou Kasischke was one of the climbers on Rob Hall's expedition who stuck to the turn around time and turned back before the Hilary Step. Instead of focusing on the summit and analyzing the storm and subsequent tragedy, he spends most of the book describing what led him to the place where he was able to make the decision to turn around and give up his chance at the summit. It is very good.

You NEED to read this so that you can learn about shame and about being vulnerable. This book kicked my ass. But in a good way. Mostly. I feel very strongly that you should read this and that you will get something out of it.

PLAYS/POETRY

Tyler Knott Gregson writes beautiful poetry. I absolutely loved this book. These poems were all written on a typewriter, so they are all done in one take. No editing or revising of any kind.

Okay, and here is the full list also by category. It is in no significant order, just alphabetical by author.

FICTION

Tales From Watership Down - Richard Adams

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Brief History of the Dead - Kevin Brockmeier

The Illumination - Kevin Brockmeier

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Legends of the Fall - Jim Harrison