Another good year with book club as well as additional titles I was able to fit in. Book club options noted with* (I only missed There, There this year which was supposed to be quite good) and mostly listed in order read.

• Rules of Civility* by Amor Towles – A great way to start the year we all really enjoyed this tale of a woman’s life in NY taking a turn in the year of 1938, many went on to also enjoy A Gentleman in Moscow.
• The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware – Underwhelming if entertaining enough mystery.
• Pachinko* by Min Jin Lee – Very enjoyable Korean drama starting in 1910 in a small Korean village and through into Japan and beyond.
• The Heart’s Invisible Furies* by John Boyne – A little uneven but overall engaging look at 1940s to present day Ireland through the life of an adopted boy and his surrounding ‘family.’
• Moonglow by Michael Chabon – Enjoyed the latest fictional autobiography as he listens to his grandfather’s story.
• Exit West* by Mohin Hamid – Really pulled into this magical realism story of two young lovers who meet and are swept up by unrest in their city and escape through doors to other places.
• Euphoria by Lily King – Three young anthropologists in the ’30’s caught me up in both their study of other cultures but their love triangle that threatens more than their work.
  
• A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin – I can’t believe I had never ready any of her work, the stories gathered here are compelling and heart breaking and humorous.
  
• Maps & Legends Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon – This collection of essays goes a little more in detail on subjects that are clearly favorites of the author’s but maybe not for everyone.
• Elmet* by Fiona Mozley – This was one of two books we picked this year that we questioned the balance of good to bummer as the story of a family living basically off the grid in Yorkshire and let’s just say it doesn’t go well.
• Eileen* by Ottessa Moshfegh – This was the other but bummer, and it’s making us a little dubious about My Year of Rest and Relaxation getting lots of buzz for this last year.
• Less* by Andrew Sean Greer – I’ve mostly enjoyed the rest of Andy’s work I’ve read but this latest really pulls it all together as a struggling author travels the world to avoid a wedding is mostly amusing in its mishaps but also a little poignant.
• How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely – Slacker decides to game the system mostly to get back at an ex has some amusing areas but a little too turned off by the protagonist.
• The Good Girl by Mary Kubica – Ditto The Woman in Cabin 10.
• All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld – A woman’s present and past are told with a bit of sheep shearing has some interesting aspects but overall might not add up to a whole lot.
• Manhattan Beach* by Jennifer Egan – While overall I enjoyed this book it covered a lot at maybe some expense and our discussion turned more toward the three versions of the book we might have liked better.
• Floating in My Mother’s Palm by Ursula Hegi – Another on my Hegi backlog this was a lovely story of the characters of small town in Germany where we met many in Stones From the River.
• Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham – This collection was a gracious gift from my City Arts & Lectures attendance but I enjoyed hearing her speak more than I enjoyed the personal essays.
• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan – I loved the idea of the culture, food, and fashion that make up the ingredients of this book but overall the story and characters didn’t make it for me.
• This is My Best: Great Writers Share their Favorite Work – Fun to ready a bunch of stories from a wide range of authors, not all my favorites but a lot of great gems.
• Sourdough* by Robin Sloan – A fun fictional look at food and culture though maybe not as satisfying as a loaf of sourdough.
• The Man Who Fell In Love With the Moon by Tom Spanbauer – This book wasn’t quite my jam as we followed a western feeling group of whore house protagonists.
• The Perfect Nanny* by Leila Slimani – Not everyone loved the book for various narrative and nonfictional reasons but some good ingredients for a good discussion.
• News of the World by Paulette Jiles – Recommended to me by lovers of this book from page one, and while it took me a bit to get into I ended up won over by this Civil Wartime reader of the news and his goal to reunite a young orphan with her fam after being raised by Indians.
• The Witches of Eastwick* by John Updike – I’m technically still not quite done with this and most of our group didn’t finish this tough to get into lengthy descriptions.

We’ll keep our eye on Lithub list as these come out in paperback and for a more comprehensive list of best book lists you can check Large Hearted Boy.

What were your favorite picks?

I should abandon the ‘best’ language since this is just all the books that I’ve read. There were some gems but if nothing else I’ve read more books this year! Listed in order read with months indicating my book club’s pick.

• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Jan) – This was sort of the book of 2016 and definitely appreciated the fictional, somewhat fantastical, and yet illuminating journey seeking freedom.
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins – This book was certainly readable but I didn’t buy the story ingredients that our heroine gets herself wrapped up in.
• Tenth of December by George Saunders – Another on my list because of high regard, I really enjoyed this collection of slightly off kilter short stories.
• Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer (Feb) – I’ve read a few of his books and this tale of a woman time traveling between lives struck about the same balance in being a little unusual and basically enjoyable.
• The Nix by Nathan Hill (Mar) – This was one of my faves of the year, if not the fave, as it wove a very smart story with great cultural awareness and enjoyable characters as we follow a man who gets reconnected with the mother who abandoned him and a whole lot more.
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Apr) – After really enjoying the short story collection earlier I was excited for this much buzzed about book, and I don’t want to say I hated it but I just could not get into the odd format and tale of Lincoln and the living and dead characters.
• 1984 by George Orwell (May) – This year just seemed like a time for a reread, and while the book was still enjoyable what was most interesting about the reread is the parts that I did and didn’t remember.
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Jun) – I’d had this on my list since someone being interviewed at City Arts & Lectures (and I can’t remember who, maybe Zadie Smith) raved about it and it’s well worth a read to follow through the stories of the lineage of two sisters born in 18th century Ghana.
• Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo (Jul) – Even though this wasn’t one of my favorites of his, his writing is still some of my favorite and was glad to revisit this town from Nobody’s Fool and some of its interesting characters.
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini – This had been on my shelf for years and I was glad to pick up and dive into the poignant tale of two friends unfolding their story from Afghanistan and beyond.
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel – A great journey with the end of the world as we know it and finding how tales current and during the initial breakout all tie together with compelling characters and stakes.
• In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware – Also readable but didn’t really get into the unbelievable bachelorette weekend gone darkly awry.
• All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Aug) – This fantastical book covering technology, magic, romance, and the complications these can bring was fun enough if not totally successful for me.
• Razorgirl by Carl Hiaasen – You can’t go wrong with a campy Florida caper and this one is very typical Hiaasen.
• The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (Sep) – I really enjoyed this quirky rom com of a book following a socially awkward scientist trying to boil down the ingredients to marriage with the help of a slightly less by the book female.
• The Brookly Follies by Paul Auster – Another off the shelf, this protagonist comes to Brooklyn to die only to reconnect with life, very enjoyable and I have some Auster backlog still to do.
• Everyman by Philip Roth – Speaking of backlog, I haven’t done a ton of Roth but I enjoyed the look at one man’s life through illnesses.
• Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (Oct) – As a fan of his television work I was curious about the writing and enjoyed the story of the last survivors of a private plane crash and its look at media.
• Intrusions by Ursula Hegi – I had a stack of old Hegi options after falling for Stones From the River and this book about an author mixing her life, her in progress novel, and talking to her characters was odd and entertaining enough.
• Golden Hill by Francis Spuffold (Nov) – I almost stopped reading the heavy handed language of this novel of old world New York but stuck it out because others said it got better, and it did in that the treatment of the protagonist, the story, and the writing got less annoying but though it moved to have some entertaining moments I can’t quite endorse.
• I Remember You: A Ghost Story by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Dec) – Well it was definitely a ghost story, and although I didn’t read it late at night I thought it did an appropriate job of being spooky and tying a few yarns of creepy abandoned remote island house and creepy kids of years gone by together.
• The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood – This was sort of a year of Atwood so I picked up another one of the books on my shelf and while the overall story wasn’t completely successful for me I really enjoyed the stories of three women and their relationship to a college ‘friend’.

For a more consolidated list of critic picks check out Largehearted Boy or Literary Hub. What were your favorites?

I keep saying I wanted to read more so this year when the opportunity arose I joined a new book club! I was a little hesitant about the commitment and a little hesitant about the book selection but all in all I rate the year a success. Below is the list of what we read this year, plus a couple of additional vacation selections, in order of reading.

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty – This was a unique and amusingly satirical take on race that was well worth a read and a think, great fodder for my first book club attendance.
• A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James – Super long and super challenging with the multiple POV entailing lots of Jamaican dialect, and while I appreciated it more than I enjoyed this fictional look surrounding politics and days of Bob Marley for an interesting read.
• Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem – I am typically a big Lethem fan but there was something about this book that just never quite engaged me with the look at multi-generational dissidents who were interesting if not endearing.
• The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson – I’m going to label this my favorite book of last year, as we move with the titles character through his unbelievable journey through North Korea, as fantastical as his story is the very real research grounded it.
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang – This surreal and poetic mix of three points of view in a tale of a woman taking a turn in her life starting with visions of food, fell more on the appreciation than enjoyment side of the fence.
• The Girls by Emma Cline – We picked this one for something a little lighter, in readability though not subject matter, I was entertained by if not totally brought on board with the psychology and situation around at a young girl who falls in with a cult-ish group.
• Boy Snow Bird by Helen Oyeyemi – Although very readable the loose riff on Snow White never quite hits trying to do a myriad of styles and stories feeling like it’s not quite covering too many bases.
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann – This had been sitting on my shelf for ages so jumped at the chance to get this in the rotation and pleasantly surprised as the weaving together of various people’s stories brings a greater appreciation for each as well as their place in the time and NYC.
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen – This book may have suffered in my opinion by the fact that it was the one I didn’t finish on time and therefore was relegated to finishing in dribs and drabs, but while the communist double agent protagonist kept me interested in his trips from early Vietnam to the US and back again and yet not totally engrossed.
• Funny Girl by Nick Hornby – This was the first of my vacation books, I’m a big Hornby fan in general always readable and amusing if not always amazing, this one that was a look at an early English comedienne was definitely enjoyable.
• The Pesthouse by Jim Crace – I started into the backlog after reading Being Dead and this was an interesting look at this peculiar slice of remote world and people thrown together but not my fave.
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman – This was the talk of the town for a bit and though I was left a little less glowing of the simplistic character and slightly overly coincidental series of events in the end I was won over by Ove and the people who won him over.
• Swing Time by Zadie Smith – I’m realizing that I’m actually up to date on Smith having gone back to the backlog after favorite On Beauty, and though for me nothing else has matched that I enjoyed this journey with our unnamed and somewhat distant protagonist as she journeys through family, friends, work, romance, and politics.

A little tardy with my end of year lists, I’m also taking a pass on doing the critic roundups. Trying to find any good compilations but you can find a full rundown of all the year-end lists (which is a little overwhelming to be honest) at Largehearted Boy. And stay tuned for tv and movie picks!