2016 in Books

2016 was arguably a terrible year, but not for reading. My thoughts on this year's books:

Purity, by Jonathan Franzen
The media loves to hate Jonathan Franzen, and I am tired of reading about him, but I fully admit that I love reading him. I almost didn't pick up his latest book because I've been reading too much about him...but I'm glad I did anyway, because he's a brilliant writer (regardless of whatever else he is) and this is an ambitious novel. That said, it didn't resonate with me the way The Corrections and even Freedom did. I didn't love it, but I did enjoy reading it--quite a trip.

In the Country, by Mia Alvar
Each story in this stunning collection gives a different perspective of the Filipino diaspora, and each one works beautifully -- often I didn't realize until the end that I'd been holding my breath. Alvar tells stories of daughters and sons, mothers and siblings, lovers and friends in first, second, and third person and hits each one out of the ballpark. Staggeringly good.

In the Body of the World, by Eve Ensler
This was not Eve Ensler's attempt to set her own suffering apart from that of the world, to elevate it, but rather to try put it in a greater context. The first half carried me away, and while the second half didn't quite live up to the first, it was still honest, lovely, raw, and painful, often all at once.

(I'd read a memoir about her relationship with her mother, for sure.)

The Country of Ice Cream Star, by Sandra Newman
Look, this was the last thing I was really in the mood for. I'm tired of dystopian, post-apocalyptic novels. But last year there was Station Eleven, which I really enjoyed and keep recommending to people, and now we have The Country of Ice Cream Star. The appeal for this one might not be as widespread; I likely won't suggest this to as many people. However, I'd argue that it's a better book. The plot is nothing we haven't seen before, and if the novel were carried by that alone I'd have given it a pass altogether. But two things make this novel shine: Ice Cream, the protagonist, and Newman's language. This book is nearly six hundred pages long and the entire thing--no seriously, the entire thing--is written in a made-up dialect spoken by the Sengles, a tribe of children surviving in the ruins of what used to be America. I read an excerpt last year and knew I'd have to at least try it. I didn't find it difficult; I was utterly swept away. Newman's language conveys the complexity of the characters and everything they feel in a way that standard English just wouldn't here. I don't even know how to write about it adequately; it made me feel everything. It's what makes this story one worth telling instead of one destined to become just another post-apocalyptic movie.

Understanding Pat Conroy, by Catherine Seltzer
I am nerdy enough to read literary criticism on Pat Conroy for fun and enjoy every word.

The Grownup, by Gillian Flynn
I didn't expect this to be great but I did think it would be fun. Basically I just rolled my eyes a lot.

Where the Line Bleeds, by Jesmyn Ward
First of all, let me say that I think Jesmyn Ward is brilliant, and Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped are both 5-star books for me. Where the Line Bleeds is her first novel, and I think there's considerable evidence of Ward flexing her writing muscles. Her prose is gorgeous. However, there's almost no plot--at least not enough for 230 pages. This could have been a 5-star short story.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
How can I possibly write a review of Anna Karenina? I read almost half of it in a single weekend and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I read it because I thought I should have the experience of reading Anna Karenina in my lifetime, but as it turns out, I truly loved it. I'm also glad I didn't try to read it any sooner than I did, because I think I appreciate this so much more now than I would have in my twenties.

What I love most: Tolstoy's characterization, and the way he takes us inside the thoughts of all the characters; they are complex and flawed and human. I love the descriptions of things I expected to have to trudge through--all the farming! The trees, the way the air feels, the mud. And there are some spectacular moments: when Levin and Kitty finally confess their feelings to each other. The birth of their son. The passages leading up to that tragic scene at the end of part 7--I love the stream-of-consciousness of Anna's thoughts. And even the last section, which shows Levin wrestling with all these huge cosmic questions. I think it just captures so perfectly why we read anything at all, why humans are called to write, to try to connect with each other. Maybe that's what I loved most about this book--its depiction of the messy ways we try to do just that.

When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
Ann Patchett calls this book a "universal donor," one she would recommend to anyone and everyone. And for good reason. It is stunningly, devastatingly beautiful. Just...read it.

For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards, by Jen Hatmaker
I like Jen Hatmaker. I do. And I like a lot of what she says in this book, too, except that for me it seemed like the transcript of a bunch of motivational speeches (which perhaps I'd have enjoyed more had I experienced them as such? I don't know in what context) with some humorous chapters and snippets of real-life anecdotes (which I enjoy and wanted more of) thrown in. I thought this might deliver something of what I expect when I read Rachel Held Evans or Nadia Bolz-Weber, but it didn't quite. (However, I DID appreciate feeling validated in my intense loathing of Pinterest and visceral aversion to "Mission Trips" that seem to serve mostly as something for sanctimonious teenagers to put on their resumes.)

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, by Sunil Yapa
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that my knowledge and understanding of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle was virtually zero; I was a safe little college student in the Midwest at the time. But I loved this book and read it in a few sittings. I love what Yapa does with perspective and I really love what he does with language. Some critics have said this is "overwritten" but, you know, my favorite author is Pat Conroy and no one ever accused his prose of being "spare," and also Yapa's writing does remind me of the writers who praise him: Colum McCann and Smith Henderson, both of whom I love as well.

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida
The title grabbed me immediately; how could I not at least pick this up? And when I did, I read it in two sittings. I think this a book I admire rather than love, but admire it I do. I get the feeling that Vida chisels each sentence until it reads exactly as she wants it to, and in this book--described by just about every reviewer as "spare"--she manages to convey so much subtext underneath the tightness of her prose. It's the story of a young woman who learns some family secrets and travels to Helsinki, and then to Lapland, in search of answers about her identity. And, I think, love. Whether she succeeds or not is the question. Her voice is dry, even humorous, but the story seems as cold and brittle as the winter landscape in which it is set. This isn't a criticism; I think it works.

Conversations with the Conroys, by Walter Edgar
Transcripts of recent(ish) interviews with Pat Conroy and his siblings (minus Carol, of course). I mean, it's just a record of their conversation, but I spent the week after Conroy's death listening to podcasts, old interviews with him on NPR, and I love his voice and his stories and even though this doesn't really give me anything new it is still wonderful.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
I should have read this before I read Are You My Mother? a couple of years ago -- I enjoyed it so much more, and I might have appreciated her second book more if I'd read this first.

The Lords of Discipline, by Pat Conroy
Five stars. ALL the goddamn stars. I'd been saving this for years because I never want to finish Pat Conroy. I loved it and it destroyed me.

Alice and Oliver, by Charles Bock
Before I read a single word of this novel, I knew that Charles Bock lost his wife to leukemia a few years ago, just shy of their daughter's third birthday. I also knew that Bock runs in very literary circles, and reading about the ways in which other writers I happen to love (sometimes in spite of myself) rallied around him made me want this to be a five-star book. However, I read this shortly after I read When Breath Becomes Air, and maybe it's unfair to compare the two because one is memoir and one is fiction, and they have, I think, very different aims. In the end, I found much to admire in Alice & Oliver, but I didn't find it the transcendent reading experience I had reading Kalanithi's memoir. (Again, though, is that fair? Bock fictionalized his story for a reason; at no point does it read like a memoir, nor should it.)

Anyway, I read this straight through in two days. Full disclosure: I read most of it on an airplane. I wonder if it would have taken me much longer otherwise, because some of it, frankly, was awfully tedious. (It's hard not to feel guilty writing that when I knew what I did about the context). But there are some equally beautiful parts, and as I continue to process and think about it, the more I admire not only the book, but the author. He wanted to tell an emotionally resonant story, but he also paid clear attention to the telling of that story, to the rhythm and structure, to the tone and pacing. It didn't always work for me, but I recognize and respect it.

The Nest, by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
This is the kind of book you buy at the airport to read on the plane and then pass off to a friend (which is how it fell into my hands). It's not the kind of book to buy because you want to mark up the margins and underline sentences, which is why the comparisons to Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings didn't quite work for me. However, it was entertaining, and as my friend put it, it has you rooting for the characters (most of them, anyway) despite their terrible decisions, and it was the kind of book I wanted to curl up with in the evenings during a very long week.

The Tsar of Love and Techno, by Anthony Marra
This book is stunning and Anthony Marra is brilliant. I absolutely loved A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, and I was skeptical this would live up to it, but in the end, I think this book might even surpass it. Each story can stand alone, but the stories are meant to be read together; they are puzzle pieces, perfectly linked, and each adds a layer of understanding of the larger story that, at the end, left me nothing short of awestruck.

My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout
How well do we ever really know each other? How do we extend grace when we've been hurt? How do we make peace with our past? These are the questions Elizabeth Strout asks us to wrestle with in her latest novel. And to think it's one I almost didn't pick up! I absolutely loved Olive Kitteridge but found The Burgess Boys to be pretty disappointing. But I did pick it up, and I didn't put it down until I'd finished. It's that kind of book: a one-sitting read. And it's exquisite.

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
This reminded me a bit of The Remains of the Day, which, for me, was a nearly perfect novel. Mothering Sunday takes place on a single day in 1924, and it captures both the changes sweeping across a century and a young woman's coming-of-age, and the way a single day can change the entire course of a life. Part of me wishes there would have been more; I wasn't quite ready to leave the story that felt it was only beginning to unfold. Then again, not a single word is out of place, and the book itself is a tribute to the power of storytelling.

LaRose, by Louise Erdrich
I thought The Plague of Doves was pretty much Louise Erdrich at her finest, although I love so much of her work (and my favorite is still probably The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No-Horse, which I think I need to read again).

LaRose, though, is spectacular. If it's not her best work, it's mighty close.

I almost didn't want to pick it up when I read the premise: a man accidentally shoots his best friend's son (a little boy the same age as my own son), and he gives the man his own son. The layers of grief and love and repentance and forgiveness -- how to bear it? But the story transcends this moment, and it's really about our interconnectedness, about how our actions affect each other, how our stories build on each other, and about the imperfect ways we love and forgive one another. It's a messy story, but the telling of it is close to perfect. I had some pretty wonderful reading experiences this year, but this is definitely among the best of 2016.

In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri
I know many of Lahiri's readers have expressed disappointment in this shift to writing in Italian when we have fallen in love with her work written in English, but I thought this was a beautiful exploration of language and identity.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain
I picked this up because it was on some list I saw at Powell's -- contenders for the most important books of the decade or something like that. Ben Fountain's writing is really, really good. Although, full disclosure, it took me awhile to get past the first fifty pages. That's not necessarily a criticism of the book; I was just pulled in a few other directions and couldn't quite focus. In fact, I almost gave up on it. But I didn't, and I'm so glad -- I read the rest in a single weekend. It's pretty piercing satire that showcases the disconnect between soldiers and civilians. It's funny, but not the kind of funny that made me want to laugh; it's funny because it pretty much gets 'Murica exactly right. It's poignant and often heartbreaking, and I'm glad I happened across it and stuck with it.

A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James
This book was possibly the most brilliant work of literature I read this year. And I'll be honest: I didn't really want to read it. When it won the Booker Prize last fall I sort of sighed; I'd been hoping one of the books I'd already read would have won, and then I could just say, "Welp! I got that covered!" But then this one was announced, and then I read somewhere that one of the judges said that everyone who read the the synopsis and thought this book "wasn't for them" were probably the very people who needed to read it, and who's always saying that great literature pushes us out of our comfort zones? Oh, that's right. Me.

And this book is way out of my comfort zone. It's set in a place I know nothing about, against a historical backdrop I know nothing about. And it's brutally violent. As many reviewers have already stated, this book is neither brief nor about only seven killings. And killings aren't the worst of it.

But it's also spectacular. What Marlon James does with language is absolutely brilliant. What he does with voice is brilliant. His cast of characters is impressive; the list of them in the front of the book came in handy. (Some of you might be put off by that. Don't be.) One of my favorite characters (and arguably the most finely developed) is a woman who takes on different identities throughout the book, reinventing herself. One of the characters is already dead on the very first page, but his voice is the first one we hear, and we continue to hear it at the end of each section. Some of the characters speak in pure poetry.

This book is big enough to read for a long time, but once I started reading, it was a difficult world to come out of; I thought about it all week when I wasn't reading it. I even dreamed it. It was the perfect book to read during the first full week of summer when I could really immerse myself in it.

A Mother's Reckoning, by Sue Klebold
Heartbreaking -- as a mother, this was tough to read, but I finished it in the course of a single weekend. I also think it's an important read, whether you're a parent or not. It's a good companion piece to Dave Cullen's Columbine. (I reserve five-star ratings for books that move me with the writing as well as the story, but I still recommend it.)

The Sound of Gravel, by Ruth Wariner
Compelling (and often horrifying and terribly sad) story about a woman's experiences growing up in a polygamist Mormon colony in Mexico. Reading this I had to keep reminding myself that she's only a few years older than me, I think, because what century is this? Pretty impossible to put down once I'd started. (I picked this up at the library and my husband borrowed it on a road trip after forgetting his own book back at home. It's not anything I'd imagine him reading, but he finished it in a couple of sittings.)

Get in Trouble, by Kelly Link
I picked this up after a bookseller told me Kelly Link is "just brilliant." (I love booksellers. I love listening to them talk about what they love. If you want recommendations, tell them what you like and take their advice! I rarely need recommendations myself, to be honest, because I grow my reading list really well already, but I absolutely love eavesdropping on booksellers recommending books to other people, and sometimes I just like asking them what they think. Anyway.) He wasn't wrong. Link's imagination is wild and fierce and funny, as are these stories. I kept reading because I couldn't wait to see what strange thing would happen in the next paragraph, in the next sentence. Highly recommended.

In the Skin of a Lion, by Michael Ondaatje
I wanted to read this before I went to Toronto for the first time this summer; I also wanted an excuse to dive into some of Ondaatje's writing again. I read and loved The English Patient seven years ago, and a few characters from that novel are introduced for the first time here in different contexts. (I love it when writers do that.) I read it in a couple of sittings and it is stunning. No one can describe work like Michael Ondaatje, and yet he takes the most gritty demanding physical work and turns it into poetry. This novel is a story of work, a story of a city, a story of the people who built it, and the way their lives intersect. The entire thing takes on a lyrical, dreamlike quality that both slowed me down as a reader but kept me in the language, so much so that I didn't want to break the spell until I'd finished.

The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy
Stand by for a fighter pilot.

I have loved every word Pat Conroy has written since I was in high school, yet I've read him out of order. And because I've read all of his other books, (besides The Boo, long out of print, although you better believe I found a way to score a copy upon the news of his death this past March) I felt like I intimately knew these characters before I read the first page. And I did. Some of the finer plot points were new to me, of course, but I knew Ben Meechum, and I knew Lillian, and I knew Bull. I've listened to Conroy speak about this book in his own words. And something about knowing these characters from the first chapter made this a deeply satisfying, even comforting experience, which is perhaps a strange thing to say considering the usual dose of brutality and dysfunction that Conroy serves up in perfect sentences. This is Conroy flexing his writing muscles. It's not a perfect book, but this is one of the first looks at a writer who became truly great. And my heart broke a bit at the end, because that is what Pat Conroy does and because although I still have The Boo, and although there is the possibility of his last novel being published posthumously, I know there will be no more great works from this master.

Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan Cycle: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child
I don't know if I'd have picked these up except that I overheard a bookseller at Powell's raving about them. So I did. The way to read these books is all at once. I was so deeply immersed in this world; I didn't want the story to end. (If you find the first book a little tough to get into, don't abandon them until you've tried the second. I enjoyed My Brilliant Friend but the others took over my life until I finished.) I am absolutely in awe of Ferrante's ability to evoke a particular time and place, the "big picture" but also the relatable details of life, lived and unglamorous and real.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond
Stories are how we see each other, and stories are what make us care about issues. Matthew Desmond follows eight families through the poorest neighborhoods in Milwaukee as they struggle to find and keep a roof over their heads, but this really could be any American city. He puts a human face on poverty, vulnerability, and desperation, and he does it by moving, literally, right into the middle of it with the people about whom he writes. I read it in two days, and when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it. Had I bought it in hardcover, I wouldn't have regretted the price. This book is eye-opening and heartbreaking and important and I learned a lot. I consider myself progressive, and I still had many of my assumptions challenged. I realized how much I don't know about the housing crisis. Check it out, buy it, read it. Be challenged, be open, be moved.

As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCann
Had I run across this on my own, I likely wouldn't have picked it up; a historical novel set in England during the seventeenth century just doesn't sound like my thing. But after reading a few persuasive reviews, and after tripping across a copy at Powell's, I decided to give it a go. And I was captivated by the very first sentence: "On the morning we dragged the pond for Patience White, I bent so far down trying to see beneath the surface that my own face peered up at me, twisted and frowning." And then I didn't want to put it down. I realized very early on that this book could not possibly end well, that it would have me all twisted up by the end, and I wasn't wrong. Jacob Cullen is an unlikeable protagonist--unreliable at best, a monster at worst--but something about him is so compelling; perhaps it's that he shows the potential for darkness in any human heart. And the love story, despite the fact that it goes so terribly, terribly wrong in the end, is intensely delicious.

McCann's research is meticulous, and her writing is incredibly smooth (save for a few instances of clunky dialogue--an attempt to remind the reader that we're in the seventeenth century, maybe?). There were a few characters I wanted more of, especially towards the end, but life doesn't always give us the closure we crave.

Death in Glacier National Park: Stories of Accidents and Foolhardiness in the Crown of the Continent, by Randi Minetor
Need I say more? This is my jam.

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, by Monique Morris
I wish every educator would read this.

Pretty Girls, by Karin Slaughter
Right around the beginning of the school year I crave fun, read-in-two-sittings mysteries. This delivers.

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, by Mona Awad
There is so much here that Awad gets exactly right, I think. This is the story of one young woman--the "fat girl" who loses weight as a young adult, and the ways in which she still struggles with the way in which she perceives herself, as well as the ways in which she struggles with others' perceptions of her (real or imagined). A few of the vignettes were told from others' perspectives, but mostly it's Lizzie's/Elizabeth's/Liz's voice (the names she chooses to use shift along with her body). In the end, though, I was left wanting more from Liz as an adult; I think she has so much more to her story.

The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware
I could copy and paste my review from In a Dark, Dark Wood. Apparently mediocre (though admittedly kind of fun) mysteries that require very little commitment are what I need to read while I'm getting ready for a new school year. If Ruth Ware writes another one, I'll probably read it.

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, by Jill Leovy
"Take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened. Signal that no one cares, and fail to solve the murders. Limit their options for escape. Then see what happens."

This book belongs alongside The New Jim Crow on anyone's bookshelf -- powerful and important.

Another Brooklyn, by Jacqueline Woodson
This book is close to perfect. It reads like poetry, like music, like a love letter to memory. The prose is beautiful even when it delivers grief and heartbreak, and the beauty of the prose doesn't mask the grief. It's a wonderful evocation of a very particular time and place, but it also transcends that time and place to show what it means to be fully, deeply human. I read almost all of it in one sitting and wanted to begin again immediately.

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
While Americanah is the book everyone talks about (and it should be talked about, because it's great too), I think this book is really Adichie's masterpiece. Every time I read her work I think, "This is why reading fiction matters."

The Trespasser, by Tana French
Tana French hasn't broken her stride with this one. As a reader, I trust her to be consistently good, and I loved this book. As always, the real meat comes from her nearly perfect characterization; there's a mystery, yes, but the story is really about the people. And I love the way she reveals layers to her characters, especially when she introduces them as a secondary character in a previous novel. Antoinette Conway might be my favorite narrator yet.

Mystery novels, for me, are usually a fun if formulaic escape for my brain. French delivers more. She can be bitingly funny, but she also has this remarkable ability to make me invest in her characters and ache at the end. The mystery is almost beside the point, and even a solve leaves behind a lingering feeling of melancholy because the people involved are all so messily human.

Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett
This might actually be my favorite of Ann Patchett's novels (I still love her memoir about her friendship with Lucy Grealy the best of all her work; nothing has managed to unseat that yet, although this comes close). I've liked all of them, though. I loved Bel Canto and State of Wonder and I even really liked Run, the one that didn't seem to work for a lot of people. This book doesn't feature exotic locations or require me to suspend my disbelief (much); it is a family saga that stretches over five decades (but somehow not seven hundred pages like such novels often do) and shows, I think, a great deal of tenderness towards complicated people. And that is my favorite kind of novel. The thing about Ann Patchett is that, as a reader, I just trust her. This book proved to me again that I am right to do so.

Work Like Any Other, by Virginia Reeves
This novel is set in rural 1920's Alabama, and you don't need to read more than the first page (or the book jacket) to know what happens: Roscoe T. Martin, an electrician by trade, uses his skills to build a transformer and siphon electricity from the state to power the farm he lives on, unhappily, with his wife and son. The work brings him renewed happiness in his family and satisfaction he could never find as a farmer, until a young state worker is accidentally electrocuted. Roscoe earns a sentence at Kilby Prison, and his family abandons him. Somehow, even knowing the plot from the very first page, I couldn't stop reading. The language is gorgeous and clear, and though I didn't much like Roscoe in the beginning, I felt for him deeply throughout the story. The title, too, is perfect; Reeves is a master at describing work of all kinds--electrical work and farm work, but also work inside the prison walls: in the dairy, in the library, even the work of a prisoner building the state's first electric chair in exchange for a month-long furlough, from which, naturally, he doesn't return. It begs the questions: how much are we willing to sacrifice for our families? Our freedom? Our self-worth? When is the cost too high?

I love almost everything about this book. I love the ending slightly less, but not enough to subtract a star.

A Lowcountry Heart; Reflections on a Writing Life, by Pat Conroy
I never wanted to come to the end of Pat Conroy's writing and I am utterly bereft.

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Wonderful, devastating, horrifying, and brilliantly written. This book deserves all the accolades it receives.

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
This book is phenomenal. The story begins with two half-sisters in 18th century Ghana, separated before they ever know each other. The novel traces each sister's descendants in both Ghana and the United States through the present day, revealing the effects of colonialism and the slave trade. It's an incredibly ambitious, beautiful work and I had a hard time putting it down.

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward
It's always difficult to rate a collection of work from multiple writers, but this one is important and so timely. Also, I will read anything associated with Jesmyn Ward's name. And I want to leave copies of some of these essays everywhere I go, especially "White Rage" by Carol Anderson, "Black and Blue" by Garnette Cadogan, "The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning" by Claudia Rankine, "This Far: Notes on Love and Revolution" by Daniel José Older, " and "Message to My Daughters" by Edwidge Danticat.

Slade House, by David Mitchell
The way to read this book: Be a fan of David Mitchell already. Check it out from the library (don't buy it). Read it in one sitting on a chilly winter's night, or Halloween.

It's still not that scary. But it's fun. I'm not sure it's supposed to be any more than that.

Anyway, I enjoyed it well enough, and you don't really need to have read The Bone Clocks, which I loved, although it helps. I will say, just as I was feeling pretty much done with the book, I read a line that made me literally laugh out loud and say, "Yes! There it is."

Hag-Seed, by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood's retelling of The Tempest delivered everything I hoped it would. Delightful, funny, sharp, with just the perfect amount of darkness and poignancy.

The Nix, by Nathan Hill
I read all 600+ pages in four days; I didn't want to put it down. And yes, it reminded me a lot of The Corrections, but...better, maybe because Nathan Hill isn't yet someone we love to hate. I loved this book.

The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford
There is nothing that should appeal to me about Richard Ford's Bascombe novels, really. And I likely won't rush out to recommend them to everyone I meet (especially if my reading friends require much in the way of plot or likable characters, of which this book has...not much of either). But I do love them. Frank Bascombe is not a great lover of humanity, and perhaps neither is Richard Ford, but he is clearly a great lover of language, and the way he slips us so fully inside the consciousness of another human being, whether or not we relate to that person, is something that leaves me in utter awe each time.

I wouldn't pick this up without having read The Sportswriter and Independence Day (both of which I enjoyed), but this is, I think, the best of the three. It was the perfect way to end 2016, during winter break when I had a few more hours to wrap up in a blanket on the couch and immerse myself in the flow of his sentences.

***

As you might expect, I have quite the reading list started for 2017...I'm kicking off the new year with something a little lighter (Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple), but I plan to follow it with Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance (isn't this on everyone's to-read list these days?), His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet (a psychological thriller that was actually shortlisted for the Booker Prize this fall), and a line-up of highly anticipated reads by some of my favorite writers: Swing Time by Zadie Smith, Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer, and Moonglow by Michael Chabon.

I'm told there's a lot of good stuff on Netflix, etc. these days, but mostly, I'd rather read. (Though if you must know, I'm currently watching The OA, and it's giving me bizarre dreams. And! I'm ridiculously excited about Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack, which will reportedly be available on Amazon Prime soon.)