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2016 Reading

2016 wasn't a great reading year; I squeaked in under the wire with 50 books. I hadn't expected the beginning of 2017 to be much better, but then I started looking at the books I managed to finish last year (thank you GoodReads) and realized I had had a lot of good reading experiences. Most of my frustration seems mainly to have come from my lack of reading and a couple of ill-chosen or ill-timed books. I had periods of avid reading and months where I read little and finished nothing, which was a big change from my previously mainly consistent reading habit. Realizing this, I'm feeling much more optimistic about the books I'm considering for 2017.

While I had hoped to read more globally, I did read books from 14 different countries. Including several which were new to me: Poland, Iceland, Spain, Philippines, and Denmark. Of these, I particularly enjoyed Smaller and Smaller Circles (Philippines) and Reykjavik Nights (Iceland) for their glimpses into societies I knew next to nothing about as well as their excellent mysteries. Similarly, The Unquiet Dead and If You Could be Mine tackled issues in places I knew little about.

My favorites for 2016 were my favorites for a variety of reasons: excellent mysteries, beautiful prose, compelling characters, glimpses of lives and societies different from my own, or, in yet other ways, very similar to my own.

In the order I read them 2016 favorites:

Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan Eon by Alison Goodman Terrier by Tamora Pierce If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling
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