Books Read in 2016

[Shadow]

So it's time to do another year's review in books! I completed 109 books this year, but these were the highlights (or the worst ones)

Classics:

Spoiler

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
Excellent book and study on the human nature, guilt, and restitution. Very much enjoyed it.

King Lear by Shakespeare
Tragic. Yup. Great play.

The Odyssey by Homer
A great piece of western literature, and there are lots of references to it in our culture. A worthwhile read but not something I'd read again.

Pride and Prejudice by Austen
I actually thoroughly enjoyed the satire and commentary on high society in England. Well done Miss Austen!

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
Brilliant book. Sad, with lots of brokenness but people's motivations drive them to do things they regret, it doesn't necessarily mean they are motivated by evil.

The Secret Garden by Hodgson
It was okay. A little too squishy sweet for me.

Jane Eyre by Bronte
What is up with those Bronte sisters? Mr Rochester is objectively a creep, not sure why I'm supposed to sympathize with him. This was basically a steamy, victorian-era romance novel.

Phantastes by George MacDonald
I need to read more by him. His books are beautiful and fantastical fairy tales for grown-ups.

20th Century "Classics"

Spoiler

A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
Didn't really care for it. I liked his abbreviated style in Old Man and the Sea, but didn't work for me here. I guess most anti-war novels from this era don't.

East of Eden by Steinbeck
Great sweeping saga of two families. I grew up near the area described in California and many of my ancestors came from there too. This could very well have been my family, except for the tragedy. Really enjoy Steinbeck.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Smith
Really nice, homely story about a poor girl in Brooklyn who seeks to better herself through reading and education. Very pleasant and sad.

Catch-22 by Heller
Meh. It has funny lines to be sure but it's like taking a Marx Bros film and stretching it to 15 hours long and beating every joke to death.

Non-fiction

Spoiler

Into Thin Air by Krakauer
I think this was recommended by OHMSS. Fascinating book that clearly delineates just how not fun climbing Everest can be.

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer
Massive tome, clearly and convincingly written. It was fascinating and terrifying to see just how the Nazi party came to power and why people didn't see it coming. Could very easily happen again because we want to believe the best intentions and no one wants to go to war.

Fate is the Hunter by Gann
Brilliant book by a pilot in the early days of air navigation. Absolutely terrifying to not know where you were, to have ice on the wings, to have airports few and far in between, and no radar! He was a good writer which made the book even more enjoyable.

Historical Theology by Cunningham
Brilliant and lengthy set on church history, particularly the battles fought over various doctrines and the reasons behind them. Well-researched and carefully written.

Founding Sins by Moore
A recently published book, whose purpose is to show that the USA was not founded as a Christian nation, which I think it does admirably.

Popular novels today

Spoiler

Mockingjay by Collins
I had to finish out the series. It just wasn't good.

Life of Pi by Martel
Just didn't like it. Maybe it works for some people but it seemed to be trying to hard to be mystical and postmodern.

Divergent by Roth
Terrible! Mediocre writing, bad character development, undeveloped plot, cheesy dialogue, why is this popular?

The Alchemist by Coelho
Sort of postmodern Arabian Nights, which worked for me. I enjoyed it.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Niffenegger
Couldn't finish. Just a steamy romance novel with bizarre genetic time travel, it's not sci-fi.

The Kite Runner by Khaled
Not impressed. The book goes for pulling emotional strings and I don't think it worked hard enough to deserve it. Decidedly a liberal Western look at Eastern morals, despite the author being from Afghanistan. And just not very well written! But at least Oprah likes it...

Memoirs of a Geisha by Golden
I actually really liked this, one of the most beautiful books I've read this year and the author did a great job, as a white male, conveying the voice of a Japanese female.

Sci-fi/Geeky books

Spoiler

Dune by Frank Herbert
I liked it, definitely an awe-inspiring and majestic book. Just didn't care too much to read the sequels.

Ready Player One by Cline
It was a fun book, not brilliant, but a nice nod to nerds.

Planetfall by Newman
I enjoyed most of this, but felt the purposeful withholding of information seemed a bit much. Main POV character's "problem" felt amazingly real and horrifyingly psychological.

Partials by Wells
One of the best YA apocalyptic books I've read. Way better than Maze Runner, Hunger Games, and Divergent combined! About genetically engineering "humans" fighting with real humans, and a disease that has swept the planet.

Storm Front by Butcher
Fun take on vampire-hunter sort of stuff, but just lots of fluff and not particularly brilliant.

Robot/Foundation Series by Asimov
So I've gotten into these books finally and Asimov is a genius. Not the best writer but his social commentary, construction, and the way he perceives how people interact with technology is amazing. Definitely finishing out the series. "The Naked Sun" was a beautiful mix of detective story, sci-fi, and social commentary.

Ancillary Justice by Leckie
This won nearly every sci-fi award under the sun. The more I thought about this book the more I disliked it. It's not that it's particularly bad, it just isn't good! No character development, flat, shallow stereotypes, Michael-Bay-ending, deus ex machina rescue, gimmicky conventions that don't actually do any world-building, and...magic. Seriously, the only piece of technology described is an alien gun that can go into hammer space, is invisible, undetectable, and can penetrate any shield, yet no one knows how it works and worse, don't seem to care. That's not sci-fi!

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Really beautifully written. The ending didn't quite work out for me but the rest of the book was fascinating as we see people surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, all linked together through the life of one common man.

Misc / other

Spoiler

Hex by Olde Heuvelt
Fascinating book and brilliant most of the way through. I hope more of his books are translated into English. The ending didn't work so well for me but I understand he changed it for English audiences. I'll have to get a Dutch speaker to tell me what the original ending was

Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman
I really enjoy Gaiman's writing, and this short story collection was no exception.

Lonesome Dove by McMurtry
Grand novel of the West, it was enjoyable but was more of a character study than a Western, and ended on a strange note for me.

Murder on the Orient Express by Christie
Really well done. Perhaps not the most believable but one of the most creative.

So that's mostly it from me. Any particular books you'd like to share a bit about? Any of my Dutch comrades read Olde Heuvelt?

[TheFlash]

Hey Shadow. Thanks for the list.

I might try to prepare a full list later but I want to quickly note that I am almost finishing up the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Problem, etc.). Something about the tone of the translations and repeated anti-climax moments has really hooked me. Several of the SF ideas are new to me too, so that is refreshing. The second book wasn't nearly as good as the first and third.

[Shadow]

I knew Three-Body Problem won a Hugo a couple years ago, I might have to check it out.

[Rigger in Chief]

I didn't read as many books as I'd have preferred but I did read Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders and Presidents in Crisis. Both fantastic books that I highly reccomend

[youseinthehouse]

East of Eden is one of the greatest books of all time.  I read it in various parts of northern CA.  Including Salinas

Glad you liked it.

[SGT RAGEQUIT]

I'm a super anxious person by nature, so when I'm trying to sleep it tends to be fantasy, so this year I read Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe - for sure one of the better books I've read. It's a Final Fantasy RPG vibe crossed with reading Harry Potter for the first time. Go read it.

[AZ]

Read a few books in 2016:

Pride and Prejudice - 8/10
Siddhartha - 7/10
The 120 Days of Sodom - very uneven (the novel was never finished) but also surprisingly entertaining. 6/10
Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred - 5/10
Den allvarsamma leken - 8/10

Also, while not novels per se, I picked up The Rough Guide to Shakespeare and The Rough Guide to Classic Novels which I'm currently enjoying. Not going to list all the film-related books I read (~20-25 in total).

[TheFlash]

In the first half of 2016 I made an effort to read more nonfiction. So I ended up doing about the same amount of fiction as previous years, plus the extra nonfiction stuff.  I will probably keep my fiction level about the same for 2016 but I wouldn't be surprised if the nonfiction slowed down.

I did about 24 fiction books, with around 8 of them being re-reads of past favorites and the rest being new to me.  Around about half of this was in the science fiction realm, with the remainder being some fantasy and a couple detective type stories.

On the nonfiction front I tried several of the mountain climbing stories people have mentioned here in the past.  I also did a three book and a two book series about world history from the earliest times to several hundred years ago. I read a couple things with Feynman's name on the cover. I also tried something in the "this is my story, you should try doing these things and it will benefit you" category. Didn't care too much for that so probably won't return.

[Shadow]

I'm enjoying this.

Added Brave Story to my list.