2016 in Review

It has been a busy year for me, but I also did quite a bit of traveling, so I did get to listen to plenty of books. I was not good at keeping up with my blog this year, so there will be some I will try to add after this, and some I will just have missed.

Seems like many of my favorite authors had come out with books recently so I read Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, Annie Proulx’s Barkskins, Isabel Allende’s Japanese Lover, Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard, and Geraldine Brooks’ The Secret Chord.

I seemed to inadvertently hit a World War Two theme this year, starting with Ken Follet’s massive Winter of the World, which I followed by Hannah’s Nightingale, that seemed to fill in gaps or continue in depth the story of French resistance, which I also glimpsed in All the Light We Cannot See last year. The Aviator’s Wife about Charles Lindbergh’s wife took us through WWII also, when they were very unpopular. One of the Massie Dobbs book also covered this era and Philip Dick took me to an alternate history where Germany and Japan had won the war in The Man in the High Castle.

I discovered two new mystery series that I really loved. Kelly Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series set in Australia in the 1920’s is a delight and quite addictive. Every one is based on some historical fact. I think I’ve now read everything they have at the audio store, I may need to get the rest in print. The other was Louise Penney’s Gamache series. He is the chief inspector of murders for Quebec, but he keeps being diverted to this small town of Three Pines. These are slow, lazy stories where we get to know the people involved. I continued to read Baldacci and Silva.

I decided on giving up on the too dark and evil mysteries by some of the Scandinavians, but Fredrik Backman came out with another heartwarming tale of humanity in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry.

I did try to do some classic reading, my oldest books was Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)– wow has how language changed. I remember reading the Scarlet Pimpernel as a Reader’s Digest Condensed book as a child and always felt good that I got references to it, but it was time to reread this 1905 book in its entirety. I read PD Wodehouse’s The Mating Season, as I had never read any of the Jeeves stories. And the Philip Dick book was from 1962 – not ancient history, but still not contemporary.

I got around to some non fiction too, my favorite being Gilbert’s Big Magic on creativity, but Michael Kinsley’s Old Age: A Beginner's Guide was valuable too.