Best of the Year – Books

 I’m taking a look back at what I’ve watched (the movies post went up on Monday) and read in 2016.   My total stands at 25 books this year.  As with the movies, this is less about being “The BEST of the Year” and more about stories that stayed with me after I closed the cover.

I am harder on books than I am on movies, it seems.  No book this year received a five-star rating.  As I look back, that seems a bit harsh.  But at the time I didn’t feel compelled to give even Hemingway’s “To Have and To Have Not” the top rating (it got a four).  In the end, it seems that the year was filled with a lot of good books but no great books.

That’s not a bad year’s reading under any circumstances.

So here are the books that really stayed with me. (links are provided to my reviews):

• The King In Yellow by Robert Chambers (1895) A bizarre and very creepy collection of vaguely related stories by Chambers.  The stories are uneven in quality but several of them, including the title story, have stayed with me.  If you enjoy Lovecraft, you’ll find something to enjoy here.
• Perfectly Broken By Robert Burke Warren (2016) The author’s debut novel gets off to a little bit of a meandering start, but it’s all setup for the final hundred pages which are as good as anything I’ve read this year.
• The Legends of Tivara series by J.C. Kang (2016) (Volume 1, 2, 3, 4) I honestly feel bad about putting Kang’s work mid-pack of my top five.  These were books I looked forward to all year long.  Great new fantasy series that I recommend.
• A Red Dotted Line by Simon Gervais (2016) – A carefully crafted, completely believable thriller written by a man who has actually served on the front lines.  For the fan of the “page-turner” novel, this one should be on your reading list.

Wish You Were Here by Stuart O’Nan (2002) – O’Nan is called “the best American novelist you’ve never heard of”.  That’s really sad.  Once again, he dives deep into the mundane, real-life details of life as a family and weaves a wonderful story out of it.  Add in that the story is set near Chautauqua, NY and I was pretty much hooked.  My connection with that beautiful part of the world goes back to the mid-70s, and my family’s goes back to the 1930s.  I’m not sure that I have ever felt more intimately “in place” for a story than this one.  Even if you’ve never been there, the story is a delight.  I would tip towards “Emily, Alone” as my favorite O’Nan novel, but this one is a solid representation of his work.