2016 Wrap-Up

I read 52 books in 2016, which is not as many as I read last year or the year before, but that’s OK. The break-down:

Picture books for kids/middle-grade books/YA: 15. Highlights included Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, which was gripping and made me cry; several of Luke Pearson’s charming “Hilda” books, and Brian Selznick’s beautiful Wonderstruck. I also listened to my first-ever audiobook, which was How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, narrated by David Tennant. I continued pleasantly working my way through Lois Lowry’s “Anastasia” books with Anastasia Has the Answers and am looking forward to the next in the series.

Fiction (for grown-ups): 21. I unexpectedly loved Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth, a werewolf novel in verse. I had way more fun with Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age than I thought I would. I loved Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor even though alien-arrival stories are not normally exciting to me. I quite enjoyed re-reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, especially because I was in England for part of it and it felt really apt. And I finished the year really strongly with the delicious writing of Danielle Dutton’s Margaret the First and the unputdownable Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple and The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas.

Non-fiction: 16, including autobiographical comics. Hyperbole and a Half was as amazing and funny as I expected it to be. I liked the essays in Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City and Teju Cole’s Known and Strange Things, differently. And I had lots of fun with Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, not just because of the interactive/text-messaging element, though that was pretty neat.

I did about half of the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, and am undecided as to whether I want to try the 2017 one or not particularly: I like the idea of these challenges, but I also like reading without a plan.