These aren’t books that came out in 2016, just books that I read for the first time in 2016. I’m not a reviewer, so it goes without saying that everything that follows is just my personal opinion. (My correct personal opinion.)
19. Preincarnate by Shaun Micallef
This book sounds like the kind of thing that would interest me – time travel, comedy, adventure – but I couldn’t have been less invested in the story. There were so many poorly explained time jumps and weirdly introduced characters that I barely knew what was going on for most of it. I skim-read the last third just to say I’d finished it.
18. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas feels like an experiment – ambitious and clever, but also, at times, almost unreadable. Mitchell wrote six completely different stories in six completely different styles and stitched them together with a lofty message about humanity. This would be great if all the stories were interesting on their own, but they weren’t. I really liked one, sort of liked another, disliked three of them and straight-up despised the last one. And hey, maybe I’m just an idiot, but that last one was written in an imagined future-dialect so thick it was almost impossible to understand, so I feel like I’m justified in hating that one.
17. Terms and Conditions by Robert Glancy
This book has a clever gimmick and a few laughs early on, but it soon petered out into something very predictable and two-dimensional. It fits neatly into the ‘straight white middle-class male goes through a book-long breakdown because his wife cheats on him, despite not being particularly faithful himself’ genre that I’ve read a lot of. Glancy didn’t bother to give the secondary characters any redeeming qualities, and the protagonist himself doesn’t have much depth. Also, at one point he references the Myers-Briggs type EFTP. That’s not a Myers-Briggs type. You can be an ENTP, an ESTP, an ENFP, or an ESFP, but you cannot be an EFTP. A quick Google search would have cleared that up for him, but clearly neither Glancy, nor any of the people editing this novel, cared enough to check. Funny that.
16. The Life and Loves of a He-Devil by Graham Norton
This is the only non-fiction book I read in 2016. I picked it up for two dollars at an Op Shop, and that’s about what it’s worth. It’s not bad. I always enjoy Graham Norton’s sense of humour, and he’s a solid writer. In his defence, I probably would have enjoyed it more if I shared his attachment to pop star divas, drinking, New York, and Ireland (each of which get their own chapters in the book). So, a frothy, enjoyable read that I’ll probably never think about again.
15. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
This book is quite a challenge at first, because it’s full of slang that Burgess invented to suit his imagined dystopian future. Eventually, though, you do start to figure out what he’s saying, and it’s actually quite cool to have essentially learnt a new language through context. (Unlike when a similar thing is done in Cloud Atlas, which I hated throughout.) However, upon reflection, the thing that stops me from loving this book is not its language, but its message: I simply don’t agree that free will is as important as Anthony Burgess seems to think it is. He treats his protagonist being put through a mind-altering procedure as a morally dangerous thing, but I honestly didn’t mind it. I hated the main character so much that I completely approved of his mind being altered to make him incapable of rape, murder and abuse. Also, I kind of hate that the final chapter (SPOILERS) implies that the rapes, murders and abuses he committed earlier on in the novel were youthful indiscretions that he grew out of with relative ease. Can’t get behind it. Sorry.
14. The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
I read three Agatha Christie books this year to fill in a blind spot. Murder at the Vicarage was the first book to introduce Miss Marple, but it’s told from the point of view of a priest whose vicarage the murder takes place in, and doesn’t feature much Miss Marple at all. That struck me as a waste, because Miss Marple is a really great character. Ultimately, I judge whodunits by their reveal at the end, and this one was only okay.
13. Nemesis by Agatha Christie
This is the last Agatha Christie book with Miss Marple in it, and the only one to follow her point of view the whole way through. The reveal at the end is pretty good.
12. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie
This one had the best ending, by far: There were a lot of potential suspects, I didn’t predict the reveal at all, and it all made perfect sense once revealed.
11. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
This writing in this book is truly amazing, and I enjoyed reading it, but once it was over I felt like something was missing. For me, the ending didn’t pack the punch that I know it did for other people. I felt like Darnielle could have gone deeper into the main character, and a few plotlines were dropped too soon. It’s a short book, so it wouldn’t have hurt to beef it up a bit more.
10. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
I wanted to love this book so much, but instead I only liked it. The ending is deeply unsatisfying because it’s not really an ending – it just stops because the narrator gets tired of talking. (The framing device is that the protagonist is telling his life story to a scribe). I understand that it’s the first book in a trilogy, but that’s no excuse – the first book in a series should still be satisfying on its own. The plot for this novel could be described as: “A teenage boy faces extraordinary hardship, but he gets through it because he’s the best at everything ever.” The protagonists’ main goal for most of the novel is getting enough money to not die, which is a realistic problem, but not the most riveting storyline to carry you through 650 pages. Having said all that, there is still some really great stuff in this book. The magic system is so meticulously thought out that I found myself momentarily forgetting it’s not a real thing. There’s some really nice thematic stuff about the effect that storytelling can have on a person’s identity. And the writing is, at times, truly excellent.
9. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
I liked this book, but a part of me will never be able to forgive it for being compared to Gone Girl, because Gone Girl is a freaking masterpiece, whereas Girl on the Train is merely a solid thriller. I didn’t see the reveal at the end coming, and towards the end it was a page-turner, so it gets points for plot and structure. However, the characters are fairly flat and unlikeable, and the writing is nothing special.
8. This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
This book goes along with Terms and Conditions in the ‘straight white middle-class male goes through a book-long breakdown because his wife cheats on him, despite not being particularly faithful himself’ genre. The reason this novel is so much higher on my list than Terms and Conditions is because it’s executed so much better. There are still some flaws, for sure. The narrator seems incapable of describing a female character without going into too much detail about her body (yes, this includes his family members), and the plot is a little meandering. However, it is genuinely hilarious and occasionally profound.
7. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by John Tiffany and Jack Thorne
I’m a huge Potter fan, so I was very excited for this play. I really enjoyed it as I was reading it, but the more I’ve thought about it since, the less I’ve liked it. The main problem is that (SPOILERS) it completely abandons the time travel logic set up in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Prisoner of Azkaban makes it very clear that, in the Potter universe, the past cannot be changed with time travel because the past has already happened, therefore when you go back in time you have already succeeded or failed in your mission. I really appreciated that about Prisoner of Azkaban, because inconsistency in time travel is one of my storytelling pet peeves. Then Cursed Child comes along and shoots that logic in the face. Ugh. (END OF SPOILERS) There were a few times when the dialogue was more sentimental than it ever was in the original series, so I was very aware of the fact that J.K. Rowling didn’t write it. However, there was some good character development for adult-Harry, adult-Hermione was spot-on and Scorpius was a great new character.
6. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
This is a very long, extremely depressing book, and it’s probably a masterpiece despite being deeply imperfect. The writing is fantastic, to the point where it can be genuinely uncomfortable to read, as though you’re being forced to imagine awful, horrible things in incredibly vivid, HD technicolour. The plot is slow and boring at first, but it picks up about halfway through and proceeds to be one of the greatest books I’ve ever read for about 250 pages, then slows down and becomes less interesting again at the end. I can’t remember the last time I cried this hard because of a book. In fact, I may never have cried this hard because of a book before. It was cathartic. It was like cheap therapy. I can’t even remember a specific moment that made me cry, because I was crying consistently on and off for about fifty pages. The main problems are in the structure, because sometimes the POV is ambiguous, she spends a lot of time setting up characters who end up being unimportant, and I suspect it could be about a hundred pages shorter without losing any of its power.
By the way, this thing needs ALL the trigger warnings. Proceed with care.
5. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
I love me some Gillian Flynn. In this novel she uses multiple POVs to great effect, because she’ll drop a tiny detail into one POV that ends up having great significance in another POV. I like that the main character’s whole motivation for trying to track down whoever killed her family is that she’s avoiding getting an actual job. Brilliant. The writing is, as always, excellent, because it’s Gillian Flynn. I have a few problems with the ending, but I won’t go into them because of spoilers.
4. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
This one outranks the previous Gillian Flynn because I preferred the ending, but I didn’t like the main character quite as much. The story keeps trying to assert that she’s very strong-willed and difficult to control, but we don’t see much evidence of that in the story. Regardless, I loved it because it has that dark, creepy, twisted quality that Gillian Flynn is known for, and I wasn’t able to put it down.
3. Double Fault by Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver is one of my favourite authors because she’s smart as a whip and unflinching in the face of humanity’s capacity for ugliness, and this book is no exception. It’s all about a woman who defines herself so completely by one career goal (being a professional tennis player) that when it starts to fall apart, she goes into a downward spiral that threatens to destroy not only her career but her marriage as well. It is often infuriating to read, because the protagonist’s problems are largely a result of her own petty stubbornness, but it also feels very real, and I must confess I can relate to her more than I would like. I like this book even more every time I think about it, but be warned: This is not a book to read for escapism or warm fuzzy feelings.
2. The Martian by Andy Weir
This is the geekiest, most scientifically technical book I’ve ever read, but funnily enough, it also made me feel great about humanity. The characters are intelligent, resilient, selfless and full of humour, and the story shows that those traits can be enough to overcome insurmountable odds and save the day. It sounds trite when I lay it out like that, but it’s done in such an honest, earned way that it really works. The level of scientific detail makes it feel incredibly plausible, even though I didn’t understand half of it. It would have been nice to get some more backstory and character development, but you know what? That’s not what this book was about, and that’s okay sometimes.
1. Room by Emma Donoghue
This book drew me into the mind of its five-year old protagonist so well that even after I put the book down I found myself thinking like Jack would. The suspenseful scenes were some of the most nervous I have ever been for characters while reading a book. At times it was terrifying and tragic, but more than anything it’s a beautiful, heart-warming, nuanced picture of a mother/son bond, of childhood and of perception. I honestly can’t think of a criticism of it, and that’s why it’s my favourite book of 2016.