This year’s list of books

It is that time of year when anybody may be forgiven for making a list. So bear with me and share with me 2016 in books.

The older I get, the more likely I am not to finish a book I’m not enjoying. This means that most of the books I do finish, I can generally recommend. This year’s big disappointment was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, a Man Booker Prize winner. I struggled to get into the book, then got caught up around page 80, but finally gave up some fifty pages further on.

Here is my final list, with the really outstanding books marked with five stars.
 

1. Guy Deutscher – The Unfolding of Language
2. Deborah Steinmair & Gerda Taljaard (ed.) – Skrik op die lyf
3. Patricia Ferguson – Peripheral Vision
4. Enrique Joven – The Book of God and Physics
5. Anne Enright – The Gathering
6. Dylan Thomas – Under Milkwood
7. Gregory McGuire – Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
8. Kerry Greenwood – A Question of Death
9. Karen Hitchcock – Little White Slips
10. Charles Barber – The English Language
11. Joyce Carol Oates – Give Me Your Heart
12. Kati Woronka – Mourning Sham
13. Ian McEwan – Atonement *****
14. Amity Gaige – The Folded World
15. Margaret Atwood – Stone Mattress *****
16. Rae Litting – The Kidnap of Alice McGilvray
17. Emma Donoghue – Astray
18. John Lennox – Gunning for God
19. Ashley Hay – The Body in the Clouds
20. Garrison Keillor – Pontoon
21. Geraldine Brooks – The Secret Chord
22. Graeme Simsion – The Rosie Project
23. Paulo Coelho – The Witch of Portobello
24. Stephan Prothero – God is Not One
25. Johnathan Moore – Inigo
26. Wayne Jacobsen & Dave Coleman – So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore
27. Elizabeth Harrower – The Watch Tower *****
28. Vicki Hastrich – The Great Arch
29. Thor Heyerdahl – The Kontiki Expedition
30. Henry Handel Richardson – The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
31. Alexander McCall Smith – The Careful Giving of Compliments
32. Jassy McKenzie – Pale Horses
33. Eugene O’Kelly – Chasing Daylight
34. Terry Pratchett – A Blink of the Screen
35. Richard Beard – Lazarus is Dead
36. Haruki Murakami – The Elephant Vanishes
37. Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale *****
38. Peter Monteath (ed.) – The Diary of Emily Caroline Creaghe
39. Ian McEwan – Nutshell *****
40. Tracy Chevalier – Remarkable Creatures
41. Carmel Bird – Child of the Twilight
42. Jill Bolte Taylor – My Stroke of Insight
43. Paul Bugeja – Outback Women’s Stories
44. Téa Obreht – The Tiger’s Wife *****
45. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt – The Woman with the Bouquet
46. Toni Morrison – A Mercy *****
47. Joyce Carol Oates – Mudwoman
48. Thomas Moore – Care of the Soul
49. Jon Doust – Boy on a Wire
50. Kent Haruf – Plainsong

 
My vote for Book of the Year? Probably Ian McEwan’s Nutshell, with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale a good second.
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Have a great new year and happy reading!