Inspired by Elisa Gabbert (but lazier), I decided to make just one year-end reading list and blog that. Overall, this year was just an ok one reading-wise, a lovely one personally, and a total dumpster-fire in the world at large. I read less than I intended to, and wasted more time than I should have online thanks to my enemies, Twitter and my NYTimes subscription. I read a lot of chapters for research, without finishing the books that contained them. I read fewer mysteries than I usually do, but I read some science fiction, I think for the first time in my life? Somehow I read almost no non-fiction (???). This is what I read all the way through:
1-The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
2-My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
3-Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
4-The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (my favorite)
5-The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante (but really, this was also my favorite) (I love Ferrante now, take your trash opinion and shove it, Ana from last year)
6-A Room With a View by EM Forster
7-Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
8-Gilgamesh
9-The Tongue of Adam by Abdelfattah Kilito
10-The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
11-Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill (how could I have forgotten this was my absolute favorite?)
12, 13-The Hangman’s Daughter and The Dark Monk by Oliver Pötzsch
14, 15, 16-Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
17-Dogs of God by James Reston
18-Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (no, this was my favorite)
19-Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
20-A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab (I have to say, this was a big thumbs down from me and I was surprised)
21, 22-The Golem's Eye and Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud
23-The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
24-Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
25-Nude by Naeem Murr
26-Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
27-Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (also my favorite)
28-Dawn: Xenogenesis by Octavia Butler
29-El Entenado by Juan José Saer
30-The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
31-The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman
32-Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey (ok, I've settled on this one as my favorite)
33-The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff
34-Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (ok, I lied, this one is my favorite)
35, 36-I reread The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman
37-The Ada Decades (this was written by my writing group buddy Paula Martinac, and it is great and you should buy it)
38-The Art Forger by BA Shapiro
39-We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays by Samantha Irby (but really this was my favorite)
40-Made for Love by Alissa Nutting
Small victory: I read a book in Spanish for the first time in 15 years. Next year: another book in Spanish...give me a break, I have the vocab of a 14 year old, this is all I can manage.
I love short novels the most. Sorry.
Next year I want to read A Heart So White, The Argonauts, something by Bolaño in Spanish, Black Wings Has My Angel, something by Forster, something by Wharton, something by Maugham, that Gabe Habash book I keep eyeing, and that Barbara Comyns book I have been sitting on for months. The end, amen.