I Read or Listened to 36 Books in 2016: The Best and the Rest

Posted on by David Evans

Over the course of this year, I consumed three dozen books in an array of formats – audio, ebook, print, or a mix. As with my movies, my rating is as follows: 1 = bad; 2 = okay; 3 = good; 4 = great; 5 = wow!

Standout titles were Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing in fiction and James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History in nonfiction. I managed to write short reviews for 27 of the books. In those cases, I include the link next to the title.

What were your favorite books of the year?

Title Author Rating Format
Fiction
Homegoing (review) Yaa Gyasi 4.5 Audio+Ebook
Le Petit Prince (review) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 4.5 Audio+Print
Blackass (review) A. Igoni Barrett 4.5 Print
Confession of the Lioness (review) Mia Couto (translated by David Brookshaw) 4 Audio
Tram 83 (review) Fiston Mwanza Mujila 4 Ebook
The Secret Chord (review) Geraldine Brooks 4 Audio
The Hobbit JRR Tolkien 4 Print
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (review) Gabrielle Zevin 4 Ebook
American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition Neil Gaiman 4 Audio
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (review) Junot Diaz 4 Audio
Claire of the Sea Light Edwidge Danticat 3.5 Audio+Ebook
All the Light We Cannot See (review) Anthony Doerr 3.5 Audio
Slade House (review) David Mitchell 3.5 Audio
School Days (review) Robert Parker 3.5 Print
Holy Cow (review) David Duchovny 3.5 Audio
The Fishermen (review) Chigozie Obiama 3 Audio
The Vegetarian Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith) 3 Audio
Purity (review) Jonathan Franzen 3 Audio
A Career of Evil (review) Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) 3 Audio
The Lazarus Effect (review) HJ Golakai 3 Ebook
War of the Worlds (review) HG Wells 3 Audio
The Last Battle CS Lewis 3 Audio
The Kraken Wakes (review) John Wyndham 2.5 Ebook
Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist (review) Sunil Yapa 2 Audio
Dark Places (review) Gillian Flynn 2 Audio
 Non-fiction 
Time Travel: A History (review) James Gleick 4.5 Audio
Mormon Jesus: A Biography (review) John Turner 4.5 Ebook
Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (review) Paul Tough 4 Audio
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Matthew Desmond 4 Audio
Teach Like A Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College Doug Lemov 4 Audio
$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (review) Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer 4 Audio
The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Men and Women (review) Carol Lynn Pearson 4 Print
You Will Not Have My Hate Antoine Leris 3.5 Audio
Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Pasi Sahlberg 3 Audio
A Book of Mormons: Latter-day Saints on a Modern-Day Zion (review) Edited by Jensen & McKay-Lamb 3 Print
Empire of Cotton: A Global History (review) Sven Beckert 2.5 Audio

 

Published by David Evans

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