Towards the end of the year, just like everyone and their dog I decided to look back at what I read this year. What I liked, what didn’t go that well, the treasures I was happy to find. Here’s my subjective list ob the best and the worst.
7 besties in random order:
We Have Always Lived in a Castle – Shirley Jackson (r)
The Children Act – Ian McEwan (r)
The Shore – Sara Taylor (r)
Beloved – Toni Morrison (r)
Hot Milk -Deborah Levy (r)
The Casual Vacancy – J. K. Rowling (r)
Solar Bones – Mike McCormack (r)
3 awfulies, don’t get anywhere near those! I think I have one more Elkins book somewhere on my kindle, I’ll probably read it just to see if it’s as bad as the other two:
Alone (The Girl in the Box #1) – Robert J. Crane
A Cruise to Die For – Charlotte and Aaron Elkins
The Art Whisperer – Charlotte Elkins, Aaron Elkins
3 best non-fiction. I read a lot more of non-fiction this year than usually, other bloggers encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone, I’m very grateful for that:
Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World – Mark Miodownik (r)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson (r)
Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through a Country’s Hidden Past – Giles Tremlett (r)
1 best find of the year. I’m very happy to read my first Kazuo Ishiguro, looking forward to reading his other books:
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (r)
Please share your best reads of 2016 in the comments!
I’m travelling home this week, so there is a chance that with all the Christmas preparations and catching -up with people I won’t have time to blog until 2017, if it comes to this I want to wish you all lovely and peaceful Christmas and crazy and fun New Years Eve!
Photo by Violetta Kaszubowska
bookskeptic.com 
Remains of the Day is so good! I’m still pondering my year end list but probably number one will be Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing.
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Hot Milk will make my Best of 2016 list as well – truly a book I can’t stop thinking about and one that deserves a re-read.
I also really enjoyed The Children Act but it was outdone by Nutshell for me (yes, two McEwan’s in one year!). Nutshell was mad but a fabulously original story.
I don’t normally post a list of my worst reads of the year although might have to break that rule because Kathleen Spivak’s Unspeakable Things still haunts me!
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I blogged about my best of on January 1 so I won’t repeat that here. I was glad it was 60/40 fiction/ non-fiction like my actual reading. George Eliot and Virginia Woolf both featured, and it was a good reading year on balance. I don’t list worst ofs but I had a few run-ins with Did Not Finishes through the year …
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