#also i dunno if you guys fell for this (kristen did) but

[charoshane]

My Favorite Books of 2016

I read well over 100 books this year which I say not to brag (although, obviously, to brag a little) but to provide some perspective about the size of my field for consideration and to explain why there are so many titles. Most of these weren’t published in 2016 so you’re not going to see the same 10-15 that kept showing up on all the usual year-end lists. You’re welcome! Here we go:

THE UNFORGETTABLE 

Zippermouth by Laurie Weeks — Sweet, funny, propulsive. I adored it. 

Dark Pool Party by Hannah Black — No one’s brain works like hers.

Eros The Bittersweet by Anne Carson — Also read this year, and recommended, of course: Antigonick, Decreation, and Float, which I reviewed for The New Republic

Straw Dogs by John Gray — Invigorating and smart, albeit peppered with extreme declarations supported by little to no evidence. You have to be willing to put up with a voice that assumes complete authority without always earning it, i.e., a man’s. 

White Out by Michael W. Clune— If you were going to read only one book on this entire list, I’d probably urge you to make it this one. And I know, I know, he is a man, and I just took that dig at men! But truly, this is a masterpiece, and you know it has to be exceptional to override my reverse sexism. Hilarious, vivid, insightful, insert additional superlative here and additional superlative here and then just go read it.  (Gamelife, his subsequent book, is also very good, but it’s hard to write something perfect twice in a row. That’s more Anne Carson’s domain.)

10:04 by Ben Lerner — What can I say? Ben Lerner is a genius, this book is genius, 2016 was the year I could not deny that men actually wrote some things worth reading. I continue to almost shudder in admiration every time I think about this title. 

The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner — I thought about its ideas a lot, and referenced it in the Float review linked above. Pick 10:04 over this if you’re only doing one, maybe, or start with this one instead because it’s short and direct (?)

The Gift by Barbara Browning — God bless @ruthcurry for giving me this book on election night. It was the only thing I could read over the following two days: gentle, loving, wise. I am so grateful to have had this book when I did. It has shades of 10:04, which I say just to compliment them both, not to imply it’s derivative. It doesn’t come out until spring of this year, but please give yourself the gift of reading it ASAP. (See what I did there?) 

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson — I put off reading this for years—can you guess why—but once I started I could not stop. I usually went back and reread the stories that had come before, before I progressed to the next. Good albums are like that too; too arresting for you to get very far into them right away, because you keep replaying the opening track(s).

All The Lives I Want by Alana Massey — It’s no secret that I’m friends with this little dynamo and I understand why you'd be liberally salting this recommendation as a result. But I’d never recommend a book I didn’t think was worth reading. Life is too short to pretend bad things are good, even if the maker of that bad thing is my friend. I just can’t do it! So believe me when I say that although I already respected Alana’s daunting ability to turn a phrase, I was so impressed with this book. It’s relentlessly intelligent, and mischievous, full of verve and focus and conviction. It made me want to write, which is the highest compliment I can give. 

Loving Sabotage by Amélie Nothomb — I’d never heard of Amélie Nothomb until I came across this recommendation from @magicmolly but now I think I’ve read everything of her’s that’s available in English. (Loving Sabotage is the best but there are striking passages in all the others, too.)

The Vet’s Daughter and Our Spoons Came From Woolworth’s by Barbara Comyns —  They’re both surprising horror stories told by unsentimental but vulnerable female narrators. I loved them very much. 

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle — I picked this up a few times as a kid but I couldn’t find any sex in it, so I didn't bother giving it a proper read. Now that I have, I can say it is exceptional: delicate, lyrical, original. I cried, and then I cried again. I know it’s about a unicorn, but fuck you.  

Other books I recommend without reservation:

Private Citizens by Tony Tulathimutte 

The Man in the Ceiling by Jules Feiffer (I cried!)

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble (Truly the year I fell in love with British female novelists.)

Drawing Blood by Molly Crabapple (generous, beautiful, singular)

Problems by Jade Sharma

D.V. by Diana Vreeland

I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris by Elizabeth Hall

Little Labors by Rivka Galchen (Good enough to inspire me to read her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, which I’m glad to have read but perhaps should have been a short story instead of an entire book.)

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick (When I’m reading Hardwick, I am amazed by her, but her writing also tends to leave my brain immediately, like it’s a dissipating smoke.)

Orgasmic Bodies by Hannah Frith (Academic but not too dense, and packed with important ideas)

Intimacies by Adam Phillips and Leo Bernsani (another academic one, but all about anal sex. [Ok, not only anal.]) 

The Lost Daughter by (duh!) Elena Ferrante, whom I wrote about a little here, much to a certain Freddie DB’s disapproval  

Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nunez

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson (Recommended to me ages ago by Mallory Ortberg so you know it’s good.)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (Related: I read Memento Mori and sort of hated it!) 

The Selfishness of Others by Kristen Dombek 

The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick (+ The End of the Novel of Love)

Investing Sex: Surrealist Discussions (I dunno, it’s kind of stupid because it’s mostly a bunch of young straight guys sitting around talking about women’s orgasms like the complete jackasses they are, but it’s also fun and reminded me of things I forget too often, like how fundamentally boring sex can be.)

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (bizarre, assured, unsettling. I was dying to talk about it with someone during and after I read it but that loneliness is what I get for reading everything at the wrong time. And for having no friends.) 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (HAUNTING. So haunting.)

The Bitch in the House (It’s rare for anthologies to be good, I think, because they invite such a compromise on quality of writing . But this one is!)

The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner (Also, A Girl’s Life and Other Stories, which is a rehash of a lot of what’s in Diary but I liked it anyway. You have to be prepared for true teenage diary writing though. Gloeckner has stresses it’s fiction but she also includes excerpts at the end from her real diary as a kid, and they appear almost verbatim in the book. It’s self-involved and repetitive and tedious in places—like diaries are supposed to be!—but I still found it worthwhile. )

Diary of an Emotional Idiot by Maggie Estep (And/or Soft Maniacs by the same.)

And obviously I loved everything @tigerbeepress released this year. I have a particular soft spot for my collaboration with @merrittk, and for Bad Drawings, which turned out more perfect than I could have imagined. 

#Han Kang #Ben Lerner #Anne Carson #Tigerbee #tigerbee press #Alexandra Kleeman #vivian gornick #maggie estep #elena ferrante