2016: The Year in Books

I'm on holiday. I AM ON HOLIDAY! <cue Kermit flailing> 
Until January 9. But I don't feel like I'm on holiday yet--it's still sinking in. I know the end of it will be here too quickly, so I am going to try to enjoy it, to forget about work and stress and *stuff*. I plan to travel, eat, drink, sew, and READ. And on that topic, here is what I read (so far) in 2016:

• Diary of a Witchcraft Shop by Trevor Jones and Liz Williams
• Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand (a re-read because I assigned it to my students)
• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (also a re-read, and then I loaned it out, and now I can't figure out who has it. And I've got the 2 other books in the trilogy...still unread.)
• Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock (another re-read)
• Viper Wine (another re-read because I assigned it, but I had wanted to read it again because I felt very WTF after the first read. I love it even more now.)
• Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (ditto on re-read)
• The Three by Sarah Lotz (ditto ditto)
• The Girl with All the Gifts by Mike Carey (I love his Felix Castor novels, and I loved this, too.)
• The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce (I found this very meh and not ghostie enough.)
• Pure by Andrew Miller (I found this in the charity shop and loved the cover, so bought it and another by him; it was excellent, but the second book is still on the shelf.)
• Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin (a book on breaking bad habits and re-programming yourself to take up good ones) (and on that note, I also read most of Productivity Ninja)
• I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron (I wish she was still around to make more great films)
• Nod by Adrian Barnes (really cool book about the end of the world happening because people suddenly cannot sleep)
• What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund
• All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (loved this)
• Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear (totally loved this--it was worth the wait for me to finally pony up the bucks on Kindle)
• Uprooted by Naomi Novik (I liked this much more than I expected to--it surprised me)
• Eliza Rose by Lucy Worsley (I love LW on telley, and this was a fun historical fiction for the YA set)
• The Painter by Will Davenport (odd book I picked up in the charity shop about 'what if Rembrandt had been in England and painted a portrait'? with two parallel stories: a historic and a contemporary. It was okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of the modern half of the story.)
• Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (this took me 2 tries because the first copy I had was messed up with 50 pages reprinted inside; I found another copy at the charity shop and really enjoyed revisiting this character from The Shining.)
• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natahsa Pulley (I might need to re-read this. I got to the end and felt like I had missed a really vital sentence somewhere that would have helped the whole thing gel in my mind. I really enjoyed it, but, like with the first read of Viper Wine, I don't know if I got it.)
• Astray by Emma Donoghue (collection of wonderful stories inspired by true bits of history)
• Borderline by Mishell Baker (one of my Clarion peeps wrote this, and it is wonderful. I can't wait for the next book with this protagonist.)
• Gardener to the King by Frederic Richard (lovely little novel translated from the French about Louis XIV's gardener)
• Lock In by John Scalzi
• My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix (by another of my Clarion peeps--I totally loved this and didn't expect it to make me tear up at the end!)
• The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
• The Fireman by Joe Hill (so good--I do love pandemics!)
• Immoveable Feast by John Baxter (I got on a non-fiction kick about food and France)
• Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny
• Restoration by Rose Tremain (I have wanted to read this for years and finally came across a copy at the charity shop--I'm in the middle of the sequel now)
• The Most Beautiful Walk in the World by John Baxter
• Ghostwritten by David Mitchell (my first Mitchell read, and it won't be my last)
• The Perfect Meal by John Baxter (I told you I went on a Baxter kick)
• The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge (my first Hardinge read, and definitely not my last!)

That makes 37 books. By no means a record for me, but it was a busy year. Next year the plan is to read 52--it's a nice match, books to weeks. I have a research project that will require wide reading of post-apocalyptic books (some re-reads), so that will help with the numbers!