What I Read in 2016
Round about this time of year I usually post a list of all the books I read in the previous year, along with some fairly bland comments on what I liked and (if I’m feeling particularly brave) what I didn’t like. So here we go.
I only read 60 books this year, down from 70 last year, which was in turn a steep drop from the dizzy heights of 95 in 2014. I’m not entirely sure what to blame for this – possibly the stint I did as a first stage judge for the Bath Short Story Award, or possibly my involvement in the quixotic poetry venture Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis (now deceased, or at least in indefinite hibernation). Either way, I’m intending to read more in 2017, and I’ve joined Vanessa Gebbie’s Read 100 Books in 2017 Facebook Group in order to force myself to get a move on.
One interesting revelation I did have this year was that reading bad books is just as useful for a writer as reading good ones. Because reading a bad book forces you to think about why it’s so bad. What would you do to fix it? Are you making the same mistakes in your own work?
Here are those 60 books. Some of them were bought new, some of them were sent to me by publishers, one of them was borrowed, some of them had already been bought by members of my family and quite a few were random acquisitions from charity shops (which I always try to follow up by making a proper purchase – if I like the author, of course). Embarrassingly, despite the fact that I bought several books of poetry, I only got round to reading one of them. Must do better than that this year. I’ve also realised that there are only four books in the list by non-white authors, which is something else I need to work at.
Aaronovitch, Ben
Rivers of London
Ali, Monica
Alentejo Blue
Barbery, Muriel
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Barley, Nigel
Island of Demons
Bath Short Story Award
Anthology, 2015
Bath Short Story Award
Anthology, 2016
Beadle, Jeremy J.
Will Pop Eat Itself?
Blandford, Richard
Flying Saucer Rock and Roll
Bowman, WE
The Ascent of Rum Doodle
Brayfield, Celia
Sunset
Bridport Prize
Anthology, 2015
Bryson, Bill
The Road to Little Dribbling
Cartwright, Netta
The Many Lives of Zillah Smith
Chabon, Michael
Wonder Boys
Coe, Jonathan
The Closed Circle
Cope, Julian
Japrocksampler
Cox, Tom
The Lost Tribes of Pop
Davis, Lindsey
The Silver Pigs
Davis, Lindsey
Shadows in Bronze
deWitt, Patrick
Ablutions
deWitt, Patrick
Undermajordomo Minor
Ellis, Brett Easton
American Psycho
Frayn, Michael
Towards the End of the Morning
Freud, Esther
Hideous Kinky
Fuller, Claire
Our Endless Numbered Days
Gayle, Mike
My Legendary Girlfriend
Gordy, Berry
To Be Loved: An Autobiography
Hadley, Tessa
The Past
Haruf, Kent
Plainsong
Haruf, Kent
Eventide
Hawes, James
A White Merc With Fins
Hawes, James
Rancid Aluminium
Hensher, Philip
King of the Badgers
Hershman, Tania
Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open
Johncock, Ben
The Last Pilot
Knausgaard, Karl Ove
A Death in the Family
Lambert, Charles
The Children’s Home
Lewycka, Marina
We Are All Made of Glue
Logan, Kirsty
A Portable Shelter
Logan, Kirsty
The Gracekeepers
Mars-Jones, Adam
Lantern Lecture
Mayhew, Becky
Lost Souls
McEwan, Ian
On Chesil Beach
Munro, Alice
The Love of a Good Woman
Perry, Grayson
Playing to the Gallery
Perry, Sarah
After Me Comes the Flood
Porter, Max
Grief is the Thing with Feathers
Powell, Gareth
Macaque Attack
Pryce, Malcolm
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth
Rao, Mahesh
One Point Two Billion
Ronson, Jon
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Shukman, Henry
Travels With My Trombone
Stickley, Joel and Wright, Luke
Who Writes This Crap?
Stickley, Joel
100 Ways to Write Badly Well
Stokes, Ashley (Ed)
The End
Townsend, Sue
Number Ten
Vigen, Tyler
Spurious Correlations
Ware, Chris
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
Welsh, Irvine
Trainspotting
Williams, John
Stoner
This year’s big discoveries (for me, obviously) were Alice Munro and Kent Haruf – both very low-key and unfussy writers who seem to be able to bring out some real truths about their flawed but realistic characters. Will be reading more of them in 2017. I also thoroughly enjoyed James Hawes’s first novel “A White Merc with Fins”, but the follow-up, “Rancid Aluminium” turned out to be a bit of a mess. (The film of it is supposed to be one of the worst British films of all time, incidentally, and I quite fancy watching it some time.)
Biggest disappointment was probably Stoner, which everyone was raving about a few years back. No idea what the fuss was about, although the fact that the protagonist is a creative writing lecturer may have had something to do with it, I guess.
Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” was a non-fiction highlight, and I also found Berry Gordy’s autobiography fascinating. My cousin-in-law Netta Cartwright’s “The Many Lives of Zillah Smith” was a fascinating insight into a totally different (and often-maligned) way of life.
Claire Fuller’s “Our Endless Numbered Days” was probably the best debut I read, and I’m looking forward to her next. I also thoroughly enjoyed Mahesh Rao’s “One Point Two Billion” (not technically a fiction debut, I guess, but it was his first collection of short stories).
I continued with Malcolm Pryce’s excellent Aberystwyth series, and I also got going on Ben Aaronovitch and Lindsey Davis (both form favourites of other members of the Pinnock household) – I’ll definitely be working my way through more of those in 2017. And I also got stuck into Karl Ove Knausgaard (the second one in the “My Struggle” series, “A Man in Love”, was the first book I finished this year). The premise for “My Struggle” isn’t enticing – basically a disagreeable Norwegian bloke describing his life in microscopic detail – but it’s oddly compelling and I can see why he’s such a cult figure.
The book I probably enjoyed the most this year was Patrick deWitt’s Undermajordomo Minor – a weird fable with Freudian undertones that really should have got more attention. And my favourite short story of the year was Anne O’Brien’s winning story from the Bath Short Story Award, “Feather Your Nest”. I actually picked this one out myself during the first stage reading process, so it was good to see it go all the way to the top.
Drop me a line below if you see anything in the list you’d like to talk about, or if you’d like to suggest something I really ought to be reading this year.
