My Year in Books, 2016

Inspired by Alex Watson’s Year in Books, here’s mine.

1. Charmed Particles, by Chrissy Kolaya. Two families in Illinois have their values challenged when the main employer, a physics lab, wants to build a giant supercollider under the town, impacting the academic prospects of one character and the political future of another. Intriguing characters in a gentle but satisfying story.
2. The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz, which I was inspired to dig out and read by this list from Simon Cross. Managing technology companies, with particular emphasis on scaling start-ups. Didn’t make me want to be a CEO.
3. The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell. Got it half price in a Buy One, Get One Half Price deal at Waterstones and found it much harder going than the book I actually wanted (The Martian, which I read in 2015). It comprises six episodes set in 1984, 1991, 2004, 2015, 2025 and 2043, loosely connected by recurring characters and a battle for our non-immortal souls on an Escher-inspired staircase-y astral plane. When I finally got to the end, I agreed with the American reviews more than the British ones. The fantasy elements didn’t quite make me want to “vomit with dizziness”, but every time something weird happened, there was a voice in my head going, ‘Ooh, clue.’
4. Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov. Struggling writer Viktor Zolotaryov lives in Kiev with Misha, a penguin adopted from the zoo. Viktor gets a job preparing obituaries (‘obelisks’) for the local newspaper, but realises there’s more going on when his subjects start dying. Surreal, darkly humorous, different.
5. Lonely Planet New England (Kindle), because we’re going to Boston in the summer. I hate reading travel books, but since I’m supposed to be slogging through this, I’m not letting myself start anything new… which means I’m rereading whatever comes to hand when places, places to visit, places to stay and places to eat is JUST TOO MUCH PLACES.
6. Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais. Elvis Cole is a private detective; his best friend Joe Pike is an ex-Marine, an ex-policeman, a sometime mercenary and an somewhat sociopathic business partner. I’ve read all the Cole and Pike books and picked this one out as a quick break from the travel guide (see above). Not the best in the series, though.
7. A Breach of Security, by Susan Hill (Kindle). A novella in the Simon Serrailler series, and another deviation from the New England travel guide (I like going on holiday, I just don’t like all the faffing around beforehand). I liked the earlier Serrailler books, but his recent adventures haven’t seemed credible for a cop from a smallish town.
8. Indigo Slam, by Robert Crais (Kindle). Another reread while pretending I have good intentions to complete the travel guide. This is the seventh in the series — the characters are well established, but he’s still building up to the two standout titles (LA Requiem and The Last Detective).
9. This New Noise, by Charlotte Higgens. If I’m not going to read the travel guide, I might as well read something new. Beyond the complete novelty of reading about women (women!) managing departments and having ideas in the late 1920s and early 1950s, this is a pleasant amble through the history and evolution of the BBC, mostly focusing on its mission and management culture. It was written alongside a series of long essays for The Guardian and reads more as a collection than as a single work.
10. Notes from an Exhibition, by Patrick Gale. Weaving together art, family, faith, mental illness and death, this could easily be depressing, but Gale’s gentle empathy creates believable, forgivable, very human characters.
11. The Martian, by Andy Weir. Reread this after watching the film while ill. The book is longer and more detailed, but the film is largely true to the spirit and plot of Weir’s novel.
12. The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen (Kindle). Free from Amazon on the back of some other purchase. I don’t know whether this tale of American family life, culminating with One Last Christmas, is supposed to be darkly comic or just depressing, but I gave up at the 50% mark when the talking turd appeared. Yes, there’s a turd that speaks. I don’t know what it signifies, because I stopped reading.
13. The Curious Journalist’s Guide to Data, by Jonathan Stray (e-book). Free e-book about collecting, analysing and visualising data in news reporting and feature writing. Particularly strong on the relative impact of quantitative data and illustrative examples.
14. The Worm Forgives the Plough, by John Stewart Collis. An actual book, from one of my favourite actual bookshops, in which there are two types of ‘artificial manure’, superphosphate and potash, that do not speak (see no. 12). Collis was an academic who wrote biographies in the ’20s and ’30s, then spent the Second World War working on farms and clearing out a wood as part of the Land Army. I enjoyed the parts where he wrote about the work — truly a different world, with many tasks done by hand — but once he started waxing philosophical, my interest waned.
15. Blood, Sweat and Tea, by Tom Reynolds. Got this from a charity bookstall and zipped through it when I needed a break from ploughing (see above). It’s a lively compilation of blog posts about Reynold’s work in the London Ambulance Service. Sometimes he saves people, sometimes he doesn’t; mostly he deals with drunks and prank callers. Beyond me how people can do that job without burning out in weeks.
16. The Dressmaker, by Rosalie Ham. “An unforgettable tale of love, hate and haute couture,” says the cover. Delivers on the hate and the haute, wrapped up in the petty cruelty of small-town life, but less so on the love. Very black, but imaginative and unusual.
17. Making Light of Tragedy, by Jessica Grant. I don’t normally read short stories, but I loved Come, Thou Tortoise and Grant hasn’t written any more novels. These stories are sharp, odd, offbeat fragments, but I miss the through narrative and development of a novel
18. Hunter Killer, by Chris Ryan. I was sick and needed something to fill the time. Pacey and easy to read, although I hope the actual members of the SAS are a bit smarter than Danny Black.
19. Murder Team, by Chris Ryan (Kindle). Novella that ties up the lose ends from Hunter Killer. Skipped the chapter where one of the characters gets tortured, which apparently wasn’t essential to the plot.
20. Matters of Doubt, by Warren C Easley (Kindle). Cal Claxton was a hotshot prosecutor in Los Angeles, but now he’s a small-town lawyer in Oregon. When he’s approached by a street kid wanting help to prove that his mother was murdered several years earlier, he initially says no… but of course changes his mind (hard to make an entire novel out of ‘no’). Typical detective story, lifted by interesting characters and settings.
21. The Railwayman’s Wife, by Ashley Hay (Kindle). In a small town on the coast of Australia, south of Sydney, three characters search for solace after the Second World War. Annika Lachlan is rebuilding her life in the railway’s library after a personal tragedy; Roy McKinnon is a writer who can’t find poetry away from the mud and horror of the war; and doctor Frank Draper is struggling to forget the people he couldn’t save. The plot is slightly overwrought and it has ‘period movie’ written all over it, but it’s worth reading for its evocation of time and place.
22. November Rain, by Donald Harstad (Kindle). The previous books in the Carl Houseman series are set in rural Iowa, but this one takes the Deputy Sheriff to London. I preferred the earlier novels, but he’s still an engaging character with a self-deprecating voice. “I’m what those who don’t want to irritate me refer to as ‘experienced’. Under Iowa law, in fact, I’m so experienced I’m eligible to retire. Under Iowa’s Public Employee’s Retirement System, I can’t afford to.” His trip to London comes in somewhat improbable circumstances, but if you can suspend disbelief, it’s a fun read with a few surprises.
23. The Heart Broke In, by James Meek. Taking in reality TV, sexual infidelity, blackmail, microbiology and the possibility of eternal life, Meek’s 2012 novel has the modern fiction thing of trying too hard to be edgy and original.
24. A Long December, but Donald Harstad (Kindle). Reread after enjoying November Rain (see no. 22). Frustrating that his other books aren’t available on Kindle.
25. Sweet Caress, by William Boyd. Amory Clay is born in 1908 and develops an interest in photography after being given a camera as a child. She starts out assisting her uncle with society portraits, then works in the clubs of 1920s Berlin, in New York in the 1930s, as a war photographer in France and Germany, for local magazines in Scotland, and then as a correspondent in Vietnam. Each phase of her life brings new locations, new men — or a new arrangement with the previous man — but not much inspiration. She doesn’t seem passionate about her profession, despite 70-odd years of taking pictures. It’s well written and packed with detail, but left me as ambivalent as its heroine.
26. Gods of the Morning, by John Lister-Kaye. Wildlife encounters through a year in the Scottish Highlands, from autumn through to the end of summer. Lister-Kaye describes the moments spent tracking a fox, hunkered down in the snow next to a raven, watching a merlin and facing off with pine martin with total focus. It’s as if you are there with him, watching over his shoulder. Lyrical, vivid and enjoyable.
27. Grief is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter (Kindle). Prose-poem about death, grief and Ted Hughes. You probably need to read Hughes’ Crow first. They don’t point that out on the posters, though.
28. The Kiwi Pair, by Hamish Bond and Eric Murray (Kindle). Dual autobiography by New Zealand’s hugely successful men’s rowing partnership, the Olympic champions in London and Rio. Promises to explain how their contrasting personalities contribute to their success, but the alternating chapters format makes them seem very similar. Entertaining but not hugely enlightening.
29. The Wolf in Winter, by John Connelly. I enjoyed Connelly’s The Book of Lost Things, so was curious to try one of his thrillers when it appeared on a charity book table (see also no. 15). This is the 12th book in the Charlie Parker series, so probably not the best place to start, although it does work as a standalone novel. Slightly odd combination of crime thriller with gothic supernatural stuff, but his writing holds it together, particularly through the development of the minor characters. By the closing chapters there are five separate (I think) groups of bad people in play, but it’s still possible to follow the plot.
30. Emotionally Weird, by Kate Atkinson. Got to page 65, remembered how much I hate universities, gave up. I used to think it was wrong to give up before the end of a book, but I’m over that now.
31. Shelter in Place, by Alexander Maksik (Kindle). Joseph March is living in a motel in a California beach town with Tess, a girl he met in a bar, when he finds out his mother has killed a stranger with a hammer in a Seattle parking lot. Reluctantly he heads north, wondering whether the same anger lurks within him, to the town where his mother is imprisoned. Madness, violence, the fog of depression and moments of crystal clarity in a compelling first-person narrative. Highly recommended.
32. When the Game Was Ours, by Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson and Jackie MacMullen (Kindle). I first watched basketball in the 1980s, when the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers were the leading teams, so this dual biography was a warm, nostalgic read. It covers the on-court rivalry and off-court friendship of Larry Bird and Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson, simultaneously the most similar and most opposite stars of their time. Both grew up poor in small towns in the midwest; both were talented, hard-working team players; one an introvert representing the hard-grafting east; one an extrovert dazzling the west with ‘Showtime’; both three-time regular season MVPs; both multiple winners of the NBA Championship (3x for Bird, 5x for Johnson). For the same story as a TV documentary, see Magic and Byrd: A Courtship of Rivals on YouTube.
33. A Snowball in Hell, by Christopher Brookmyre. This is the third book in the Angelique de Xavier series. I preferred the second, The Sacred Art of Stealing, mostly because the plot seemed stronger. This still has Brookmyre’s black humour, and it’s still entertaining, but there are a few too many loose ends.
34. The Monuments Men, by Robert M Edsel. Before the film, there was the book, which explains how a handful of American and British museum curators, art historians, architects and sculptors spent the final years of the Second World War protecting historic buildings and tracking down artworks stolen and hidden by the Nazis.
35. Brazzaville Beach, by William Boyd. Living alone on a West African beach, Hope Clearwater reflects on her failed marriage to an English mathematician, her year observing chimps at a research centre in the African bush, and a brief entanglement in a chaotic civil war. Mixing biology, ecology, mathematics and physics with a flawed cast of researchers and academics, it begins and ends with a quote from Socrates — “The unexamined life is not worth living” — which connects it to several of Boyd’s other books.
36. A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away, by Christopher Brookmyre (Kindle). The first book in the Angelique de Xavier series (see no. 33) is more fun and easier to follow than the third. The mix of comedy and action makes it an easy read, especially when you’re spending 26 hours on a plane.
37. The Heavens May Fall, by Allen Eskens (Kindle). Set in Minneapolis, this is both a detective story and a courtroom drama, told from the alternating perspectives of Detective Max Rupert and defence attorney Boady Sanden. Rupert believes wealthy socialite Jennavieve Pruitt was killed by her husband, Ben — who is Sanden’s former business partner, and now his client. Rupert and Sanden are also connected through previous cases. The tangled loyalties of both men add emotional depth to the twists and turns of an engaging thriller.
38. The Guise of Another, by Allen Eskens (Kindle). Working my way backwards through the Eskens books, because the synopsis for the first one didn’t appeal. This one features Detective Alexander Rupert, younger brother of Max Rupert from the third book (see no. 37), unravelling a case of identity theft that escalates into murder and mayhem. Interesting characters and plenty of twists make up for the improbable plot.
39. Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some, by Christopher Edwards (Kindle). Two passages summarise this book. In the first, Kristin Eskandarian, aged 5, is talking to her grandmother. “I’m not a girl,” I replied, insulted. “Yes… you are,” she said gently. “No, I’m not, I’m a boy.” “No, you’re not, sweetheart.” “Well, then I’m gonna be,” I insisted. The second, almost 20 years later, describes a female-to-male support group for people with gender dysphoria. “[Brian] was going to go through the entire transition process — including surgery — to become a man, only to still be attracted to other men. And that’s when, as Oprah would say, I had my ‘aha moment’. Brian’s gender identity was completely separate from his sexual orientation… Think of it this way: sexual orientation is who you go to bed with; gender identity is who you go to bed as. But understanding it didn’t make everything all better.” What does eventually make it better is therapy, hormone treatment and 28 surgeries. Edwards’ memoir describes the surgeries in painful detail, and yet they’re nowhere near as distressing as the descriptions of his teenage years, trying to be the girl he wasn’t. Simultaneously candid and humorous, it invites you to stand in his shoes and see the world from a different perspective.
40. The Life We Bury, by Allen Eskens (Kindle). I was ill over Christmas and needed something pacing and entertaining, so I downloaded Eskens’ first book (see also nos. 37 and 38). This time the central character is college student Joe Talbert, trying to complete an English assignment by interviewing an old man in a care home. Carl Iverson is a decorated Vietnam veteran, but also a convicted murderer. Trying to square the heroism with crime turns the assignment into an investigation, with Joe as the detective, assisted by his neighbour Lila. As with Eskens’ other books, the detailed back stories and complex relationships make it engaging as well as exciting.

And that was it for 2016, 40 books in 52 weeks. Here’s the 2017 edition.