What I Read This Year: 2016 Edition

Published in

Nonce & Happenstance

6 min readDec 31, 2016

I read constantly. Mostly on my computer screen and as often as possible with actual paper pages fastened together in a hard-bound book in my hands whilst curled in a comfy chair, chaise, or (because who am I kidding) in my beloved bed, where I spend too many waking hours, not unlike a Brontë sister.

The thing is, though, I have since childhood had a problem with the muscles in my eye that results in my reading books slowly—maddeningly so for someone who loves to read as much as I do.

So my list here isn’t terribly long. I’m not going to be winning any gold stars at the public library’s reading contest.

Still my year-end list is longer than some. And it’s shorter than others. But I also don’t read books I don’t enjoy. If I don’t like the lede, I pass. Life is too short to slog through a book. That’s what grad school was for….

The books listed here were read and loved. And they were read precisely because I loved them. If I didn’t, I would have put them down, put on another episode of Midsomer Murders, found my knitting, and called it a day.

What I read in 2016, in no particular order (except for this first one because it’s special):

When Did Everybody Else Get So Old?: Indignities, Compromises, and the Unexpected Grace of Midlife
by Jennifer Grant

A few words about this first one, because it’s perhaps the only book I read in 2016 that won’t be out in bookstores (and purveyors of books) until 2017.

I am a fan of memoir. I write memoir. Memoirists are among my favorite authors—Frederick Buechner, Annie Lamott, Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, and Annie Dillard, come quickly to mind. And I have many friends who have and continue to write memoirs that I find compelling and enjoyable. Jennifer Grant is one such friend and memoirist. But let me tell you, this new book of hers is something else.

It’s special. It’s a little bit magic….

I was fortunate enough to get to read an advanced copy of Grant’s manuscript a few months ago while I was on a solo train trip across the United States. I have enjoyed her previous books and was looking forward to her latest work. What I didn’t expect was to have my breath taken away, torrents of tears followed (sometimes on the same page) by uncontrollable belly laughs. And I’m not just saying that because I know the author well and love her dearly (though both are true.)

This book snuck up on me and grabbed me by the tenderest part of my tiny, shriveled raisin of a diamond-meatball heart (Hi Annie!) and led me through some of the most difficult parts of this midlife thing, which I have, thus far, unilaterally loathed—in fact, as I took stock while reading Grant’s book, I realized the most oft-repeated mantra I have is “I hate my forties.” As Grant took me by the hand and led me through the shit and the disappointment and the questions and the uncertainty and the hilarity with equal parts tenderness, candor, and gentle good humor, I wanted that to change, but nothing she wrote made me feel like I should change that or anything else.

This book is dear, like the kind of friend you maybe see only once a year or even less than that, but with whom you feel such a deep connection and affection that when you finally are in one another’s physical company it feels as if no time at all has passed. It is dear, as in precious (in the rare and good—not the snarky—meaning of that word). It is the kind of book I want to press into the hands of every 39-year-old I know, tell them to put it aside somewhere in their bedroom or on the bottom shelf of the coffee table and go looking for it in a few years when they’re ready for it and they need to know they’re not the only ones who feel the way they’re feeling, that’s it’s OK, that they’ll get through it, and that it gets better (or at least, that’s what Grant tells me and I tend to believe her.)

By the time I finished reading When Did Everybody Else Get So Old, I was weeping (for joy) so loudly the women in the berth across from mine on the train poked their heads out to make sure I was OK. I was. More than OK. I was great. I had been given the literary equivalent of a loving bear hug, lifted off my feet, and placed gently back down a few yards up the path.

So yeah. Maybe go ahead and pre-order When Did Everybody Else Get So Old now so you can read it or give it away to your favorite middle-ager as soon as it’s released on May 17, 2017. You’ll thank me. Some day.

Right. Now, back to the rest of the wonderful books I read this year:

Some of these books (and volumes of poetry) were life-changing. Some them were aperture-widening and soul-expanding. Some were companions on journeys real and metaphoric. Some were light-bringers and joy-bearers in a time of great darkness.

There was a LOT of poetry. And that started long before 11/9. Why am I reading so much poetry? Dunno. (Here are some theories from the editor of Poetry magazine.) But I do know I must read poetry right now. It is a thirst, a hunger. I can’t NOT read poetry. The poetic bender continues unabated on the eve of the new year….

Some of the books on my list were old. Some were new. Some were revisited.

I recommend each of them.