Some of the Better Books of 2016: Staff Picks

Alternating Current Staff Interviewer Lori Hettler talks up her favorite books of 2016, from F-bombs to deliciously unreliable narrators.

Fallen Land by Taylor Brown

Taylor Brown is wicked talented. I fell hard and fast for his novel, Fallen Land, back in February, and nearly 60 books later, I still consider it one of the best I’ve read this year. Simultaneously tender and terrifying, I was blown away by both the quiet intensity of his words and the ravaged and devastated landscapes he drew up around his characters.

The North Water by Ian McGuire

This book is breathtaking in the most wonderfully gory sort of ways. Brutal, bloody, and brilliantly paced, Ian McGuire’s The North Water is what happens when the best of Herman Melville and Jules Verne gets together and has a baby. It’s the ultimate what-never-to-do survival book, complete with F-bombs galore. And it’s awesome.

8th Street Power & Light by Eric Shonkwiler

A solid, and highly anticipated, follow-up to Eric’s debut novel, Above All Men. Set some years in the future, we are reunited with Sam Parrish. It’s gorgeously written in Shonkwiler’s trademark bare-bones prose where every word packs a punch.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

This was one of those books you pick up feeling “meh,” and then it just shocks the hell out of you. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a twisted, mental mindfuck of a novel and contains one of the most deliciously unreliable narrators I have experienced in a very long time. It’s the sort of book you’ll want to read again, almost immediately, to revisit the finer details, this time with eyes wide open.