Feb 6, 2017

2016 in reading

Following is the list of books I read in 2016, from my Recent Reads page:
  1. The Lady and the Monk - Four Seasons in Kyoto by Pico Iyer ***
  2. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie *****
  3. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry ***
  4. The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk ****
  5. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy ***
  6. The New York Trilogy by Paul Aster ***
  7. Mosby's Memoirs by Saul Bellow **** (Short stories)
  8. Smart Money by Andrew Palmer **** (NF)
  9. Macbeth by William Shakespeare ***
  10. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr ***
  11. Voss by Patrick White ****
  12. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway *****
  13. On Writing by Stephen King *** (Memoir)
  14. In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri ***
  15. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvio *** Translated
  16. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams *** (SF)
  17. Browsings by Michael Dirda *** (NF -Collection of notes/ essays on books)
  18. The Years by Virginia Woolf *** (If everything were as simple as good, bad, or ugly, this one had a lot of ugly in it)
  19. Rabbit, Run by John Updike ***
  20. Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov *** (SF)
  21. The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier **  (Short stories)
  22. Islands in the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke *** (SF)
  23. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf ****
  24. The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick *** (SF, kindle)
  25. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad ***** (kindle)
  26. Middlemarch by George Eliot **** (kindle)
  27. Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick *** (SF)
  28. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury *** (SF)
  29. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf ****
  30. The American by Henry James *** (kindle)
  31. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot *** (kindle)
  32. Hunger by Knut Hamsun **** (kindle). Translated. 
  33. Unflattening by Nick Sousanis **** (Literary comic(?))
  34. Contact by Carl Sagan *** (SF)
  35. The Favourite Game by Leonard Cohen ***
  36. Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield *** (Short stories)
  37. Collected Stories by John Cheever *** (Short Stories) 
  38. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli **** (NF)
  39. The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clezio **** translated
  40. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem *** (SF)
  41. The Occupation Trilogy by Patrick Modiano ****
  42. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison ***
42 books! My highest so far. Happy.
  • I read a lot of science fiction. 7
  • Read some wishlist books - War and Peace, Satanic Verses, Middlemarch
  • Bunched up reading periods through the year. A few months when I read a lot. And a couple of months, nothing. 
  • For the non fiction, often books don't end up in the 'recent reads' list since I drop them when my interest is satiated rather them completing them 
  • Read a few authors for the first time and enjoyed them
I have so far read around 5 in Jan 2017. Trying to read one non fiction each month. Currently reading through 3 big books, fiction classics - all 30-50% read, so will be some time before I come back to these pages to update.