According to Goodreads, I finished 22 books in 2016 and ran the usual gamut from non-fiction to fiction, though I was lighter on “fem-moirs” than in years past. Â The round-up:
Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles
The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer by Tracy Kidder
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God by Lauren F. Winner
Parenting Without Power Struggles by Susan Stiffelman
Stoner by John Williams
Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating by Mark Bittman
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn Edin
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
My Bright Abyss: Meditation of  Modern Believer by Christian Wiman
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Peace Like A River by Leif Enger
You’ll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein
Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West
Best books of 2016:  PEACE LIKE A RIVER! Sweet Jesus, this was good.  It’s been a long time since I’ve fallen for a character like I did for Reuben.  And his sister, Swede.  And his dad, Jeremiah.  And his wayward brother, Davy.  Ok, I loved all the family.  All the imagery.  All the things about this book!
Also dug Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed, because, wowsers, that woman has a way with words that’s amazingly simple but profound.  Honorable mention to Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See for weaving such an intricate, beautiful story, and to Lindy West’s Shrill for her sheer bad-assery.  Oh, and to Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, for touching me to the point that I did the full-on ugly sob while reading the final chapter in bed one night.  It was a good reading year.
On the docket for 2017: Â I’m about 150 pages into Atlas Shrugged, and if my Kindle is accurate, it will only take me about 47 hours to finish that one out (oooofffff…). Â I’ll be reading a little outside my comfort zone with Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and Dark Money. Â Will be jumping very much back into my comfort zone with Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling and I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro. Â IF I ever finish Atlas Shrugged, that is…