Best Books of 2016

2016 closing out. And thank God before any more celebrities die. 

Interestingly, our of fifty three books I had less 'favorites' than ever before. 

The other thing I noticed which was obviously influenced by the election, is so many of the books I chose I called 'relevant' to what was happening in the country. That and I'm sure at times I got lazy in writing reviews. 

As always not everything was written this year, and the following are in no particular order.

2017 for me is definitely going to mean reading more, and spending far less time on social media than I have in the last year.  I wish you all a hopeful, safe, and loving New Year for you and yours.

And please let me know what books you've loved! You can find what I'm reading on Goodreads.

Best

Brett 

I loved this book and what a daughters senior year applying to Harvard does to what seems like the family who has it all. Nora and Gabe are both highly successful in their respective professions. They live in Marin County, have three beautiful girls, yet when their oldest, Angela begins to go through the process of applying to college, the wheels come off the bus. Over a year the narrative switches between members of the family with each of them struggling with their own individual hurdles. Fast paced, funny, and imbued with a load of heart this is the perfect summer read, and or book club pick.

https://www.amazon.com/Admissions-Meg-Mitchell-Moore/dp/1101910143/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483215050&sr=8-1&keywords=the+admissions

First time novelist Yaa Gyasi has knocked it out of the park with this literary debut. Effie and Esi are two sisters born into different tribes in Ghana. One gets married to a white man and begins a life of splendor, while the other is sold as a slave and shipped to America. Through alternating chapters we watch their descendants through the years as tribal clashes continue through Africa and in America wars lead to slavery to the great migration. This is a book to be swallowed in big gulps for maximum impact, with each generations story even more fascinating than the one preceding it. Gyasi is a truly writer to take notice of, and I can't wait to see where her imagination takes her next.

https://www.amazon.com/Homegoing-novel-Yaa-Gyasi/dp/1101947136/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483215719&sr=1-1&keywords=homegoing




This summer I said that Nathan Hill had just written one of the best books if not the best of the year. For me it was all that. Big, expansive, and terribly funny, he satires everything from politics, to the Internet, to online gaming, and the media. Spanning fifty plus years the story centers on Samuel Andresen-Anderson, an unhappy college professor, struggling writer, and player of 'World of Elfquest'-a vaguely veiled, 'World of Warcraft' game. With his novel deadline now passed, and a publisher ready to sue for breach of contract, he desperately ends up turning to the one person who abandoned him over thirty years ago and is now at the center of the media firestorm for assaulting a conservative governor-his Mother. Despite Hill's book taking place in the sixties before the Democratic convention and in 2011 before the Republican one, Hill's commentary can't help but feel painfully relevant to today such as: "it's no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. Now it's sanctimony", and when Walter Cronkite is watching the riots taking place in Chicago before the Democractic convention, 'Anyone who thinks television can bring the nation together to have a real dialogue and begin to understand one another with empathy and compassion is suffering a great delusion.' Hill is being compared to Irving and I think that's a legitimate claim, both in his absurdist humor and his touching way he threads the delicate and complicated lines between parents and their children. It's not just a great first book, but a great book period, that's soon to begin production on HBO with Meryl Streep as the estranged mother. 

https://www.amazon.com/Nix-novel-Nathan-Hill/dp/110194661X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483045710&sr=8-1&keywords=the+nix+nathan+hill



There were multiple times in Tim Murphys sprawling, ambitious, yet hugely intimate novel that I expected these characters to cross paths with Jude and Willem from Yanigahara's, 'A Little Life', or any one of Maupin's colorful cast of 28 Barbary Lane. And if, like me, you loved those two worlds then this should feel like visiting an old friend. Murphy's backdrop is the lower East side in the eighties at the start of the AIDS epidemic, and it's the disease that propels so many of these characters into inevitable intersections. It starts with a young bohemian couple who are both artists, Milly and Jared, who live in the Christodora, a rehabbed condo building adjacent to Tompkins Square Park. Their neighbor is a hunky gay latino whose personal tragedies move him to AIDS activism which drives the center of the story. The thread that links them is a young abandoned boy named Mateo whose mother died of the disease soon after she gives birth to him. The book stretches over fifty years as these people grapple with identity, family, life, death, drugs, and loss. And despite writing what could feel overwhelmingly depressing, Murphy manages to infuse a massive shot of hope into the story, leaving this reader more than satisfied

https://www.amazon.com/Christodora-Novel-Tim-Murphy/dp/080212528X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483051465&sr=1-1&keywords=christodora

The gay coming of age novel is pumped with new and invigorated life with the addition of Haddad's terrific and exciting debut 'Guapa'. Told over the course of a single day in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, young Rasa is not only trying to find his cultural identity in a country torn apart from war, but his awakened sexual identity, as he and his lover are discovered one morning by his overbearing and severe grandmother. Told over the course of one turbulent day with flashbacks, Haddad has written a story that feels overwhelmingly relevant with the current political discourse about Muslims, xenophobia, and homophobia, and one that deserves a broader audience than its limited target.



 https://www.amazon.com/Guapa-Saleem-Haddad/dp/1590517695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483140763&sr=8-1&keywords=guapa

 Spanning nearly fifty years in the lives of two families that come together after an affair, Patchett again shows what a terribly gifted writer she is. The non linear story telling shifts back and forth across decades focusing mostly on the various children and what happens to them over time. There's a beautiful simplicity to her writing, with characters I felt were so familiar and fully realized, from the beautiful Beverly who leaves her husband for her neighbor Albert, to the sons and daughters whose lives are now forced together and ultimately bound by tragedy. I absolutely loved these people and the places they inhabited.

https://www.amazon.com/Commonwealth-Ann-Patchett/dp/0062491792/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483055987&sr=1-1&keywords=commonwealth+ann+patchett
























Cries of black lives matter resound through this brutal history lesson told through the eyes of a young slave Cora who escapes from her hellish life on a Georgia plantation. Whitehead portrays the railroad as a literal thing with stations hidden under trap doors in houses or abandoned buildings many of which the young heroine works through in her attempt to escape the clutches of slave catcher Ridgeway. Whitehead has written a tough but necessary history lesson about race that continues sadly to play out on our modern landscape.

https://www.amazon.com/Underground-Railroad-National-Winner-Oprahs/dp/0385542364/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483216294&sr=8-1&keywords=the+underground+railroad

Nominated for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in France, this sexy, page turner follows two friends Samuel and Samir who are in love with the same woman, Nina. When Nina chooses Samuel, Samir moves from Paris and relocates to New York where he becomes a highly successful lawyer. But the story only begins there as we see what the next twenty years has in store for this threesome, and how time and circumstance shapes their futures both together and as individuals. So smart,darkly funny,and so utterly compelling, it's a timely read for what's currently happening throughout the world.

https://www.amazon.com/Age-Reinvention-Novel-Karine-Tuil/dp/1501125648/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483217986&sr=8-1&keywords=the+age+of+reinvention

"When you start to see the seedy underbelly of America, it makes you want to live in Canada." So says one of the characters in Jodi Picoult's provocative, emotional and timely new novel. Picoult's go to is tackling an issue with high emotional stakes and relatable characters caught in impossible and heart wrenching odds. This time she must have had a crystal ball to hone in on the current atmosphere of ugly white nationalism sweeping the country with the President elect. In Picoult's novel an African American labor and delivery nurse is asked to to care for a newborn in the hospital, the child of white supremacists. One incredibly busy night at the hospital leaves Ruth, the only available nurse on duty, watching over the child who has just been circumsized, and in a freak moment dies under her watch. What follows plays out as riveting courtroom drama, but the bigger larger discussion Picoult has at play here is race. And it's messy. And uncomfortable. Picoult has more success narrative wise with her chapters involving Ruth and her Public defender, an ambitious white woman named-subtly?intentionally?-Kennedy. Turk, the white supremacist is a hard character to feel sympathetic to and the author tries her best creating incidents in both his past and his wife's that have contributed to who they are today. Like any Picoult book there are moments thick with melodrama. Yet I have to praise the author for daring to tackle this subject so head on, and perhaps sparking discussions among people who might otherwise feel this has nothing to do with them.

https://www.amazon.com/Small-Great-Things-Jodi-Picoult/dp/0345544951/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483217291&sr=1-1&keywords=small+great+things

ALSO:

Best Bio: 

Because you know she can make you laugh your ass off, but she'll also make you cry like a baby. Listen to her read it on audio and tell everyone you read it.

https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Lower-Back-Tattoo/dp/1501139886/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483217679&sr=8-1&keywords=the+girl+with+the+lower+back+tattoo

Best Young Adult Book:

Because we're all sick of dystopian novels with star crossed angst, and McGee has essentially and smartly created The Jason Bourne story with teenagers.

https://www.amazon.com/Ryan-Quinn-Rebels-Escape-McGee/dp/0062421646/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483218228&sr=1-1&keywords=ryan+quinn+and+the+rebel%27s+escape

Best Trilogy Ending:

Because Stephen King deserves all the praise he gets for rising above so many genres and continuing to churn books out like butter.

https://www.amazon.com/End-Watch-Novel-Hodges-Trilogy/dp/1501129740/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483218344&sr=1-1&keywords=end+of+watch

Best Books of 2015

Happy New Years!
My New Years resolution is read more books! Actually I never make any resolutions, because I'll never be able to keep them, unless it's gain too much weight during the holidays! 
This year had some amazing books (and some clunkers to be fair), and for the first time on this list I started with my favorite just because it was such a tremendous stand out to me. I also feel I cheated a bit because two of my choices were by the same author, but looking back, they were both excellent books on their own merits regardless of the fact they were part of a planned trilogy. 
Finally, this was also the year that I listened to my first books on audio on the road between LA and Palm Springs. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the three terrific books I listened to vs read because they were all 'pefformed' by their authors and all are highly recommended. Seriously now:
a) Amy Poehler's, "Yes Please" cause I love her, and she's hilarious.
 

b) Rob Lowe's "Stories I Only Tell My Friends" because I grew up in the 70s and 80s and if you like the Outsiders, Saint Elmo's Fire or know who the brat pack were it's necessary listening. btw he's an amazing story teller.














c) Leah Remini's "Troublemaker" because I'm obsessed with anything to do with scientology, and she's brave and crazy and so so so funny. Oh and lots of crazy Tom Cruise stories.



and now, the list:



1) "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara
This is the kind of book you want to share, and have someone else experience so you can simply talk about it. It's been awhile since I've felt so completely absorbed by something I've been reading. Certainly nothing I've read this year or probably last year comes close. I read Yanagihara's,'People of the Trees', and didn't think much of it, but this was really monumental. At it's most simplistic it's the story of four male friends over the course of roughly forty years. But early on the focus narrows to Jude,a physically and emotionally damaged, beautiful, brilliant man who has endured a simply horrific past. Yanagihara doesn't indulge the violence, but she doesn't shy away from it either creating this underlying tension throughout the narrative as Jude's past begins to slowly be revealed. It's a powerful book not for the faint of heart that brought me to tears at times more by scenes of tenderness and grace between characters than the disturbing abuse.This is simply a stunning literary accomplishment, as shown by it's inclusion in almost every major literary prize list this year as well as year end lists.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_13?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=a+little+life+by+hanya+yanagihara&sprefix=a+little+life%2Cstripbooks%2C191


2) "A God in Ruins" by Kate Atkinson
Atkinson views this book not as a sequel to her highly praised 'Life After Life' but instead a companion piece, and indeed it truly is seeing as it centers on Teddy, the brother to protagonist Ursula from the former novel. In a beautifully shifting narrative, older Teddy reflects back on his life a bomber in the RAF during World War II. Paired with this is his transition to civilian life after the war that includes a wife and a self absorbed daughter whose own children play such an important role to their grandfather. Atkinson has written another sweeping historical novel that feels both vast and intimate at the same time. A simply marvelous writer.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Ruins-Novel-Kate-Atkinson/dp/0316176508/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678054&sr=1-1&keywords=god+in+ruins

3) "The Nest" by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Sometimes a book comes along and it's exactly what you need to be reading at that moment. This was one of those books for me. The Plumb siblings are plagued by various financial mishaps that will hopeful all be rectified when from the youngest sibling,Bea, turns forty and their joint trust fund becomes available to them all. However when an accident happens with oldest son Leo,the 'nest' is left decimated, being used to cover medical and attorney fees of the young female passenger he maimed in the accident. How the children grapple with their new reality is the meat of the story, and where it finds all its heart, wisdom, and redemption. A simple but smart, insightful book from a talented new writer.

http://www.amazon.com/Nest-Cynthia-DAprix-Sweeney/dp/0062414216/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678192&sr=1-3&keywords=the+nest


4) "Purity" by Jonathan Franzen
Long, it meanders from past to present and back again and expects your utmost attention all the while feeling vaguely misogynistic with a cast of mostly unappealing characters, especially his women. And yet. I liked it, and found myself thinking about it a lot afterwards, and what a real literary genius Franzen is in constructing a story. Sure I struggled at times and felt at the mercy of his pinballing ideas from internet privacy, to parenting, and rogue journalism to name a few but it was worth it. Purity, or Pip, as she's known, follows a near modern Dickensian search for the father she never knew. But her story is only the launching pad for a series of stories linking her to a host of supporting players who all have rich and varied stories of their own. Some are more engaging than others but as complex and wordy as the narrative can be at times, Franzen threads it mostly together by the end in a simple understated finish.

http://www.amazon.com/Purity-Novel-Jonathan-Franzen/dp/0374239215/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678331&sr=1-1&keywords=purity+jonathan+franzen





5) 'The Tsar of Love & Techno" by Anthony Marra
Anthony Marra is one of those crazy talented writers who like David Mitchell cause a near spiritual devotion, and there's good reason. Crafting a series of linked stories in the Soviet Union that feels very much like something Mitchell would do, Marra has raised an already lofty literary bar from his earlier, "Constellation of Vital Phenomenon"  and crafted one of the years best books.

http://www.amazon.com/Tsar-Love-Techno-Stories/dp/0770436439/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678363&sr=1-1&
keywords=anthony+marra+the+tsar+of+love+and+techno



6) "Villa America" By Liza Klaussmann
Real life expats Gerald and Sarah Murphy became the inspiration for F Scottt Fitzgerald's, 'Tender is the Night', and in fact the book is dedicated to them. Fabulously wealthy, they built a house on the French Riviera, called Villa America which became the centerpiece of a host of parties regulary atttended by the up and coming literary elitle including the aforementioned Fitzgerald and his troubled wife Zelda, as well as posturing, macho Ernest Hemingway. Klaussmann imagines what went on at these gatherings but the real focus is on Gerald, Sarah, and the fictionalized loner pilot named Owen Chambers who comes into their lives. The brainy banter and WASPY repression feels vaguely reminiscent of Amor Towles 'Rules of Civility', while subbing out Manhattan for the Cote d'Azur. Klaussmann's descriptive prose can be as sensuous as the setting, and the story while tragic manages to avoid the maudlin and sad, ultimately delivering a satisfying denoument, for an better than average beach read.

http://www.amazon.com/Villa-America-Novel-Liza-Klaussmann/dp/0316211362/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678400&sr=1-1&keywords=villa+america



7) "Disclaimer" by Renee Knight
Everyone seems to be looking for the next 'Gone Girl', and the cleverness of shifting narratives that eventual reveal the whole story seem to be a popular technique, especially with the success of 'The Girl on The Train'. That said, this was more sucessful than '...Train' to me, and I polished this off in nearly one breathless sitting. When Catherine Ravenscroft finds a manuscript on her bedside she can't remember receiving, she reads it and is horrified to find it's about her and an incident in her past that she has hidden from her husband and son. To say much more would take away the fun of discovering it yourself, but Knight has written the best thriller of the year that has most cerntainly already been snapped up for a feature.

http://www.amazon.com/Disclaimer-Novel-Renée-Knight/dp/0062362259/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678456&sr=1-1&keywords=disclaimer


8) "Natchez Burning" by Greg Iles
Natchez Burning is a big sprawling immersive, troubling, deeply captivating reading experience. Anyone who has followed the previous lawyer turned author turned mayor, Penn Cage will be familiar enough with the players involved in the deep south of Natchez Mississippi. However this time it turns personal, as Penn's revered and highly respected father, the towns' doctor is accused of murdering an African American woman who forty years ago worked closely by his side as his nurse. Iles doesn't hold anything back is his honest, unflinching, and at times just plain horrifying depictions of the deep seeded racism that has rooted itself in this towns history, and has caused the past to rise to the present like a bloated corpse. But the book also plays as a terrific thriller, that will leave you guessing, even as the end only wraps up certain elements as this is the first book in a planned trilogy. A great read, which should make anyone hungry for the next installment.

http://www.amazon.com/Natchez-Burning-Novel-Penn-Cage/dp/0062311085/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1V6NZ3W3HEK7CNV2Y1RB



9) "The Bone Tree" by Greg Iles
It takes immeasurable talent to follow up a massive page turner (the first of a planned trilogy) with another massive page turner that picks up immediately where the first left off and doesn't let you go until eight hundred pages later. It's exhausting to read, so I can't begin to imagine what went into writing it. -And I mean exhausting in the best possible way.
Greg Iles could have just made this book, this trilogy, about the deep seeded evil racism in the Southern town of Natchez Mississippi. How earnest lawyer turned author turned Mayor, Penn Cage, tries to get to the bottom of the accusation leveled at his father for allegedly murdering his former nurse, an African American woman whose history with Cage's dad is another layer on the onion to be peeled.
But Iles has a much bigger endgame at play that toys with American history in a convincing and unsettling way. Let's just say I had to crack Wikipedia a few times to see if some of the players he was referring were real. (They were.)
Lies depiction of racial violence is terribly disturbing to read, but it's never feels overly gratuitous. By the end,there are such massive plot movements in this book, it's hard to believe that there's one more to come. That said, I'll be waiting with anticipation to see how he wraps it all up.

http://www.amazon.com/Bone-Tree-Penn-Cage/dp/0062311115/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678504&sr=1-1&keywords=the+bone+tree+by+greg+iles



10) "Golden Son" by Pierce Brown
Speaking of sequels,  having now read the two books back to back, first off I can't believe I have to wait for a third now, and secondly what a engaging delight to read. There's no letdown with this second installment, no drag before the payoff. It's bigger than the first book, much more complex with higher engineered war sequences that at times left me flipping back so I could follow along with the expansive collection of characters he continues to amass while systematically wiping others out. Comparisons to The Hunger Games should effectively be eliminated at this point. Hunger Games was a very good trilogy but this is more brutal, more unforgiving. If anything this begins in tone where the Hunger Games ends. This sequel demands your attention which shouldn't be hard cause Brown is now supremely adept at following one breathtaking sequence with another. I really hope these books continue to find a mass audience and give this guy the recognition he deserves.

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Son-Book-Rising-Trilogy/dp/0345539834/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678567&sr=1-4&keywords=pierce+brown

11) "Fates & Furies" by Lauren Groff

Groff has manufactured a complex portrait of a long term marriage. To say too much would spoil any sense of discovery that comes as the book progresses, but the success here is in searingly insightful prose. Lotto and Mathilde have been married for twenty four years, and through the 

he said she said narrative Groff peels back the layers built up between actor turned playwright Lotto and his loving supportive wife, exposing what truths we choose to not tell our spouses.

http://www.amazon.com/Fates-Furies-Novel-Lauren-Groff/dp/1594634475/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451678595&sr=1-1&keywords=lauren+groff