Books I read in 2016
1. The Night Circus
I hadn’t heard of this book or knew what it was about - but my mom told me it’s pretty popular. I picked it up on a whim from a book store in Hong Kong because it was part of a special cover release with other awesome books, and a night circus just sounded cool.
I really liked it. Great visuals and really interesting story. The tense and dates threw me off a few times, but I also read it on holidays so maybe wasn’t 100% focused. Good start to 2016!
By Erin Morgenstern
2. Ready Player One
Late to the game on this one as well. I didn’t really like this book. Maybe because I’ve read a few similar books and there was just nothing new here. I also find something super depressing about such a cool immersive world being predominantly populated by 80s pop culture. Like we get to 2044 and the 80s are our cultural zenith? That’s even worse than the lightly touched upon collapse of the entire human race also in the book.
I lost it when it was mentioned the main character had no eyebrows. That’s literally all I could think of for the remainder of the book.
By Ernest Cline
3. Guards! Guards!
I’ve never read a Terry Pratchett book, much to the horror of many of my more literary inclined friends. I picked this one at random because it had a magical library, and you can’t really go wrong with magical libraries.
Good book. Very funny.
By Terry Pratchett
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
January was pretty slow for reading. I was trying to get through a Tom Robbins novel, who like Pratchett, I’ve never read before. I dunno if it was just general Japan fatigue (where I just spent 3 weeks) or the fact that I was also doing a ton of research on Aleister Crowley and theosophy for a project but the whole Bangkok (where I had picked up the book in the first place) and Laos (where I am heading off to next) parts combined with the fairly accurate description of random white dudes in Asia was just frankly freaking me out. Also the weird sex.
After ughing all over the place, I just re-read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for probably the 10th time. Spell broken.
By Douglas Adams
5. A Darker Shade of Magic
Yeah this was a really great book. No complaints really. I’m not so much into trilogies these days (too many other books to read), but I’m excited for book number 2. I think because she actually buttoned everything up and it was a satisfying story just on it’s own.
By V. E. Schwab
6. Carry On
I suppose if I’m going to read YA it should be a fiction based on a fanfiction parody from another fiction with a lot of teenage boys making out.
By Rainbow Rowell
7. Snake Agent
Woah.
By Liz Williams
8. The Demon And The City
Just keepin’ this Chinese Hell party going.
By Liz Williams
9. Precious Dragon
Alright, I think 3 in a row is enough.
By Liz Williams
10. The Magicians
This book was like 18 books condensed into one. Lots of cool ideas, but I kept waiting for the story to start and it never did. Imagine if the entire 4th Harry Potter book (the one about the triwizard tournament) was condensed into a single chapter and just hinted at all the awesome stuff that happened and how insanely disappointing that would be. That’s what this book is like.
By Lev Grossman
11. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
I read this in a single shot on an 8 hour flight from Sydney to Singapore. It was nice, heart warming and allowed me to drown out the sounds of a Chinese teenage softball team having the time of their lives.
By Katarina Bivald
12. Archivist Wasp
Not what I expected. Good book I think, but not my taste.
By Nicole Kornher-Stace
13. The Ballad of Black Tom
I’m a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft, but I’ve always been unsettled by the more blatantly racist stories. It’s hard to figure out what to do with H.P. I think. Chalk up the hate as an ‘of the time’ thing? Totally ignore the work even though it’s been massively influential? I don’t know. I really enjoy reading modern work derivative of his world though. Maybe that’s the best way to proceed.
This book is a repurposing of The Horror at Red Hook but not cringeworthy to read. I liked it a lot.
By Victor LaValle
14. Dreams and Shadows
I read some kind of vague reviews of this book that described it as ‘dark’ and I assumed based on the back cover it would be the story of two friends who struggle with growing up. Turns out this is a super bloody and violent revenge story about fairies. Good read.
By C. Robert Cargill
15. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
I don’t know about this one. I really liked the parts about the world of rare book collecting, but the actual crime part was weird and sad and didn’t have a good ending.
By Allison Hoover Bartlett
16. Dolphin Island
If you ever feel bad about your own writing, just remember that even Arthur C. Clarke wrote teen novels about young people shipwrecked in the South Pacific, getting in the middle of a wars between dolphins and orcas.
By Arthur C. Clarke
17. The Rest of Us Just Live Here
This was very nice and clever and cute.
By Patrick Ness
18. Discontent and its Civilizations
A small collection of essays written by a guy of Pakistani origin who grew up in both Lahore and San Fran, lived in NYC for 4 years, left right before Sept 11, spent 8 years in London before moving back to Lahore. There’s some interesting stuff about identity, writing and the political and cultural state of Pakistan. I liked this book a lot.
By Mohsin Hamid
19. The Dip
I’ve always liked hearing Seth Godin talk on podcasts (which I listen to while folding laundry) but this book sucked. It was basically a really long blog post and definitely not worth the $10 as a book. If you read the amazon reviews you’ll pretty much get the gist and not have to read it.
By Seth Godin
20. Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend
Haha what the hell did I just read?
By Alan Cumyn
21. Practical Applications For Multiverse Theory
Fun little book about a bunch of high school students caught in the collapse of multiple universes. My favourite part were the rapey sloths.
By Nick Scott and Noa Gavin
It was published via ↠https://www.inkshares.com which is a cool crowdsourced publishing platform. Kind of like Threadless, but for books.
22. Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board
Picked this up for research. It actually started off really great, with a well written history of the ouija board. Kind of lost me at the invocation of angels and stuff, but I really enjoyed the authors continued reference to his Temple in Connecticut.
By J. Edward Cornelius
23. The High Places
Book of short stories I picked up in Sydney, looking for some local writing. My favourite was a story about a mechanical parrot.
By Fiona McFarlane
24/25. Desmond and Garrick
This was a real long book split in two parts. Gay teenage vampires in 1800s England. Basically nothing happens in this book, but the characters are so hilarious and well written, it didn’t really matter.
26. The Just City
I liked this book a lot. Greek gods Athena and Apollo pull a bunch of people out of time to try and recreate Plato’s Republic on Atlantis. Worth reading alone for the chapters about Socrates discovering the concept of zero and trying to figure out if the AI robot workers have souls.
By Jo Walton
27/28. Secret Manuscripts
I will count these as they were full novels and took longer to read as I was editing as well. Written by friends in the Science Fiction and Fantasy writers group I help run here in Singapore. I can’t wait till they’re done and published so you can all read them too.
29. Not In Kansas Anymore
A brief overview of the current state of magic in America. Interesting concept, but there was a little too much of the author struggling with her own beliefs in Jesus for my taste. Also found it kind of weird she skips the Wiccans and goes straight to people who live as elves.
By Christine Wicker
30. The Kings and Queens of Roam
This was written by the same guy who wrote Big Fish, that adorable early 2000s movie with Ewan McGregor, so I was expecting something whimsical and happy and light. Nope!
This was mainly about a dying town and a deteriorating relationship between two sisters. A lot of people die. Like a lot. I did really like the background though. It’s not clear when it was set, but there’s cars and television, but the town is an American frontier thing built by Chinese immigrants. There’s a cool lumberjack.
By Daniel Wallace
31. Carter & Lovecraft
I liked this one a lot. Another Lovecraft universe story, not written by him. But I maybe didn’t always agree with the editing. The world ended three times in two chapters. I feel that’s the sort of thing that can really only happen once.
By Jonathan L. Howard
32. A Gathering of Shadows
Second book in the Shades of Magic series. I really liked the first one, and this one was good also. BUT. One of the reasons I liked the first one was she had buttoned everything up so it was fine to read on it’s own. This one ends in a cliffhanger. BUT. Then in the acknowledgements at the end she apologises for it. So I guess I’m okay.
By V. E. Schwab
33. The Alchemist
I read this one a loooong time ago, but liked the 25th anniversary cover so picked it up. I’m not much into the spiritual journey stuff, but it is a good story regardless. Something I especially liked is this quote from the forward:
“When I read about clashes around the world - political clashes, economic clashes, cultural clashes - I am reminded that it is within our power to build a bridge to be crossed. Even if my neighbour doesn’t understand my religion or understand my politics, he can understand my story.”
By Paulo Coelho
The cover was done by Jim Tierney who is one of my favourite cover artists.
34. Worldsoul
Took a minute to get into this book because just SO MUCH was going on. But I liked it. Enough with the trilogies though.
By Liz Williams
35. Diary of a Witchcraft Shop
I’ve read quite a few Liz Williams books now, and had been pretty blown away by both the sheer amount of imagination and the fact that a British woman could write in so many different cultural traditions. I did a bit of research on her before picking up this one and found out she’s actually a witch who runs some occult supply stores in Glastonbury and writes in her spare time. This book was basically just a years worth of journal entires about her day to day life. Pretty interesting.
My favourite anecdote was about visiting a conference and noticing how all the Raelians were extremely beautiful.
By Liz Williams
36. All The Birds In The Sky
Lent to me by Josh, rightly assuming I’d like it.
By Charlie Jane Anders
37. Romeo And/Or Juliet
Haha omg. This book is great.
↠ http://www.romeoandorjuliet.com
By Ryan North
38. The Bad Boy Billionaire
Someone gave me this as I guess a joke trying to test my resolve in reading anything people gift me. Jokes on them, though. I love this shit. Anyway, I was extremely hungover and it was the first thing I picked up and a trashy romance seemed like a good distraction from the results of a 3am karaoke night.
This book is like borderline meta genius territory. Maya Rodale wrote a series of books called Wallflower awhile back, which are like Victorian era bodice rippers. This book is set in the present but has the exact same plot and the main character writes those books in this book (complete with excerpts) based on her experiences - under the pen name Maya Rodale. Is this book non-fiction?! Is Maya Rodale actually a 28 year old librarian married to a billionaire?!
By Maya Rodale
39. Disrupted
This book gave me terrible flashbacks to when I used to work in the start-up industry.
By Dan Lyons
40. World War Z
Several years late on this train I guess. I was watching that Honest Trailers youtube account and the one for this movie had a list of all the cool things from the book they should have added. One was “zombie hunting weiner dogs”. I bought the book immediately.
I really liked this book and now I’m super disappointed in the Walking Dead because this would make a far better tv series.
By Max Brooks
41. Infinity Net
Yeah this was great. What an interesting life.
By Yayoi Kusama
42. The Atrocity Archives
Not bad. Supernatural spy thriller about fighting multi-dimensional Nazis. The main character was extremely unlikable which was further exasperated by writing him in 1st person.
By Charles Stross
43. After The Quake
Read this a long time ago. Needed something easy for a plane ride. Still good.
By Haruki Murakami
44. X’s for Eyes
This was fun. Too short I think. Every line was so intense.
By Laird Barron
45. Wicked as They Come
Not bad. Interesting world building - kind of a steampunk sort of vampire thing going on. Lame main character though.
By Delilah S. Dawson
46. Annihilation
I quite liked this one. Very atmospheric and weird.
By Jeff VanderMeer
47. China Rich Girlfriend
Might as well be non-fiction.
By Kevin Kwan
48. Entangled
I had the flu so read a YA novel about witches.
By Nikki Jefford
49. Screwdrivered
I liked this one. Kind of a silly romance, I actually think this is a perfect contemporary romance novel. The characters were excellent, there’s a great plot, appropriate amount of drama and misdirection and it’s funny.
By Alice Clapton
50. Date Me Baby One More Time
Not bad. There were some really ridiculous parts, in a good way.
By Stephanie Rowe
51. Heroes Are My Weakness
Eh. Alright. The main character was a ventriloquist and no one was weirded out once. Super unrealistic!
By Susan Elizabeth Phillips
52. The Accidental Alchemist
I liked the idea of this book, and that it had a Chinese American love interest. But GD the main character was so freaking annoying and half the book was her making kale smoothies.
53. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You Not to Stay
Nice book. About an Iranian journalist who moves to Tehran for a year with his American wife and new baby.
By Hooman Majd
54. A Discovery of Witches
I liked this one, but there were a lot of issues. Harkness is an academic and teaches history and I really appreciated vastness and incredible detail of the setting in this book. Having an actual historian write a character that’s a 2000 year vampire is awesome, but the whole love story just felt extremely trite and unbelievable. Also the book is like 500 pages too long. 500 pages of describing the smells of wine. But I will read the next one.
I just wish the editors did a better job.
By Deborah Harkness
55. The Last of Hanako / Photo Shop Murder
I’ll count these as 1 as they’re short. Two books I picked up in Seoul that are part of The Portable Library of Korean Literature - short modern works translated into English.
Photo Shop Murder by Kim Young-Ha - Not good. Sort of sexist. Generic.
The Last of Hanako by Ch'oi Yun - This one I really really liked. Two interesting, and beautiful written multilayer stories on the theme of how women are marginalised in Korean society. Unfortunately I can only find 3 additional short stories translated into english by this author but I would LOVE to read more (or all) of her work.
56. The Gravity Between Us
Okay.
By Kristen Zimmer
57. The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin
Ahhh lesbian pirate adventure. Good fun.
By Colette Moody
58. The Vegetarian
Not my usual style, but I really liked the translation. She did a really great job and it was beautiful to read.
By Han Kang
59. How to Not Write Bad
Very good and useful.
By Ben Yagoda
60. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
I feel horrible saying this, but I actually liked the TV adaptation better :(
By Douglas Adams
60 - 63. Meg 1,2 and 4
Lol I was on holiday.
By Steve Alten
—————
This year wasn’t as high count-wise as last year, but I did do a lot of writing and traveling.
Total: 63
By gender: Men - 31 / Women - 32
By country: America - 37 / UK - 12 / Korea - 3 / Japan - 2 / Singapore, Iran, Pakistan, Brazil, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Wales - 1
By genre: Sci/Fi&Fantasy - 20 / NonFiction: 10 / Romance: 8 / YA: 7 / Horror: 7 / ShortStory&General Fiction: 5 / Action&Adventure: 4