This has really been a fantastic year for reading (and rereading), for me. I think the best, actually. I read mostly collections and chapbooks, reread some favorites and there are some nonfiction titles in here, though I wish I’d read more nonfiction. Here’s my list:
Ayiti by Roxane Gay
Magnificent Mistakes by Eric Bosse
How the Days of Love & Diptheria by Robert Kloss
Short Dark Oracles by Sara Levine
So You Know It’s Me by Brian Oliu
The Wild Grass and Other Stories by Davin Malasarn
Us by Michael Kimball
Tongue Party by Sarah Rose Etter
This is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks
Hard to Say by Ethel Rohan
Cut Through the Bone by Ethel Rohan
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore (reread)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (reread)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (reread)
The Bee-Loud Glad by Steve Himmer
Normally Special by xtx
Mad to Live by Randall Brown (reread)
Mostly Redneck: Stories by Rusty Barnes
Suspended Heart by Heather Fowler
Asunder by Robert Lopez
At Home: A Short History of Private Life (audio) by Bill Bryson
How They Were Found by Matt Bell
The Physics of Imaginary Objects by Tina May Hall
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddartha Mukherjee
Museum of the Weird by Amelia Gray
New Stories From the South, 2010 Amy Hempel (ed.)
When All Our Days Are Numbered, Bands Will Fill the Streets & We Will Not Hear Them Because We Will Be Upstairs in the Clouds by Sasha Fletcher
Ghost Machine by Ben Mirov
Natural Habitat by Michelle Reale
Love Doesn’t Work by Henning Koch
Inside a Broken Clock by Sam Rasnake
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
First Love by Ivan Turgenev
Stoner by John Williams
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen (mother daughter book club)
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
Ampersand, Mass. by William Walsh
Look! Look! Feathers by Mike Young
Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter
The Other Life by Ellen Meister
Death is Not An Option by Suzanne Rivecca
Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson
Peeled by Joan Bauer (mother daughter book club)
Ron Carlson Writes a Story by Ron Carlson
The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg
Michael Martone by Michael Martone
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (reread)
The Bill Bryson book should not be on this list. This is my two-star review on Goodreads:
“This is pretty fascinating and I generally like Bill Bryson, but the book is heavily concentrated on the fascinating discoveries/inventions/accomplishments of men. Women are only mentioned for the silly things they did as the wives of these men or for writing silly books Bryson describes as “unreadable then and probably unreadable now.” Apparently in all his exhaustive research on the history of private life, Bryson found no significant contributions by women.”
Bah!
But I heartily recommend every other book on this list.