Best books I read: 2016

2016 was a big rebound, in terms of both quantity and quality, from my reading nadir of 2015. I found some real gems this year, and more than doubled my raw total to get back up to 2014's figure of 36 books. But more than any recovery in reading, I found that this was the year when I made the most progress on my writing. A few years ago I made a firm commitment to myself to write a review for any book that I finished. They range all the way from quick paragraphs to multi-thousand word monstrosities, but I've found that I enjoy writing them almost as much as reading the books themselves, and I do feel like I've actually gotten better at creating them. I've accepted by now that I'll never be "happy" with my own writing, cursing myself as I do at all the places I see where I could have been clearer, funnier, or more insightful - but I've learned that other people enjoy them, and that in itself is worth a lot to me. All of these paragraph summaries below go to the full reviews on Goodreads, and of course you should be following me there as well!

What was best this year? In terms of fiction, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels became personal favorites, and even though I don't often have the time to re-read books these days, I can easily see myself dipping back into them to more fully absorb their story. I'm also going to keep plowing through the one or two Michel Houellebecq that I haven't read yet, as well as Robertson Davies, who also stood out in a crowded year for non-fiction. All of the non-fiction in my top 10 are no-brainer recommendations, but if you had to read only one, I would pick either Geoffrey Miller or Tom Vanderbilt's books. Here's to 2017!

Fiction:

Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel. I read that Borges praised this book, and indeed in the Introduction he says that "To classify it as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole." While I'm not quite sure it reaches those Olympian heights of accomplishment, this hazy, hallucinatory science fiction novella posed an enormous number of great questions. It begins as the simple diary of a man hiding from the world on a remote tropical island who encounters some mysterious intruders, but the slow revelation of its premise is eventually tied in with the main character's impossible, unrequited love in a way that also manages to function as a 1930s-era reaction to the invention of motion pictures with sound, which is pretty interesting from the perspective of 2016. Its simple, clear prose comes across well even in Ruth Simms' translation, which makes the otherworldly events of the novel more vivid in that H.G. Wells way (whose own The Island of Doctor Moreau is an obvious influence). And much like a Wells novel, Casares's work touches on broader social themes like the morality of technology, how it offers escape from nature, and its effect on population.

Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others. A fantastic mix of science fiction short stories that don't skimp on the science or the fiction. While many individual aspects of the stories reminded me of more famous works, that should only be a credit to Chiang, as he never simply repeats any of his predecessors and always provides a new and interesting angle on the general ideas. One of the hardest things to do in fiction is to establish a unique voice, and while I would never call his prose style particularly distinctive, he's able to get his concepts talking for him in a way that few authors manage.

Robertson Davies - A Mixture of Frailties. Every Davies book I've read so far has been really enjoyable, but I found this one truly exceptional. His later novels are more technically skilled - the Deptford trilogy taken as whole contains more detailed characters and more insight into the subjectivity and serendipity of personal experience - but of his individual works that I've read, this one presents Davies' personal philosophy of "live life to the fullest" in the most engaging way. I realize that to a reader in 2016, "the Canadian inferiority complex towards British art and society circa the 1950s" might not at first seem to be the most riveting thematic scaffold for that idea, yet the way that he entwines that commentary with the musical training and personal growth of a young girl from Canada sent to England to learn about art is both a great narrative and fun from a meta perspective, without ever being overly self-aware. In fact, the more you give yourself over to how harmonious Davies' view of life is, the more it rubs off on you, and you wish more authors could blend comedy and drama so smoothly.

Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name. I've read that Ferrante split the single Neapolitan Novels story into four volumes for publishing reasons, but it's perfect that the reader gets dropped right back in, because the intensity of the story hasn't let up a bit. My current summary of what the books are "about", which is a silly way to box in such a fearless and expansive creation, is the power of choices in life. Well, it's also about the futility of completely excising memories, what happens when people try to create new lives for themselves, the problems of love that come with adulthood, the importance of small decisions that you're often unaware you've made, the strengths and limits of education as a way to improve your life, how hard it is to see yourself as a full and complete person, the difference between how you see things and others see things, and, of course, Elena's ever-more complex relationship with Lila, her best friend and chief spiritual rival, which has gotten both richer and more distant as their lives diverge.

Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. Neapolitan Novels volume 3 is not any less gripping then the preceding two volumes, even if it starts off a bit slower than volume 2. Elena's steadily intensifying domestic drama easily overcomes a weak self-referential subplot about the critical reception of the novel she wrote in the last book, while Lila's struggles with the fallout of her own decisions become even more interesting when set against the labor militancy of the time. While both characters live in much larger worlds than they did as children, and desperately seek to widen their horizons and pursue their own dreams, they still find themselves constrained by their own choices and their own personal limitations. It's remarkable how much Ferrante makes you sympathize with people making truly terrible decisions out of short-term blindness, but I think most readers will be slapping their foreheads in frustration by the end of this one, as Elena's momentous decision at the book's climax really makes you wonder if Voltaire's line of "to know all is to forgive all" is actually true.

Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child. The final volume of the Neapolitan Novels has just the balance of clarity and ambiguity that it deserves. All of the plotlines are "closed", but the central mystery of Lila's place in Elena's life is open forever, as it should be. Her children have given her a mixture of pride and frustration. Her past lovers brought both disappointment and fulfillment. Even the city of Naples, which she's been constantly running from but never entirely leaving, remains as alienating as it is inescapable. She ends the final book with Lila having vanished from her life, trying to write the story of her relationship with her best friend, knowing that it will never truly capture the most essential aspects of that friendship but unable to desist. You knew exactly how the story would end from the very beginning of the first volume, but you had to see how Ferrante would get there, and that ability to compel the reader's attention over the subsequent thousands of pages is the mark of a truly great writer. I can nitpick individual parts of the series but overall it's exactly as great as everyone says it is.

Nick Hornby - High Fidelity. The film version of High Fidelity is the greatest romantic comedy about music fans ever made. The book itself, which I'd stupidly not read until just now, was not one bit less good. As with all truly meaningful art, I found different things to relate to now than I did when I saw the movie back in college, but much of it was just as great as I remember: the protagonist has the right balance of likability and unlikability, his music obsession is as admirable as it is embarrassing, and the resolutions of his personal and professional crises are as inspirational as they are aspirational. As a romantic fantasy for anyone who thinks that sharing musical taste (or any kind of taste) with someone means that everything will always work out for the best, High Fidelity can't be beaten, and even the parts where I disagreed with the plot had me thinking about how my own life was "supposed" to go. Even its sappy ending is unhateable.

Michel Houellebecq - Platform. Platform is a great example of Houellebecq as a deeply moral writer. That might sound like an odd description for someone who writes such lovingly detailed scenes of group sex, but it's true - amid his signature brand of overwhelming cynicism for the modern world, Platform contains some of his most moving passages on the search for happiness and fulfillment. If you read Houellebecq's novels out of order, like me, then it's striking how consistent yet unrepetititive he is. In each novel he has the same preoccupations, the same characters, and the same writing style, and though you would think that only a very few hands could be drawn from such a small deck, the strength of those themes, his ability to place his essentially identical author-surrogates in fresh situations, and his great sense of irony and black comedy make his books worth shuffling through. The sex doesn't hurt, either.

Michel Houellebecq - Submission. Submission was published on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo shootings in 2015. That tragedy only deepens Houellebecq's novel, which could not be more relevant to questions of cultural identity and the individual's relationship to changes in the surrounding society. And even though the book is deeply political - the French left vs the right, nativism vs the existing power structure, secularism vs Catholicism vs Islam, traditional French national identity vs new possibilities, the Enlightenment vs pre-Enlightenment thought - fundamentally Houellebecq's classical preoccupation with the modern self remains: which direction does the contemporary man turn to for truth in a post-everything world? Once every modern source of authority is suspect or discredited, what's left to answer the pull of ancient dogma? Furthermore, by returning to religious certainties, what exactly would be lost?

Enrique Vila-Matas - Bartleby & Co. High-concept literature like this provides so much pure pleasure that it's a real shame that a sequel would be inappropriate. Taking its title and central inspiration from Melville's immortal scrivener who would "prefer not to", this is an "anti-novel" in the form of 86 footnotes about writers who would also prefer not to, who possess the capability to write and create but choose instead to refrain. Channeling Kafka, Pessoa, Borges, Beckett, Salinger, and many more, Vila-Matas provides an oddly hopeful exploration of the various motivations that writers use to avoid practicing their craft, from seclusion to despair, exhaustion, and suicide. Yet as this novel is itself an act of creation, Vila-Matas shows that even the lengthiest list of Nos can still somehow add up to a Yes. 

Non-Fiction:

Robertson Davies - One Half of Robertson Davies. There are few things more pleasant or more absorbing to read than a work by someone of enormous erudition, perception, and taste where they just let loose and talk about the subjects most near and dear to their heart for as long as they want to. I've always thought that Davies' prose style - learned, opinionated, funny, curious sarcastic, but above all reader-friendly - would work at least as well spoken as it does on the page, and boy does it ever here. This is a collection of mostly speeches that he gave throughout the later part of his career, mixed with a few short stories, plus a few odds and ends. The primary highlight for me was the four long lectures in Part Five where he talks about the Problem of Evil in literature, drawing heavily on the Jungian philosophy that underlies the Deptford trilogy, but this is a phenomenal companion to his novels and essential for any Davies fan. I came away thinking that the title was even more cleverly chosen than he intended, since it means that it contains only just a part of him, and you end it wanting much more.

Rene Girard - Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. The basic theory of mimesis, or "imitative desire" laid out in the first 10 pages of this book is one of the most powerful and thought-provoking literary theories I've ever read. In the best tradition of revelatory theories, Girard's thesis that the lion's share of our desires, be they physical objects, sexual partners, glamour-related, or status-based, come from observing and copying the desires of others is intuitively sensible, convincingly argued, and infinitely applicable. Sometimes it takes a particular phrasing to make something click in your mind, and while the idea behind "keeping up with the Jones" is as old as the hills, the way that Girard connects the source of envy, jealousy, and hatred to both the appeal of classic literature and the petty emotions of everyday life is so elegant you'll wonder why you never thought of it in that way before. The rest of the book is a long exegesis of examples from great novels you probably haven't read, but the core insight is so valuable that it's worth powering through the rest of the book.

Jennifer Homans - Apollo's Angels. To my surprise, this appears to be the first general history of ballet ever written. That's a real shame, because as Homans shows, ballet is more than just another slowly dying elite artform like opera. Not only is it intimately linked to the other cornerstones of Western culture like music, theater, and film, it continues to set the standard for demonstrating how the movement of the body can produce beauty. You don't have to be a ballet fanatic to enjoy this book, but some familiarity helps, as she deeply explores the history of the form; its artistic movements; the cultural influence of France, Italy, and especially Russia; the major composers, choreographers, and dancers; and of course the actual ballets themselves, explaining much of the symbolism that a layman like myself would not have noticed otherwise. Homans danced with George Balanchine's School of American Ballet for several years, and so her intimate understanding of ballet's appeal to both the head and the heart is apparent on every page, and even though she writes with sadness of the passing of ballet's glory years, your "to watch" list will still be quite large after finishing.

Ian MacDonald - Revolution In the Head. The Sixties have left a cultural hangover that we haven't slept off in 50 years, and The Beatles were one of the strongest drinks of that decade. Even if you're not a superfan, it's worth pondering why so many people keep coming back to the bar for another round, and MacDonald produced an incredibly well-researched look into their music and its place in that decade and beyond that actually discusses the music itself, as well as its social context, without devolving into Baby Boomer navel-gazing or unthinking fandom, though he tacks on some endearingly reactionary rants about how much better music was back in the day. I had never read a book on The Beatles before, but now I don't feel like I need another one. MacDonald is "critical" in the best sense of the word, enthusiastically poring over just about every aspect of the songs, from the historical background to the composition to the lyrics to the music, with a perceptive, nuanced, intelligent ear for what made their songs so surprising and distinctive. He's able to show where they fit into the context of their times, and also why they still matter to so many people, while not failing to point out when they wrote a lazy tune or flubbed a take. Best of all, even if you were understandably a bit tired of the most endlessly discussed rock group in history, he makes you want to relisten to the music all over again.

Geoffrey Miller - Spent. This book hooked me from its name alone: not only is the pun on its subtitle of Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior exactly my sense of humor, those subjects are right up my alley. Miller's thesis is that much of modern conspicuous consumption is a waste, and not just in the environmental sense. In his view, much of what we buy as signaling and trait display devices are also a waste in evolutionary terms, because human beings are already extremely good at figuring out who they want to have sex with, and most purchases don't actually add much value to the whole mating determination process. Proving that takes him through evolutionary psychology, the economics of consumption, product marketing and consumer behavior, signaling theory, the relationship between technological progress and human nature, the quantification of personality types, how shared qualities like musical taste relate to sexual attraction, and the politics of conservation. He's really funny and well-read, with a keen eye for how our endless quests to spread our genes manifest themselves in our product purchases, with plenty of references not only to recent scientific research, but also to relevant pop culture like The Sims.

Viginia Postrel - Glamour. Before I read this, I had thought of glamour as being essentially synonymous with glitz; some showy display designed for and appreciated by shallow people. Not "serious"; not for me. Postrel did a phenomenal job of showing me how wrong I was, articulating how universal the concept of glamour is and how it works, and really putting the lie to the idea that you can be somehow "above" fashion, style, or trends. She manages the neat trick of posing questions of taste without imposing questionable taste herself, and discusses what makes things attractive and desirable to people in an approachable and insightful way. Replete with plenty of examples from all aspects of life, the book gives you a fascinating way to analyze your own desires and sense of aesthetics. Perhaps even more importantly, it conclusively demonstrates that anyone who doubts that illusions are not only important but even necessary in their life is merely participating in an ever bigger illusion.

Robert Simonson - A Proper Drink. Craft cocktails have absolutely exploded in my lifetime, if you (quite reasonably, in my mind) define "lifetime" as "my life once I turned drinking age". If it seems like liquor drinks have gotten way more complicated than a simple gin and tonic since the turn of the millennium, it's because they have: the dramatic surge in the quality, variety, complexity, and popularity of craft cocktails is a very recent phenomenon with a surprisingly international backstory. Simonson reaches all over the planet to profile the bars, drinks, ingredients, and bartenders who transformed cocktail drinking from the sullen refuge of depressed midcentury businessmen into the performative artisanal showcase for trendy young people that we know it as today. If you've wondered why there's suddenly so many Prohibition-themed bars popping up near you or why there's so many baffling variations on a French 75, look no further than this book.

Andrei Tarkovsky - Sculpting In Time. It's always a pleasure when great artists talk about the art that they consider great and why. Tarkovsky would be a cinema legend if all he had ever done was Stalker, but here he shows, even beyond the evidence of his other films, that he's articulate and insightful enough about art in general to be worth reading for his criticism alone. In this essay collection he uses his own movies as specific examples of his general aesthetic philosophy, but his real sights are set a bit higher than his own work: the purposes of art; how spirituality informs his creative goals; how cinema differs from the other arts like painting, theatre, literature, music, etc; the problem of communicating and connecting to an audience without writing "for" them; and most importantly, why time itself is the primary medium of film. Many of his opinions are contentious, but his personality is strong enough that if you were ever curious about why so much ink was spilled over the "auteur theory" of film back in the day, this is one reason why.

Peter Turchin - Ultrasociety. Ultrasociety is an extension of Turchin's thesis, laid out in his earlier War and Peace and War, that warfare is the primary driver of civilization. Why are humans so good at cooperating together in groups? Because warfare between groups is a powerful selector for traits of cooperation, so over time societies that have been good at getting their members to work together within groups have outcompeted less cohesive ones. Or, as Benjamin Franklin said to encourage his fellows struggling to establish a new group identity: "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." This inside the tribe/outside the tribe distinction has fascinating implications for many aspects of modern society, in particular understanding how and why many types of violence have declined over time, so if War and Peace and War often seemed like a response to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel, Ultrasociety can be seen as a response to Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature.

Tom Vanderbilt - You May Also Like. I've been fascinated with taste for a long time, and Vanderbilt, whose previous work Traffic is a must-read for anyone with a commute, collected in this book almost everything I've ever wanted to say about it. He discusses what taste is, where it comes from, how it works, and how it relates to status - plus plenty of other aspects I hadn't thought of, all over such varied domains as food, wine, beer, music, art, film, architecture, pet breeds, and baby names. As you would expect for such a complicated, circular, and subjective topic, his analysis is somewhat digressive, but in a good way, with plenty of specific and well-chosen examples. He's careful to build upon the works of famous philosophers of taste like Pierre Bourdieu, Immanuel Kant, and David Hume, updating their thoughts about objectivity, social determination, and personal identity for the modern era. He investigates the act of judgment while being reasonably non-judgmental himself. Best of all, his conclusions are lots of fun to discuss: is our sense of taste a carefully curated expression of our innermost selves, or the circumstantial accumulation of stochastically-determined signaling indicators that are essentially meaningless in and of themselves? Both!