2016 Reading in Review

This may be a little late for a "Best of" list, as usual, but here again is my yearly review of books read in 2016.

I have not been as prolific a reader this year as in the past, and that is not because my reading is more demanding or thoughtful. Looking back at past posts, I see that I read 71 books in 2009, my first year of blogging - and most were not YA books. Some were hefty classics. In 2012, I read 60, but almost half were YA books. Blogging must have slowed my reading.  Last year I read 51 books. This year: only 43. Boo.

The two primary causes for the drop in the amount of reading are 1. teaching - my English classes, subbing in the school, and tutoring, which I officially quit this fall, coaching, and religious education - and 2. Media - but not blogging. 2016 was probably my least active year on the blog. I am not a constant phone checker, but I'll spend 15 or 45 minutes a couple times a day browsing through social media and email, which is time that could be spent reading. Also, for the past several months on weekend evenings with the kids we have been watching the Little House on the Prairie videos - other time that could be spent reading out loud. And having a toddler and teenagers wears out my brain, so time I used to spend reading is sometimes spent worrying about the kids.

Excuses, excuses - or simply analysis?  I like to do an accounting of sorts in an attempt to figure out how to devote more time to the things that matter. And sometimes I wonder how much reading is it important to do? I read a few blogs where the authors read a hundred or more books a year.  If you are a reviewer or an educator or an editor, you must be a prolific reader. But if not, reading a lot is just one choice of entertainment and edification over another.  I also see the reports and infographics of how little some people read - some people never read a book again after graduation, or haven't read a book in five years, etc.

As a reader and teacher, these numbers are horrifying but don't reveal a moral failure, exactly.  Surely, the world would be a better place if people read more rather than gossiping on-line, but many people choose to spend time with family or on other hobbies - knitting, drawing, whittling, whatever - rather than reading.  And reading junk books probably ranks on par with binging on Netflix series, as we have been doing with The Crown.  Another sort of learning...

Leaving behind conjecture to move on to the analysis of what I have read this year:

• 43 books
• 5 were rereads: Song of the Lark, The Bridge Over San Luis Rey, Sing Down the Moon, Little House on the Prairie, A Right to Be Merry
• 21 were fiction.
• 8 of those were YA or children's chapter books
• 22 were nonfiction
• of which 15 were spiritual reading, thanks to my Catholic book club
• 2 were anthologies of short stories and poetry. I actually did quite a bit of reading in preparation for my literature course this year, since I hadn't taught one in a while that had a focus on Western Lit from Ancient Times to the Renaissance.  But I didn't count that in my reading list because it was mostly excerpts and scanning for selections to assign.
• 4 were books in translation: the Mauriac, the 2 by Fr. Jacques Philippe, and Amoris Laetitia, so not a lot of diversity. 
• Sadly, only 2 could maybe count as classics, and those are a stretch - I don't think I read anything published before 1915: Song of the Lark and 1927 Bridge Over San Luis Rey. Maybe Little House on the Prairie? 

Favorites: Fiction: Song of the Lark, All the Light You Cannot See, 
Nonfiction: Man's Search for Meaning, When Breath Becomes Air, A Right to Be Merry
Least Favorite: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Doing this analysis shows me that I really need to expand my reading.  I didn't read any novels that were "don't miss in this lifetime." The book I mention most to fellow readers is When Breath Becomes Air.  Next year I need to make sure I read at least a couple classics, a couple books from non-Western authors, and a book or two that could be life changing or at least unforgettable in the near future.

That ties in to next year: The Immediate Book Meme courtesy of the Darwins and Melanie:

1. What book are you reading now?
The Faith Club by Ranya Idliby, Priscilla Oliver, and Suzanne Warner
This is a collection of conversations between three women of different faiths (Muslim, Christian, and Jewish) who meet to write an interfaith children's book after 9/11 in an attempt to overcome prejudice and misunderstandings. It came out in 2007. The concept is interesting and so are the conversations, but I keep finding myself surprised that it is these three women who are preparing to write a book. All three of them are not particularly active in living their respective faiths. I am thinking that by the end of the book they not only will gain a deeper understanding of the three Abrahamic traditions, but that they also engage with and love the faith they explain, although I suspect the book remains rather surface level.
Louisa: An Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams by Louisa Thomas
This is an advanced reading copy of a biography of Mrs. John Quincy Adams.  I'm having a really hard time sticking with it. While the time period is fascinating and the main characters have interesting roles in American history, the author makes both Mr. and Mrs. Adams rather unlikable.  She's sickly and querulous; he's demanding and unsympathetic.  Other major figures in the time period remain shadowy.  I haven't stopped reading it because I'm fascinated by the early years of American diplomacy. JQR is busy trying to establish America's presence as an independent nationality and wants his wife, who has never set foot on American soil, although her parents were Americans living in Paris, to represent republican ideals.  An interesting to be alive.

I need something new.

2. What book did you just finish?
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance  The link is to the WSJ interview with the author, which gives a good taste of what the book is about.  This may end up being one of my favorite books of the year.  It was less political than I thought it was going to be, and more of a memoir.  The author is a Kentucky hillbilly who finds success after he is taken in by his grandmother, joins the Marines, eventually goes to Ohio State and finally to Yale Law School, where he was mentored by Amy Chua, the Tiger Mother.  The setting is familiar. The rough characters that Vance grows up with are humanized and given a lovable side, which they deserve after being stereotyped by the people who don't understand how Trump could win this election.  This book is a reminder of Mother Theresa's admonission that we need to serve those here at home before seeking outside of our family/nation for those who need help. 

I bought this book as a gift for my dad and then read it while he was visiting, so I didn't write down any favorite lines, and it's not really that type of book, but my favorite part of the interview: "Mr. Vance goes back to Ohio a few times a year to see his aunt, sister and father (with whom he reconnected when he was 12), and tries to go back to Kentucky regularly. “I don’t feel at all like I can’t go back home,” he says. “The weird thing about my life is that I always feel a little out of place in both Ohio and among the elites, but I’m always most comfortable when I’m around my family.”"

I sometimes feel that same alien way out here in on the left coast. 

What Pope Francis Really Said by Tom Hoopes 
This was the book club choice for January. A quick, good read, much already familiar. As Nancy Gibbs, a writer from Rolling Stone, said, "He has not changed the words, but he has changed the music." . I already mentioned it as the source of my resolutions to build a charism of encouragement and a culture of encounter.  He mentions how technology "tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic. In the most radical sense of the term, power is its motive -- a lordship over all."  A favorite anecdote: when he visits the Little Sisters of the Poor in America and says that you need to sing into the ear of Jesus daily "I love you, Jesus. I'm doing this for you; ...if it's just one of those days when everything is hard, you can look at that difficult resident and say, "you know, Jesus, you're really being a nuisance right now. You are really being spoiled, Jesus! I'm doing this for you!" 

Francis seems to embody what it means to have a friendship with Jesus and to have a true understanding of how Mary inspires "the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness."

Cincinnati Review.  From the Little Free Library book box. How does so much dull, gloomy writing get published? And why did I waste my time reading it? The poetry brings to mind Dana Gioia's complaint against modern verse for being opaque. Or completely nonsensical, as the case may be.

3. What do you plan to read next?

From the Little Free Library: Gettysburg Review. I picked this up at the same time as the Cincinnati Review. I loved reading Granta and Lapham's Quarterly. We'll see if this holds any treasures or if it puts me off reviews for a good long time.

For Catholic Ladies Book Club - we don't have a pick for next month or the rest of the year, but I'm going to recommend Sarah Swafford's Emotional Virtue because I bought it for my daughter on the advice of a friend who works in youth ministry. Need suggestions! Have any good ideas for books on a spiritual topic that would suit discussion in a book club?

I saw a couple books at the library book sale that I want to read: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro and Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

I occasionally check if the Elena Ferrante books are on the shelf at the library but the first one never is.

What classics should I add to my TBR?  Loved reading Agatha Christie. Thought about looking for Barbara Pym for my 9th grader because I want her to branch out of YA mysteries and dystopian romances.  And for a read aloud? I have an illustrated copy of the Secret Garden I might pick up with the fifth grader.

4. What book do you keep meaning to finish?
Louisa - not loving it.  About to give up. Same with The Faith Club. May skim to the end and then put back in the give-away box.

5. What book do you keep meaning to start?
Helena - Evelyn Waugh. It has been sitting on my book shelf since the church garage sale last January.

A book by Anthony Trollope that I purchased at the library book sale last April. Can't remember the title.

I am invited to three book clubs next month, two made up of military spouses, one is the high school PTO book of the semester meeting which is another book about kids and sex. The other selections are Angry Housewives Eating BonBons and a book inspired by Girl on the Train called The Girl from Perfume River.

I may not join any of these book clubs

A family read aloud - not sure what it should be.

6. What is your current reading trend?
Random books from the Little Free Library, religious book for book club, mind candy books like the time travel mysteries by Connie Willis.