I read a lot of books in 2016 and liked the vast majority of them. As a bit of a year-end project, I decided to pick ten I thought were the best and tell you why.
So here are those ten, in alphabetical order:
“Astoria,” by Peter Stark
This is history at its finest: An incredible story from a place you’ve known your whole life that you’ve somehow never heard before. Stark’s tale chronicles the birth and death of the Astoria colony at the mouth of the Columbia River, a much-forgotten part of America’s growth during the early nineteenth century. It also taught me more about beaver trapping than I ever thought I’d know.
“Barbarian Days,” by William Finnegan
I have never surfed, and Finnegan’s memoir makes me very sad of that fact. But the Pulitzer Prize winner is about a lot more than waves. In detailing his childhood in California and Hawai’i, his travels through the world, and the way that nothing in life has ever quite equaled the feeling of falling down a wall of water, Finnegan tells a universal and beautiful story about life, aging, and the things and people we remember.
“Counting Coup,” by Larry Colton
Colton spent a year with a high school girls basketball team on the Crow reservation in Montana. His protagonist is Sharon LaForge, the team’s star player and a microcosm of the many issues her tribe faces: alcoholism, abuse, misogyny, and a total lack of hope. His story hits all your typical season-with-the-team notes, but it also has a few heartbreaking twists that have stuck with me for the past nine months.
“Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” By Haruki Murakami
I’ve never experienced a novel quite like this one, a surreal dreamscape of unicorns and inklings and brain experimentation and very aggressive young women who like to wear pink. You’ll never think about your shadow in the same way again.
“The Perfect Pass,” by S.C. Gwynne
An absolute must-read for any self-respecting football nerd. Gwynne, a longtime journalist who’s also written books about the Comanche nation and Stonewall Jackson, shows off his versatility with a history of Hal Mumme, Mike Leach and the rise of the Air Raid offense.
“The Sports Gene,” by David Epstein
Epstein is a modern master of detailing the intersection between sports and science. Why are so many great sprinters from Jamaica? So many great marathoners from Kenya? Is the 10,000 hour rule real? His book will make you a much smarter sports fan.
“Titan,” by Ron Chernow
And now for something completely different: A 700-page biography of John D. Rockefeller. Not exactly light bedtime reading, but nonetheless an enthralling look at the most successful businessman in American history and an examination of the many factors that helped the United States rise to industrial prominence in the late nineteenth century.
“The Things They Carried,” by Timothy O’Brien
Fiction? Non-fiction? Probably more of the former, but does it really matter? This Vietnam War classic is a writer’s book—O’Brien’s craft is so clear and impressive—and should also probably be required reading for any elected official who makes decisions about sending children off to war.
“Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand
I was a few years late to the part on this one, but the story of runner-turned-solider-turned-captive-turned-hero Louis Zamperini is almost unbelievable. Zamperinie’s death in 2014 is a crucial reminder that the ranks of those among us who remember the absolute horrors of World War II are slowly shrinking.
“Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell,” by Chas Smith
For the first couple hundred pages, I couldn’t tell if I hated or loved Smith’s self-described “trash prose.” The final verdict was more clear. If you like chaos, stupidity, big waves and tall tales, this one’s for you. What might have happened if Hunter S. Thompson ever visited the North Shore of Oahu.