What Are You Reading in 2016? | 53 Suggestions
How do you choose which books you’re going to read? The New York Times Bestseller List? Book reviews in other publications? Suggestions from friends and family?
I definitely use mainly the latter, but over the last several years I have also gotten into the habit of saving reading lists and book challenge lists from around the web. This year I decided to be a bit more systematic with choosing my list for 2016 (Remember I want to read 64 books this year). So I went through seven of the lists I have saved, and picked a few, okay a bunch, to go on my To Be Read List for 2016.
Last year I sort of started this practice when I chose 12 books to read from The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge (I only read four, so I am carrying over the other eight).
The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge
Total read so far: 90
Goal for 2016: 16
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
How The Light Gets In by M J Hyland
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Stephen Pressfield
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Bambi by Felix Salten
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
And I’m filling out my list with books pulled from thefollowing challenges or lists. Each heading links to the source, so you can click over to see the complete lists.
7 Wonderful Books That You Can Read in Less Than A Day
Ficciones by Jorge Louis Borge
We the Animals by Justin Torres
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (I’ll read it in French!)
43 Life-Changing Books
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Jubilee by Margaret Walker
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams
Books Recommended by Stephen King
List 1 | List 2
The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
The Quick by Lauren Owen
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Marauders by Tom Cooper
Literary travel: around the world in 10 must-read books
Beauty on Earth by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz
Smile as they Bow by Nu Nu Yi
The Ladies are Upstairs by Merle Collins (written by an author from my homeland Grenada!)
By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
21 Books From The Last 5 Years That Every Woman Should Read
22 Contemporary Authors You Absolutely Should Be Reading
Pym by Mat Johnson
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (I’ve already started this one, it’s amazing!)
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Phew! That’s 53 reads for my list. My goal for the year is 64, so that leaves me wiggle room for any other great books I may happen to come across.
Have you read any of these? Would you recommend any others?
Now excuse me while I go see which of my older books I can sell so that I can finance my 2016 reading!
