2016 End of the Year Book Survey

What a crazy year this has been! Adding a baby to our family made it trickier to sit down with a book, but I still read some great ones. I’m ready for 2017, but first it’s time to take a bookish survey. I love these because they make me think about all the books I've read over the past 12 months.  

Two trends I saw in the books I read. One was fantastic descriptions of food (Relish, Sweetbitter, and Kitchens of the Great Midwest). The other was rotating perspective (Underground Railroad, Commonwealth, Did You Ever Have a Familiy). It’s always interesting when you see trends, because those books become linked in your mind.

Any books I reread this year are not eligible for this list. It was fun to reread a few favorites this year, like The Night Circus and some of the Narnia series. I didn’t count the piles upon piles of children’s books I read in this list. I also don’t limit myself to one book per answer if there are two or three that really fit perfectly.

Number of Books You Read: 125
Number of Re-Reads: 10

1. Best Book You Read In 2016?

Classics — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Germinal, Our Mutual Friend
Historical Fiction — The Underground Railroad
Mystery —The Trespasser 
Literary Fiction — Kitchens of the Great Midwest
Nonfiction — When Breath Becomes Air, The View from the Cheap Seats, Alexander Hamilton
Fantasy —The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear
Play — The Miracle Worker
Science Fiction — Dark Matter  
YA — Pippi Longstocking, The Selection series
Graphic Novel — Relish 

2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t? My Brilliant Friend, I think it was just way over-hyped. Lila by Marilynne Robinson, I really enjoyed Gilead and this is a parallel novel, but it didn’t work for me. 
 

3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read? The Selection, I thought it would be total fluff (mainly because of the cover), but I really enjoyed it! I liked that it focused on the political structure more than just the reality-show-style competition. 

4. Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read? The Kingkiller Chronicles 

5. Best series you started in 2016? Best Sequel of 2016? Best Series Ender of 2016? The Name of the Wind / Thrice Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d / The One (Kiera Cass) 

6. Favorite new author you discovered in 2016? Noah Hawley (Before the Fall) 

7. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone? The Girls from Ames 

8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?

Dark Matter 

9. Book You Read In 2016 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year? The Name of the Wind 

 

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2016? Commonwealth 

11. Most memorable character of 2016?

 Étienne Lantier in Germinal and Kvothe from The Kingkiller Chronicles 

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2016? Our Mutual Friend and Commonwealth 

13. Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2016? The More of Less and When Breath Becomes Air 

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2016 to finally read? Germinal, it’s been on my TBR for YEARS. I’m so thrilled I finally read it. 

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2016?

“One can learn from a glance at a person’s library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.” – Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d 

“If you would have your son to walk honorably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them - not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone.” – Tenant of Wildfell Hall 

“There's no royal road to learning; and what is life but learning!” –Our Mutual Friend

16. Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2016? We Should All Be Feminists: 65 pages / Our Mutual Friend: 880 pages 

17. Book That Shocked You The Most Before I Go to Sleep and Dark Matter 

18. One True Pairing (a couple that you ship)? Kvothe and Denna from the Kingkiller Chronicles

19. Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship of the Year: Ove and his neighbor Parvaneh 

20. Favorite Book You Read in 2016 From an Author You’ve Read Previously:  The Trespasser, What Alice Forgot

21. Book You Read Based SOLELY on a Recommendation from Somebody Else/Peer Pressure: The Lunar Chronicles and The Raven Boys Cycle 

22. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2016? Stefan from Along the Infinite Sea (very Casablanca) 

23. Best 2016 debut you read? The Underground Railroad 

24. Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year? The Name of the Wind and Kitchens of the Great Midwest (the best food scenes!)

 

25. Book That Put a Smile on Your Face/Was the Most FUN To Read? Notorious RBG 

26. Book That Made You Cry or Nearly Cry in 2016? A Man Called Ove, The Light Between Oceans, and The Boys in the Boat 

27. Hidden Gem of The Year? The Fox and the Star and Seven Women, I particularly loved reading about the lives of Rosa Parks and Maria Skobtsova. 

28. Book That Crushed Your Soul? When Breath Becomes Air and Did You Ever Have a Family 

29. Most Unique Book You Read In 2016? Tree of Codes 

30. Book That Made You The Most Mad? The Life We Bury

1. Best bookish event that you participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, memes, etc.)? Dewey read-a-thon in October, co-hosting the Germinal and The Fireman readalongs, and the Elizabeth Strout author reading I attended. 

2. Best bookish discover (book related sites, book stores, etc.)? Litsy! It’s the best app for book lovers.

3. Most challenging thing about blogging or your reading life this year? Having a baby! Reading with a kiddo in the house is definitely harder, but it’s still doable. 

4.  Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year? I finished my Reading the States challenge for fiction books.

Thanks to Perpetual Page Turner for once again hosting this survey!

Germinal Readalong Wrap-Up

Whoa. What a ride! This story of French coal miners going on strike in the 1860s sounded so dull to me when someone first recommended it. Then someone else mentioned it, then another person, and I began to think I needed to check it out. Before I dive into the details I will say that I ended up loving it. It's a powerful book and a few of the scenes are seared into my memory forever. What did you all think?

Germinal

by Emilé Zola

★★★★☆

From here on out there are spoilers. I'd recommend skipping the review if you haven't read it.

Étienne Lantier arrives in a French town looking for work. Soon he's down in the depths of the earth mining for coal. He becomes friends with a man named Maheu who is a hard worker and well-respected in the mine. The working conditions are atrocious and there's barely enough pay for workers to scrap by. Grumblings start to increase among the workers and eventually they decide to go to their boss to ask for higher compensation and a few small things.

Maheu is chosen to speak for everyone and he does so in a calm and dignified way. When their request is casually rejected the situation inevitably escalates. The decide to strike and a mob forms and they travel through the countryside in a whirlwind of destruction. The mob mentality makes the workers willing to do things they would never normally do, Things spiral out of control as the mob continues to progress. Even Étienne who wants to protect the pump at the beginning, later wants to destroy it in his frustration. It culminates in the death  of a man named Negrel when he falls from a roof while trying to escape the mob. The women gruesomely mutilate his corpse as the police arrive.

"It was the red vision of the revolution, which would one day inevitably carry them all away, on some bloody evening at the end of the century."

Maheu's daughter Catherine's story really struck a chord with me. She is raped by a man named Chaval, but because of the way their culture views women, she basically just becomes his property. He's brutal and jealous and she believes she has no other choice, even though Étienne loves her.

In the final third of the novel there is a collapse at the mine and workers, including Étienne, Catherine, and Chaval, are trapped underground. The scenes are harrowing as we read about their loved ones reactions above ground, but once we descend into the pits it's so much worse. I loved that after all the turmoil the workers still wanted to rescue their fellow miners.

"All the colliers rushed to offer themselves in an upsurge of brotherhood and solidarity. They forgot the strike, they did not trouble themselves at all about payment; they might get nothing, they only asked to risk their lives as soon as comrades lives were in danger."

There was one scene that chronicles the mad dash of a work horse that still haunts me. The animal, Bataille, is desperately trying to find his way out, but in his fearful galloping he becomes trapped as water rises. It was awful to read.

"It was a sight of fearful agony, this old beast shattered and motionless, struggling at this depth, far from the daylight. The flood was drowning his mane, and his cry of distress never ceased; he uttered it more hoarsely, with his large open mouth stretched out."

Another memorable scene took place above ground. The Gregorie family owns the mine. Circumstances lead them to visit one of the miner's homes with a few gifts and during the visit Cécile, the adult daughter, is strangled to death by one of the old workers, Bonnemort. That summery doesn't do the scene justice. The eerie calm as the two people looked at each other before the violence begins, the screams of her mother when she realizes what happened; it's heartbreaking. No one seems to leave this novel completely unscathed. 

BOTTOM LINE: I was expecting a boring book with political rants about social injustice. Instead I found the gripping story of a group of people mired in an impossible situation. They are desperate and in those dire moments they are capable of the unthinkable. Just a fantastic read. 

"He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle; and he thought angrily of those 'people' Bonnemort had told him about, and of the squat and sated deity to whom ten thousand starving men and women daily offered up their flesh without ever knowing who or what this god might be." 

 

Thanks for reading along my fellow #GerminalAlong folks! And thanks to Care's Books and Pie for hosting with me and sending out awesome postcards! 

Germinal Readalong

Do you guys have any unread books that just seem to haunt you? You know the ones. You've been meaning to read it for years, but you never quite get to it even though tons of people have recommended it to you. 

Well for me, that book is Germinal by Emilé Zola and this year I'm actually going to read it! The one word I see the most in reviews of the book is "gripping". I don't know why this one is so intimidating to me, but it is. 

Here's Penguin's summary...

"Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all."

So if you're interested in reading this one, join Care's Books and Pie and me as we brave this French classic. We'll be posting thoughts as we go on Twitter, Litsy, and Instagram at #GerminalAlong. It will be a very casual readalong, but it will be fun to share thoughts. I will post a wrap-up at the end of the month as well. I hope you'll join us!

To wrap things up, here's a quote from Daniel Radcliff about the book...

“[Germinal] made me realize that when books are considered ‘classics,’ most of the time they’re actually very readable and exciting.”

November Classic Club Meme Question

This month the Classics Club asks us to pick a classic someone else in the club has read from the big review list. What about their post makes you excited to read that classic in particular?

For years I’ve been meaning to read something by Emilé Zola and Germinal is one that is frequently recommended to me. When I read Riv’s review of it at Bookish Realm I knew I needed to bump it up the TBR list. The final line of her review is what really did it…

“I want more Zola in my life.”

I’ve felt that way about authors before and I understand the sentiment. Then I read Adam’s review of the same book at Roof Beam Reader and a line in his review stood out to me. He is talking about Zola’s writing style:

“It is simultaneously beautiful, self-reflective, and transporting.”

I think that between those reviews I have very little excuse for not making this book a priority.

Join in the fun here.