I don’t think I’ve ever known so many people to be so happy that a year is coming to a close. Didn’t make very many friends, did ya, 2016?

Well, at least there were good books! I heard a stat earlier this year that blew my mind. (Disclaimer: This is not fact checked!) And that is: There are one million books published in the US every year. One million. Apparently, 250,000 are published by the big publishing houses, another 250,000 by small indie presses, and 500,000 are self-published. That. Is. Nuts. No wonder I feel like I can never keep up, no matter how many I read! (96 treebooks + 7 ebooks + 11 audiobooks = 114 on the year.)

I did this a little differently this year – I wrote most of my little comments shortly after reading the books, as opposed to waiting until now. That was very non-procrastinatory of me, I know! Let’s see what I was thinking about the books I rated 5 stars over the last 12 months, presented chronologically…

A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara
(720 pages, published March 10, 2015 by Doubleday)

I have never read anything like this. Never. I have never had an author do this to me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the words. I had to keep looking away from the words, when they were about unspeakable things. The characters are complex, and loveable, and beautiful, and assholes all at the same time. I’ve always been a book crier, but never before have I wailed and sobbed hysterically – a loud, teary, snotty mess – for 250 pages straight (which is about a third of the book!). And when it was done, I couldn’t bear to be separated from these four men. I will not soon forget this one, or the feeling of being punched in the gut it gave me the entire way through.

Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff
(390 pages, published September 15, 2015 by Riverhead Books)

This fascinating, raw, sweet and dark look at one marriage from two sides was President Obama’s favourite book of 2015. Also, it wins an award I just made up in my head for best character name: Lancelot Satterwhite.

The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James
(427 pages, published February 2, 2010 by Riverhead Trade (first published 2009))

I’d never read James before but had been meaning to since he got rave reviews for this one a few years back and then won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings (beating out A Little Life and The Fishermen, by the way). So it was time to read him. And then it was time to wonder what took me so long. The Night Women are slaves on a Jamaican plantation circa 1800, so what happens to and around them ain’t no picnic. James takes us inside their heads in a way that is so convincing and just so human.

When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
(228 pages, published January 12, 2016 by Random House)

Don’t mind me, over here just feeding my obsession with books about human mortality. This is THE buzz book of the year so far, it’s garnering lots of attention two months in so I just had to drop everything and read it. Brilliant young neurosurgeon/scientist meets terminal cancer diagnosis – you’ve been forewarned.

Saint Mazie, by Jamie Attenberg
(336 pages, published June 2, 2015 by Grand Central Publishing)

Attenberg brings to life the Roaring ’20s and the Dirty ’30s in this tale of one memorable woman, who spends her days in the ticket cage of the Venice Theatre in NYC. It’s presented as a series of diary entries and interviews, so that Mazie’s character is truly multi-faceted. Is she good? Is she bad? As always with the best literature, there’s not an easy answer to that question.

Every Day is for the Thief, by Teju Cole
(192 pages, published March 3, 2015 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published 2007))

My best-of list wouldn’t be complete without at least one Nigerian writer, right? You know how the best novels read as if they were true, and the best memoirs read as if they were fiction? This is a novel, but boy are those lines blurry here.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary-Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
(290 pages, published May 5, 2009 by Dial Press Trade Paperback (first published 2008))

I know not all of you loved this as much as I did. What can I say, I am drawn to epistolary books! (For that I blame/thank my mom, who gave me a copy of A Woman of Independent Means when I was a kid.) I loved that Shaffer and Barrows captured so many different voices through the various correspondents, and somehow make them all believable. Of course, being about the German occupation of the Channel Islands in WWII it has its dark and sad tales, but there are uplifting and funny moments, too. (Plus, it’s about an authoress and her publisher and has lots of talk about books so I added to my collection of bookish quotes… in other words, no chance I wasn’t going to love this one.)

My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout
(193 pages, published January 12, 2016 by Random House)

Each book I have ready by Strout I’ve liked progressively more. So it’s a good thing I read her next two even though I thought Olive Kitteridge was “meh.” This one’s a “small” book. It is relatively short, but that’s not what I’m referring to. I mean it’s not a grand story or a complicated plot or a lot of characters. It’s just Lucy Barton reminiscing. But the fragments she pulls together into a story for us are so beautifully written, sometimes achingly so.

Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077, by Craig Davidson
(320 pages, published April 12, 2016 by Knopf Canada)

It’s now May, which means… Vegas baby, Vegas! This may seem like an odd choice for reading amidst the cacophony of the strip, but then again, both are delightful, just in different ways. You may know Davidson as the Giller-nominated author or by his pen name, Nick Cutter, under which he publishes horror novels. In Precious Cargo we meet a third Craig Davidson, completely broke, not yet famous, and for one year, driver of a school bus of special-needs kids.

Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life, by Kelsey Miller
(278 pages, published January 5, 2016 by Grand Central Publishing (first published 2015))

I could barely make out the words on the page for the tears in my eyes. In Big Girl Miller shares her struggles with obesity and dieting and her brain’s completely haywire conception of food and hunger – and IT’S LIKE SHE WAS WRITING FROM INSIDE MY HEAD. (If you are one of those lucky people who has never been obese and doesn’t have compulsive food issues, Big Girl probably won’t resonate as much, but I suspect there’re nuggets of truth in here for everyone.) Considering the enduring power of both the diet-industrial complex and the non-stop messages women are bombarded with about how we should look – not to mention the venom of online comments sections – Miller takes a very brave step in embarking on a journey of intuitive eating, AKA the Anti-Diet Project. The book and the blog are both inspiring. (Finished this just in time for bathing-suit season. I probably still won’t dare to wear one.)

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
(320 pages, published June 7, 2016 by Bond Street Books)

In the tradition of great slavery narratives, Gyasi’s novel spans continents and traces slavery’s legacy through generations, all with dazzling prose. This one follows two lineal strands, starting with half-sisters Effia and Esi, through their descendants to the present day. A towering achievement by any standard, and it’s Gyasi’s first book! (P.S.: I know you’re wondering – it’s pronounced like “Yeah Jesse.”)

Vacationland, by Sarah Stonich
(288 pages, published March 25, 2013 by Univ Of Minnesota Press (first published 2012))

It might seem à propos to read a book called Vacationland while poolside in 30° C heat, but I had a bit of cognitive dissonance going on, because parts of the book are set in winter. It’s a splendid novel-in-stories about the lifespan of a vacation resort, and the people who come, go or stay.

Our Endless Numbered Days, by Claire Fuller
(304 pages, published March 1, 2015 by Anansi International)

How’s this for a premise? Eight-year old Peggy’s father, a survivalist, becomes a little unhinged shall we say, and takes her from their city home to go live in the woods – and tells her that the rest of the world has been destroyed. The characters and their experiences are so well imagined. I could not put this one down.

Underground Airlines, by Ben Winters
(336 pages, published July 5, 2016 by Mulholland Books, audiobook by Hachette Audio)

Wow, you have been good to me book-wise, August! This one is slipping under the radar, thanks to another slavery-themed book generating much buzz – Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, which Oprah just made her next book club pick. Both books present alternate realities of the original underground railroad: Whitehead’s features a runaway slave in the antebellum south and imagines the underground railroad with actual trains; Winters’s includes a runaway slave in the present day, the figurative airline being a modern update on the figurative railroad because slavery is STILL going on. Railroad is good, but I liked Airlines way more. The history nerd in me appreciated the imagined mechanism of how slavery could continue in four states, and the plot twists give it a thriller-ish flair.

The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman
(400 pages, published June 7, 2016 by Simon & Schuster (first published 2015))

The elevator pitch for this book didn’t sound so great to me, but I kept hearing people rave about it. And they were right to! Set on the island of St. Thomas in the early 19^th century, it’s the story of Rachel Pomier, mother of the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. The story is enchanting and Hoffman’s writing is as lushly gorgeous as the setting.

Wenjack, by Joseph Boyden
(112 pages, published October 18, 2016 by Hamish Hamilton)

How was it ever a thing that, for decades, the Canadian government forced First Nations families to give up their children to residential schools, where they were horribly abused and subjected to systemic attempts to eliminate their cultures and languages? It’s a question at the fore right now, October 22 being the 50^th anniversary of the death of Chanie Wenjack. The 12-year old runaway’s story is told beautifully here in Boyden’s novella. (Gord Downie is also telling the story with his Secret Path album/graphic novel/animated film project. For more info on Chanie, check out this Maclean’s cover story from 1967.)

Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD, by Roméo Dallaire
(272 pages, published October 25, 2016 by Random House Canada)

This one breaks the rating scale – a ton of stars, and requires just as many Kleenexes. You remember General Dallaire: head of the UN’s 1994 mission to Rwanda, witness to genocide, former Canadian Senator, advocate for improved support for veterans, and global crusader against the use of child soldiers. In his second memoir, Waiting for First Light, Dallaire chronicles all of this, twining it with a candid account of his 22-year struggle with PTSD. The general’s first book, Shake Hands with the Devil, started me on a bit of a Rwanda reading jag and is outstanding – so I was counting down the months until this one came out. I figured it would be a two-evening read. And it would have been… only I started it on Monday, November 7. By 10 p.m. on Tuesday, November 8, I was in the fetal position, crying, and remained non-functional and non-book-reading for more than a week. (I’m sorry I’m even alluding to the PEOTUS in the same paragraph as Dallaire, because one is human-shaped garbage and the other is a remarkable and brave figure who tried to save an entire people under terrible circumstances and is paying an unbelievably high price for it for the rest of his life.) Please read Waiting for First Light, and, if you can stand the horrors it contains, consider Shake Hands with the Devil as well.

On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light, by Cordelia Strube
(372 pages, published April 12, 2016 by ECW Press)

Winner of the 2016 Toronto Book Award, this many-layered coming-of-age story is a sharp take on the adult world through the eyes of 11-year-old Harriet. It’s typical Strube – and I won’t tell you what that means because that would make for a spoiler.

The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis
(362 pages, published December 6, 2016 by WW Norton)

There are only a few authors whose new release dates will have me in line at the bookstore before it opens. Lewis is one of them. He justifies my little tradition yet again with this absorbing story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Never heard of them? The duo of Israeli psychologists basically invented behavioural economics and published seminal works on the science of judgment and decision making – showing us all how our minds work. If your interest has been piqued, read this, or read Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, or read both.

The Break, by Katherena Vermette
(350 pages, published September 17, 2016 by House of Anansi Press)

Christmas break reading is the best reading! Here’s another debut novelist cracking my list, this one nominated for a Governor General’s literary award for fiction this year. I loved the way Vermette slowly unspools both the characters and the crime at the centre of this story. I was drawn to this family of Métis women, in some ways so broken, in some ways so strong.

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It’s interesting to look back at these notes now, months later. I’m STILL haunted by Jude, Willem, JB and Malcolm of A Little Life. I miss them. (It’s my best-of-the-best fiction pick for the year followed closely by The Book of Night Women; you’ve probably surmised Waiting for First Light gets that nod in non-fiction.)

Speaking of people who will be missed, I’ll feel a void without President Obama’s book recommendations. Doesn’t matter whether or not I agreed with them, I just think it’s so cool that he shared them – reader-in-chief indeed.

Shortly after reading The Book of Night Women, I saw Marlon James speak at the Appel Salon (where he was interviewed by another artistic figure I adore, TIFF’s Cameron Bailey – between the two of them I was awash in so much hotness and intellect flowing all over the place). He was amazing – you may want to watch this video of the conversation.

Some of the above have been recognized in various ways since I wrote the blurbs:

• When Breath Becomes Air won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Memoir & Autobiography.
• My Name is Lucy Barton was long listed for several prizes – the Booker, the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction and Goodreads Choice Award for fiction – but didn’t make any short lists.
• Yaa Gyasi was a National Book Foundation 5-under-35 honouree.
• The Underground Railroad won the National Book Award for fiction and the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction, beating out Homegoing. Underground Airlines was a Goodreads Choice nominee, but was ignored by award juries. Not cool, IMO!

As always, the above particularly struck a chord with me, but what one person loves isn’t always the next person’s cup of tea. In case you want a few more titles of some books I enjoyed this year, here you go…

• Today Will Be Different, by Maria Semple
• Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide To Thriving In The Age of Accelerations, by Thomas Friedman
• The Mothers, by Brit Bennett
• The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue
• The Party Wall, by Catherine Leroux
• The Midnight Watch, by David Dyer
• Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue
• The Girls, by Lori Lansens
• Listen to Me, by Hannah Pittard
• The Subprimes, by Karl Taro Greenfeld
• A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierly (now the movie Lion)
• Under the Visible Life, by Kim Echlin

Well, Happy New Year all! Wishing you health and happiness, peace and prosperity and plenty of good books in 2017.