I also have A Man Called Ove on my list.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen was brutal but brilliant.

I preferred The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah to All the Light We Cannot See, though both were good.

Those would be my top three, though there were some other memorable books. Some I found interesting and liked but didn't live up to the hype (I'm looking at you H is for Hawk). Others, I have mixed feelings about (My Brilliant Friend). A year of good reads as there's nothing I read that was terrible, though, as always, I wish I had had a chance to read more. Hoping to add some good Christmas reads before the end of the year.

Y'all are good! I can barely remember the book I read before the current one.

I tried All the Light but gave up about three chapters in. I also gave up on Watership Down after a few chapters. I'm currently halfway through The Girl on the Train and I'm having a hard time staying interested in it.

I enjoyed The Last Mile by David Baldacci very much. And The Weekenders by Mary Kay Andrews.

Donna

Msmeow, I started keeping a list when I found Readers Paradise sometime around 2001 (ish?). I'd never remember, otherwise :)

Merryworld, I've wondered about The Nightingale, the two books always seemed linked together somehow. I will have to add it to the list.

"The Emotional Lives of Animals" by the scientist Marc Bekoff for anyone who cares about animals. Passages can be re-read many times.

As I mentioned , the upgrade of the computer at my library wiped out my reading history and I can't recall any book that stood out for me!

I mostly read cosy mysteries and rarely get any brilliant reads with that genre, anyway. They are really comfort food for relaxing the brain!

I keep my list on Goodreads.com. It's very handy because I can see what I read when. Plus, I keep a list of books of interest on there.

One other book I've been enjoying this year is Edward Rutherford's London. It's 1,124 pages and I started it in January and I'm still going. I read a bit every evening. I'm hoping to finish before the end of the year, and then I guess I'll have to pick another of his tomes for 2017.

Here is my list of favorite reads from 2016. I know the first one will make a few of you cringe, but I just can't help it. I loved that book.

- The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry -- Gabrielle Zevin

- Flight Behavior -- Barbara Kingsolver

- Louise Penny mysteries. I just found her this year and read four of them.

By the way, the only reason All The Light We Cannot See is not on my list is because it was on my 2015 list. Wonderful book!

I didn't have very many stand-outs, either, this year. I really enjoyed The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson, and The Post Birthday World by Lionel Shriver. Other years' favorites are mentioned by some of you--especially The Garden of Evening Mists (oh how I loved this one) and All the Light...

This hasn't been a very inspiring year on the reading front and I can't remember the last book I either couldn't put down or kept wanting to get back to.

Probably the best of 2016 were the two by Christabel Bielenburg The Past is Myself and the follow-up The Road Ahead. The first was the better one.

For its strangeness was The Hopkin's Manuscript by R C Sherriff.

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (her 'take' on 'Taming of the Shrew') was entertaining but not laugh-out-loud funny.

Loving and Giving by sharp-eyed aristocratic Irish writer Molly Keane was another amusing but ultimately sad story.

I checked on "Vinegar Girl" and found that this book and "Eligible" mentioned earlier are part of a Shakespeare tribute published by Vintage.

Has anyone read any of the others?

Ann, the re-working of a selection of various Shakespeare plays was started by the Hogarth Press in the last couple of years.

I haven't read any of the other titles.

About the Books plus youtube item

Unlike many of you, I don't keep a notebook of ones I've liked. ( I do keep journals on other topics). I can however come up with a list of favorites this year:

Leading the list as No. 1 was Sally Mann's "Hold Still." This is a tour de force memoir about her life as a controversial photographer. I would read it again.

Others in no particular order I liked include: "Under Magnolia" a memoir of her southern girlhood by Frances Mayes. Quite different in tone was "The End of Absence" by Michael Harris, who chronicles how our post-modern brains are actually changing, due to new technologies, IPhones, FB, the Internet, etc. (We now have shorter attention spans, for one thing.)

As well, I enjoyed "Long Ago in France: the Years in Dijon" by M.F.K. Fisher, a classic author whom I think is often overlooked.

When I finally finished "Gone Girl" I realized I did admire the complexity of the writing, although it was a bit shocking.

Two others I liked: "The Boys in the Boat" and the latest work by Erik Larsson, which title escapes me.

I loved "All the Light We Cannot See" but it was read in 2015.

I also really liked All the Light We Cannot See.

A couple of others were The Dust That Falls from Dreams by Louis de Berniers and American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld.

woodnymph2 is the Eric Larson book Dead Wake about the Lusitania? I read that, too and enjoyed it. Interesting to learn all about the people on the boat and the U-boat commander.

merry, yes, that is the one (by Larsson). I thought it was outstanding.

I liked Dead Wake also.

Another vote for Dead Wake! Though I think I read it in 2015.
Donna

Merry........I completely agree regarding My Brilliant Friend.

I could not like that story at all and unfortunately I assumed that I would and so purchased the sequel to it. I'm not sure if something was lost in the translation or it is more simply a difference in cultural story-telling. At any rate I didn't like enjoy the book.

Others I've read this year and enjoyed:

A Man Called Ove

The Disappearing Spoon

A Year In The World

La Bella Lingua

and many others which I cannot recall at the moment !!

I completely forgot about "A Year in the World" by Frances Mayes. I liked that one very much, too!

Count me in amongst those who do not keep records of my reading, though I greatly admire those of you with the self discipline to do so. I barely manage to keep garden records. While several books from my last year's reading (2015) impressed me, 2016 was a pleasant but uninspiring year of re-reads and passable but unexciting books. I made no discoveries this year. Can't win 'em all, unfortunately. Sad as it is to say, I have nothing compelling to offer from 2016. Let's hope 2017 will offer richer rewards.

I have to add one more book to my list, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman. It was just as good as A Man Called Ove.

I'm looking forward to a new year full of good books.

In descending order:

The Night Circus -- Erin Morgenstern

The Odd Sea -- Frederick Reiken

The Love of my Youth -- Mary Gordon

The Whole World Over -- Julia Glass

The Time Traveler's Wife -- Audrey Niffenegger