From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2016

Ever since I began this blog, I have been periodically looking back at one of my old top 10 favorite book lists.  As a reminder, these are lists I made contemporaneously at the end of the respective years, made up of books I read in that particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  And with today's post looking back at my favorite books of 2016, I've now got all my top 10 lists on this blog in some form, since one of my very first posts on this blog was my ten favorite books of 2017.  Stay tuned for a future post with a special look back at 20 years of my lists!

Here's my list from 2016, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

Black Rabbit Hall - Eve Chase
The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin
The Trespasser - Tana French
Monsters - Liz Kay
The Expatriates - Janice Y.K. Lee
The Last One - Alexandra Oliva
Harmony - Carolyn Parkhurst
Missing, Presumed - Susie Steiner
Kitchens of the Great Midwest - J. Ryan Stradal
Modern Lovers - Emma Straub


For more random details about these books, keep reading!

How Does This List Hold Up Over Time?

Given that I read these books 3 years ago, no surprise that I remember all of them!  I really loved them all and still heartily recommend all of them so it's hard to pick a favorite.  If you forced me to do so, I guess I'd pick "City of Mirrors."  But I actually gave 6 of the 10 a 5 star rating at a time.  Interestingly, it's one of the 5 star books that I'd say I remember the least - "The Trespasser."  It's part of one of my favorite series of all time, and Tana French is not just my favorite mystery writer but also one of my all time favorite, must-read authors.  Yet I can't remember the plot of the book other than it was a part of the series.  Meanwhile "The Expatriates" is one of the books which I rated 4.5 stars, yet it still haunts me to this day.

Genres

There's a good mix of genres on this list - two mysteries ("The Trespasser" and "Missing, Presumed"), two science fiction-y thrillers ("The City of Mirrors" and "The Last One"), two contemporary women's fiction books on the lighter side ("Monsters" and "Modern Lovers") and two more literary ones ("The Expatriates" and "Harmony"), one historical novel with a bit of mystery ("Black Rabbit Hall"), and one interlinked short stories ("Kitchens of the Great Midwest").

Popularity

This list consists of slightly less popular stuff than some of my other lists - there are certainly books on this list that were bestsellers, but none that were blockbusters or were the kind of books read by seemingly every single person I know.  (I read an early copy of "The Last One" and really thought it was going to be a mega-best seller but for some reason it wasn't.)  The most read of these books on Goodreads is "The Trespasser" with more than 52,000 ratings, while the least read was "Monsters" with only 1,100 ratings as of today.

Other Random Stuff

For once the highest/lowest rated don't match up with the most/least popular - the highest rated of these on Goodreads is "The City of Mirrors" with a 4.20 average rating, while the lowest rated was "Modern Lovers" with a 3.44 average rating.

This was the 5th book on one of my lists for both Tana French (following her double appearance in 2010 (when I cheated and put 11 books on my top 10 list just so I could include her first two books), and then 2011 and 2014) and Justin Cronin (following  2003, 2007, 2011, and 2012.)  Not for nothing are they two of my favorite authors of all time!  And it's the second appearance for Carolyn Parkhurst after 2004,

This list marked the first time I read all 10 books on my Kindle.  I also got 5 of the books from Netgalley which I think is a record for me.  Perhaps related to those two things, 9 of these books were actually published in 2016, only "Kitchens of the Great Midwest" was published in 2015.

I read "Harmony" with my book club and "Kitchens of the Great Midwest" with my two person book club with my friend Sarah, GCBC.

***

Note that I'll give all these posts the tag "Top 10," so you should be able to click on the label  "Top 10" at the bottom of the post and see all my other Top 10 posts.  And if you just want to see all my old Top 10 lists without elaboration, you can also click through to my Goodreads profile - I have a separate shelf for each of my old lists.