Firstly – Thank You for yesterday- I have many great questions to answer while I am travelling. This will be fun. Most excellent.
Now the next thing on our Christmas List is our Christmas Book List! I had not forgotton.
This year, because last years list got SO BIG and SO LONG (like many of you I read – and listen to audio books a lot so I too have heaps of favourites), I think that this year we will limit ourselves to TWO personal favourites – it can be a novel, or cookbook, or nonfiction, or fluffy historical romance, audio book or book of art – any book at all but one we met for the first time THIS YEAR in 2016. Not your favourite book of all time just two of your favourite books from your 2016 reading list.
And let us know the genre and a why you recommend we read it.
Have a scroll through the comments and if your favourite book is already there SECOND it, or third it or fourth it. This way we will get a really good idea of what everyone is reading (or listening to) and you get to name two MORE books in your own comment if your first favourite is already in the list. 
I am never without a book. Often I am listening to a book (while I do housework or cook) and then read another book (usually on my kindle in winter when it is hard to get to the shops) before I go to bed. So I get through a fair number of books. And I often listen to podcasts when I am cleaning in the barn but that is a completely new discussion! 
I love our annual Fellowship Book List. Sound like fun? Good – because – I need some good reading material for my travels. I particularly need a good airplane book. (Why airplane book is not a genre I do not know!).
I will collate the list tonight and publish it for you tomorrow so you can print it and use it as a book mark or give it away during the holiday season.
If you run your own book list with your own readers at your blog be sure to link it back to The Kitchens Garden (I will note it at the bottom of my post the day I receive the link) so that we can all come and look at your list as well. Your own readers might have some new ones too!
The roads were frozen sheets of ice out here in the country yesterday and for two days we have not even received our mail. The country roads are too dangerous. I hope they are better today because Lori the Pig Lady is coming to collect the little barrow. I am glad he is going to a good home but I have to admit I wish he were not going at all. He has been a perfect little house pig. Boo and I will miss him awfully.
Much love, have a lovely day.
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
112 responses to “Annual Book List request 2016”
I recommend the whole Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon! Excellent read or to listen too.
I just know Boo will be heart broken for a spell.
Linda
Sorry the Outlander Series is a time travel series. The movies are good also.
Linda
Which book was your favourite? c
I really like them all…I would suggest starting with Outlander and then move on to the next in the series. But if you only want to read one…read the first…Outlander.
I’m an Outlander fan too… ALL the books in the series plus the novellas are wonderful, and an essential read to follow the entire epic. Plus the TV-movies, which my husband also enjoys. We buy the season DVDs each year when they are released. John might even enjoy the movies too. 2016 was a reading drought for me but I’ll find gems for 2017 from these suggestions I’m sure.
I can hardly wait for her next novella comes out and the next book in the the series…”Tell the Bees That I am Gone”
I hope the little pig settles into his new home. I’m reading The inspector Lynley books by Elizabeth George at the moment. I do love a who dunnit. 😊
Can you remember the title of your favourite one?
Thats a difficult one as I’m reading them in order, because in the background the major characters have a storyline of their own.
But they are stand alone story’s as well.
What kind of books would you put in “Airport genre”? I’m rarely interested in reading the books they sell at airports.
I love fiction too, but it seems I’m always toting nonfiction when I fly.
I’m reading a book right now called “The Vegetarian Myth” which I will probably be reading on my short flight tonight. It’s been a fascinating treatise on the importance of eating meat (for our bodies and the land) from a former vegan.
I also discovered a fantastic “kids” drawing book this year called “Draw-a-Saurus.” Even if you’re not interested in drawing dinosaurs, it’s a cute and fun book to look through. Ironic juxtaposition… is that what you’d call a t-rex skipping through the meadow with a basket of flowers?
I was thinking I didn’t have any new favorite books this year… Ha! What a lie!
Exactly – all the books you canNOT find in an airport store. Though truthfully sometimes I have found some obscure goodies when I am stranded and run out of a book.
Just finished Jonathan Franzen’s book “Purity.” An amazing story, well written, dark, funny…did I say dark? Also read my usual quote of Georges Simenon and Fred Vargas mysteries. Both French, both published in English. They are fun and quick and, if you read them in French, help you to keep brushed up in that department. I also read — and this might sound weird but it was TOTALLY entertaining — Nick Hornby’s “In the Tub” which is actually a huge collection of HIS book reviews and serves as an AMAZING booklist in its own right. “Ten Years in the Tub”…great to read before you go to bed. Witty, smart and FULL of ideas of what to read next.
In the Tub sounds like a MUST I like the name too! Thank you! . c
Complete title is Ten Years in the Tub.
Okay you guys are quite the literate bunch! I’m going to chime in with a favorite author. Nothing high-brow about her books, but they are sweet and fun. Rachael Herron writes romance and women’s fiction, and she’s got a ton of titles out. I especially like her romances set around knitting, and her novel called Pack Up the Moon. Other women’s fiction authors I like are Emelie Richards and Barbara O’Neal. I’ve probably gone over my allotment, haven’t I? So sorry!
Actually you are not over your allotment because you have only named one book – Pack Up the Moon. So you still have one book title to go!! What was your second favourite read this year. c
I stumbled upon Martha Grimes detective writer and have enjoyed The Blue Last and a book about the Australian Aborigines called Song Lines. I enjoy many different types of genres. Depends on whether it grabs my interest in the first chapter. We used to use audio books when travelling to entertain our whole family. I prefer it to DVD watching in the car.
I second Songlines….Bruce Chatwin
I second Martha Grimes – for the Richard Jury novels. They are awesome – with the almost-bumbling sidekick who makes me think of Bertie Wooster. Any of them are good, I find the later ones are darker and have more character development.
Chris S in Canada
My most favorite book I read this year is the Swedish best seller, A Man Called Ove. I laughed and I cried.
Second that!! Awesome book
I third it!~ I love love that book! A Man Called Ove is wonderful!
I loved all of the Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn, a chronicle of the dark side of British privileged families, but my favorite was “Mother’s Milk.” His writing is acerbic and lyrical. Another favorite was Louise Penny’s “The Beautiful Mystery: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel,” wherein a body is discovered in the walled cloister of a remote and nearly forgotten monastery where the monks have preserved some of the most ancient Gregorian chant.
I read The Beuatiful Mystery too SECOND it. great selections! Thank you! c
Third to The Beautiful Mystery. The chant that is the feature of the novel is a real plainsong melody circa the 12th century. Divinum Mysterium. It is absolutely beautiful – I can understand how monks (or anyone) could become pulled into it.
Chris S in Canada
This year I was impressed with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain. This is a satirical yet very touching tribute to American soldiers, and how hard it is for anyone who has not endured what they endured to understand. Unfortunately they made a not-so-great movie out of it this year. The other book I’m recommending is The Sellout, by Paul Beatty, a scathing novel that looks at race relations in America. Hard for some to read due to its unstinting use of racial epithets, but the book, written by an African-American, is just as brutal about the pretensions of Black intellectuals as it is about the stupidity of white racists. The novel won the Man Booker Prize, the 1st book by an American author to do so.
Two excellent offers – thank you Tom. c
People Who Knew Me by Kim Hooper……a lightish read but absorbing, I like books whose characters grow and develop throughout. There’s something about the way she tells this story that really engaged me.
I’ve also found Jeffrey Deaver lately, and particularly like his Lincoln Rhyme character who is a quadraplegic criminalist. They’re crime thrillers, there’s lots of them, and also other books of his with Special Agent Kathryn Dance. They’re sometimes woven into each other’s stories. I particularly like the relationships between his characters, and Rhyme’s ascerbic, often rude, comments to people and or even worse in his thoughts. It’s not all blood and gore. My favourite?…..hard, I’ve loved them all but perhaps the first one I read…….The Kill Room.
Thank you – onto the list they go! c
I am reading Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. It is chilling dystopia that feels like NOW. I am going on a trip in February, so I’m making notes, too!
I am going on another trip in Feb too – so this is great – thank you.. c
You are making this hard, so many to choose from. 1. “The Aftermath” by Ridian Brook this is post WWII set in Germany when allied forces took over. You see war from the “other side” and what happened after the war. It was a different perspective and I really enjoyed it. 2. “They left us everything” by Plum Johnson. This one was a bit different from what I usually read and I am am so glad that I read it! After almost twenty years of caring for elderly parents—first for their senile father, and then for their cantankerous ninety-three-year old mother—author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers have finally fallen to their middle-aged knees with conflicted feelings of grief and relief. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, twenty-three rooms bulging with history. I felt like I was there with her.
OO – both these sound like good reads! Thank you.. c
To Down Under readers only unless you do get interested: I love biographies and autobiographies. Three this year brought wealth and excitement sans pareil!L
1. The lesbian actress Magda Szubanski’s ‘Reckoning’ which addressed not only my refugee childhood but my understanding of alternate lifestyles.
2. The incredible Jimmy Barnes’ ‘Working Class Boy’ which so excitingly took me totally out of my own comfort zone with its violence and drug use, but which I could not put down until the last page was turned. Who has not heard of ‘Cold Chisel’ wherever their domicile . . . yes, I love opera and symphony, but
3 The somewhat unexpected second biography [this time mostly auto] – of my most beloved Cadel Evans, OUR road biker who did and does us proud!] What a lesson in how many ways!.
Second the first two, definitely, loved Working Class Boy! And I’ve bought my son Cadel Evan’s book for Christmas.
Cadel is a bit ‘up himself’ here but has SO taught me about how competitive road cycling ‘works’! I DO miss him but wish him well! Yes, Jimmie Barnes ‘ one was a bit of a surprise one for me as his is definitely not my kind of tune 🙂 !! I have 40 pages to go and can’t wait! . . . . Enjoy, one and all!
C. I have been away for 3 weeks with very spotty internet so have not been able to comment very often but have read the blog every day…sooo, I’m very behind with my 2 cents! Wonderful book suggestions and off the top of my head, I will have to think a little further for my own two favorites this year. After I finish a book, I usually give it away and then forget the titles! And there were alot this year! Some not so good, so I’ll have to recall the better ones.
On another note, here’s my favorite December poem to help us get through these dark, cold, dreary days of winter. I thought of it after reading your post about the birds in the barn!
I heard a bird sing in the dark of December, so magical and sweet to remember! We are closer to spring than we were in September! 🙂
I love your December poem – Love it!! c