Among other things, 2016 has been a big year for literary Pittsburgh (there are so many excellent new bookstores to visit!)… and a big year for books in general. Looking back on our “year in reading,” we wanted to highlight the titles that were most memorable for us as readers — the books that got us talking, the books that we loved… and we asked Pittsburgh’s indie booksellers for their picks as well!
Part Two If you’re shopping for a book lover, we’ve been posting chapters from the books of local and touring authors all year, so be sure to check those out for more ideas.
A huge thanks to City Books, Mystery Lovers, City of Asylum Books at Alphabet City, White Whale Bookstore, Nine Stories, and Penguin Bookshop for sharing their years in reading… Please join us in supporting our fabulous local booksellers this holiday season, and let us know your favorites of 2016 on Facebook and Twitter!
Rachel Ekstrom Courage, Founder
It’s always difficult to narrow down my year in reading because I read so much for pleasure and in my work as a literary agent. The books that jump to mind are very different, but they’re all books I devoured in one or two sittings.
Editor’s note: the books that are asterisked below are books that Rachel agented!
How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
A hilarious send-up of the world of writing and publishing. I laughed so hard I cried. Or was it the other way around?
“A savagely funny, well observed skewering of the current state of best-selling fiction of all genres: a surprisingly affectionate story of a confused life.” — NPR
From the publisher: “Narrated by an unlikely literary legend, How I Became A Famous Novelist pinballs from the post-college slums of Boston, to the fear-drenched halls of Manhattan’s publishing houses, from the gloomy purity of Montana’s foremost writing workshop to the hedonistic hotel bars of the Sunset Strip. The horrifying, hilarious tale of how Pete’s ‘pile of garbage’ called The Tornado Ashes Club became the most talked about, blogged about, read, admired, and reviled novel in America will change everything you think you know about literature, appearance, truth, beauty, and those people out there, somewhere in America, who still care about books.”
The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
This slender literary novel is beautifully written, and superbly unsettling.
“Riveting… Phillips’s thrillerlike pacing and selection of detail as the novel unfolds is highly skilled…What makes The Beautiful Bureaucrat a unique contribution to the body of existential literature is its trajectory, as the story telescopes in two directions, both outward to post macro questions about Gd and the universe, and inward to post intimate inquiries about marriage and fidelity. Ultimately, The Beautiful Bureaucrat succeeds because it isn’t afraid to ask the deepest questions.” ― Jamie Quatro, The New York Times Book Review
Maestra by L.S. Hilton
Reading this book is like eating Black Forest Cake for breakfast. Decadent, with an art-world backdrop, and — fair warning — it’s very… racy, so read it first before giving it to your mother-in-law as a holiday gift.
From the publisher: “Judith Rashleigh works as an assistant in a prestigious London auction house, but her dreams of breaking into the art world have been gradually dulled by the blunt forces of snobbery and corruption. To make ends meet she moonlights as a hostess in one of the West End’s less salubrious bars – although her work there pales against her activities on nights off. When Judith stumbles across a conspiracy at her auction house, she is fired before she can expose the fraud. In desperation, she accepts an offer from one of the bar’s clients to accompany him to the French Riviera…”
Today Will Be Different by Maria Sempel
A darkly humorous book (with a built-in graphic novel) about a woman having a very interesting day.
“Another tour de force…. The success of this poetic, seriously funny and brainy dream of a novel — ‘Mrs. Dalloway Takes Laughing Gas,’ perhaps — has to do with Maria Semple’s range of riffs and preoccupations. All kinds of details, painful and perverse and deeply droll, cling to her heroine and are appraised and examined and skewered and simply wondered at. If that’s considered a trick, readers of Semple’s novel will be overjoyed to fall for it.” – Meg Wolitzer, New York Times Book Review
Only Ever You by Rebecca Drake*
A suspenseful psychological thriller for fans of The Good Girl and The Husband’s Secret… by Pittsburgh’s very own Rebecca Drake!
“A twisty, compelling, and harrowing thriller that will hook and leave you breathless from the first to the final page.” -Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Love You
From the publisher: “Jill Lassiter’s three-year-old daughter disappears from a playground only to return after 40 frantic minutes, but her mother’s relief is short-lived–there’s a tiny puncture mark on Sophia’s arm. When doctors can find no trace of drugs in her system, Jill accepts she’ll never know what happened, but at least her child is safe.
Except Sophia isn’t. Someone is watching the Lassiter home in an affluent Pennsylvania suburb, infiltrating the family’s personal and professional lives…”
Start reading Only Ever You right here on Littsburgh!
Tranny by Laura Jane Grace with Dan Ozzi
The punk-rock memoir of Laure Jane Grace, frontwoman for my favorite band, Against Me!
“Laura Jane Grace has pulled off the near impossible. With her first book, Tranny, she has added a new perspective to a vastly over populated genre of music-based literature.
In doing so, she has also managed to tell her own deeply personal, at times heartbreaking, story of her struggle with gender identity in a society still content to ascribe gender using an archaic binary system that drives so many transgender people to despair.
This book is a mandatory read for anyone interested in gender identity, intellectual punk rock, or an engrossing account of a great rock and roll band, subjects that may sound mutually exclusive but here are inextricably linked.” ― Shirley Manson, lead singer of Garbage
Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin*
An ALA Rainbow list nominee and one of Chicago Public Library’s Best Teen Novels of 2016 are just a few of this debut novel’s well-deserved accolades.
From the publisher: “A sharply honest and moving debut perfect for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Ask the Passengers.
Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. But Riley isn’t exactly out yet. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in über-conservative Orange County, the pressure—media and otherwise—is building up in Riley’s life…”
Katie Kurtzman, Publicity Director
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Weird, eerie, haunting, and mesmerizing. An amazing translated work that won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. It was an unexpected favorite of mine.
From the publisher: “Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision to embrace a more ‘plant-like’ existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye — impossibly, ecstatically, tragically — far from her once-known self altogether.
A disturbing, yet beautifully composed narrative told in three parts, The Vegetarian is an allegorical novel about modern day South Korea, but also a story of obsession, choice, and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.”
My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
I read this in October as it’s a perfect Halloween read. It’s like Heathers mixed with The Exorcist. Fun and creepy as all get out. Plus, the book itself is beautiful as it’s made to look like an 80s high school yearbook!
From the publisher: “A heartwarming story of friendship and demonic possession. The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act… different. She’s moody. She’s irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she’s nearby. Abby’s investigation leads her to some startling discoveries—and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?
Like an unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist, My Best Friend’s Exorcism blends teen angst, adolescent drama, unspeakable horrors, and a mix of ’80s pop songs into a pulse-pounding supernatural thriller.”
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
I adore Chris Cleave and had the pleasure of working with him on his first book Little Bee. His latest is a WWII drama based on his own grandparents stories and letters. It’s heartbreaking and unforgettable.
“Cleave’s foray into historical fiction is both grand and intimate. The novel’s ability to stay small and quiet against the raging tableau of war is what also makes it glorious….an absorbing account of survival, racism, classism, love, and pain, and the scars left by all of them…Cleave’s prose is imbued with a Dickensian flair, deploying brilliant metaphors and crackling dialogue.” — The New York Times Book Review
Start reading Everyone Brave is Forgiven right here on Littsburgh!
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
Family drama. Love it! There’s also a poignant scene at a Virginia lake where I used to go as a kid. A really beautiful, genuine, tragic yet hopeful novel.
From the publisher: “The acclaimed, bestselling author—winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize—tells the enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families’ lives.
One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly—thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.
Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.”
Start reading Commonwealth right here on Littsburgh!
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
National Book Award winner and Oprah Book Club Pick says it all! It’s a tense but gorgeous read as Whitehead’s storytelling is unique, twisty, and courageous. I needed a break after finishing it though as I felt completely distraught.
“Get it, then get another copy for someone you know because you are definitely going to want to talk about it once you read that heart-stopping last page.” – Oprah Winfrey (Oprah’s Book Club 2016 Selection)
“[A] potent, almost hallucinatory novel… It possesses the chilling matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and brush strokes borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Jonathan Swift… He has told a story essential to our understanding of the American past and the American present.” – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Nick Courage, Co-Founder and Developer
Nicotine by Nell Zink
I’ve been interested in Nell Zink for a long time – I love how polemical she is in interviews, how she’s not afraid of starting fights. I should have read her sooner, but it turns out that the universe had a plan; I found this book at exactly the right time. The first forty-or-so pages of Nicotine were tough for me because they detailed a long death in a hospice situation — but after that, there’s a lot to love.
From the publisher: “[…] Penny inherits his childhood home in New Jersey. She goes to investigate the property and finds it not overgrown and abandoned, but rather occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters whom she finds unexpectedly charming, and who have renamed the property Nicotine House. The residents of Nicotine House (defenders of smokers’ rights) possess the type of passion and fervor Penny feels she’s desperately lacking, and the other squatter houses in the neighborhood provide a sense of community Penny’s never felt before, and she soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in the political fervor and commitment of her fellow squatters.”
Over the Plain Houses by Julia Franks
Published by the excellent Hub City Press in South Carolina, who I have the extreme pleasure of working with as a publishing consultant. I loved this book so much – it’s got a similar vibe to the movie The VVitch. If you liked that, this book is for you!
“A spellbinding story of witchcraft and disobedience.” – NPR
From the publisher: “This mesmerizing debut by Julia Franks is the story of a woman intrigued by the possibility of change, escape, and reproductive choice–stalked by a Bible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life. As Brodis chases his demons, he brings about a final act of violence that shakes the entire valley. In this spellbinding Southern story, Franks bares the myths and mysteries that modernity can’t quite dispel.”
Tranny by Laura Jane Grace with Dan Ozzi
Against Me! has been my favorite band since about 2002 – I’ve probably seen them over 100 times (starting when I lived in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida). In a lot of ways, I grew up with the band – but had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Rachel and I took a ten-hour bus to NYC to go to this book launch, and it was totally worth it.
In related punk memoir news: I also want to read the NOFX book, The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories, but am a little scared to.
Barbarian Days by William Finnegan
“Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . But on a more fundamental level, Barbarian Days offers a clear-eyed vision of American boyhood. Like Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, it is a sympathetic examination of what happens when literary ideas of freedom and purity take hold of a young mind and fling his body out into the far reaches of the world.” — The New York Times Magazine
“Incandescent… I’d sooner press this book upon on a nonsurfer, in part because nothing I’ve read so accurately describes the feeling of being stoked or the despair of being held under. . . . [But] it’s also about a writer’s life and, even more generally, a quester’s life, more carefully observed and precisely rendered than any I’ve read in a long time.” — Los Angeles Times
Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization by Derrick Jensen
It’s fair to say that Jensen is “problematic,” but I’ve found myself thinking more and more about this landmark book ever since a climate change denier was nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
If you’re horrified (like me) at the widening gyre of contemporary politics, you may also want to check out They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 and Julia Kristeva’s Intimate Revolt, one of the most powerful and (honestly) difficult books I’ve ever read.
#SorryNotSorry for getting political here. We’ve heard so much from talking heads who don’t read – it’s time for the readers to make their voices heard.
Slumberland by Paul Beatty
For everyone who read and loved Paul Beatty’s Man Booker Prize-winning Sellout, definitely check this out! Slumberland is one of my favorites, and now that The Sellout is everywhere, I’m crossing my fingers that Slumberland gets a boost too…
From the publisher: “Hailed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best writers of his generation, Paul Beatty turns his creative eye to man’s search for meaning and identity in an increasingly chaotic world.
After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little know avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city’s dreamy streets ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods, the prevent defense, and Wynton Marsalis in search of his artistic-and spiritual-other.”
Literally Everything by Robert Crais
After visiting a friend in Los Angeles this year and falling in love with the city, I wanted to get into some LA noir. As you can tell from the Mickey Mouse on the cover, Crais’ novels have more of a sense of humor than your usual noir — so I immediately started working my way through his entire backlist.
“Even at their goriest and most violent, there is a humanity about Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole PI novels… these L.A.-noir thrillers feel as if they might have been written by Raymond Chandler if he had been a nice guy.” – The Washington Post
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