what did you read in 2016?

My chronological reading list from 2016. Starred books are wildly recommended:

Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Karrie Fransman - The House That Groaned
Kay Redfield Jamison - An Unquiet Mind
Edward Ross - Filmish
Carol Tyler - Late Bloomer
Juan Rulfo - Pedro Paramo *
Roberto Bolaño - Woes of the True Policeman
Rachael Ball - The Inflatable Woman
Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
Nicola Streeten - Billy, Me & You
Ariel Schrag - Awkward
Ariel Schrag - Definition
Ariel Schrag - Potential
Ali Smith - The Accidental
Stevie Smith - Novel on Yellow Paper *
Sheila Heti - How Should a Person Be?
Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat
Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo - Where There's Love There's Hate
Patrick Süskind - Perfume
Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum
Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate - The Book of English Magic
John Matthews - The Secret Lore of London
Herman Melville - Billy Budd, Bartleby and Other Stories
Owen Davies - Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History
Don DeLillo - The Body Artist
César Aira - 3 Novels by César Aira
Ariel Schrag - Likewise
Luigi Serafini - Codex Seraphinianus
Allie Brosh - Hyperbole and a Half *
R. D. Laing - The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise **
Kathy Acker - Empire of the Senseless *
David Adams Leeming - The Oxford Companion to World Mythology
Diana L. Paxson - Taking Up The Runes
Nancy B. Watson - Practical Solitary Magic
Hermann Hesse - Siddartha
Richard Kennedy - A Boy at the Hogarth Press
Various - Granta 129: Fate
Haruki Murakami - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Roberto Bolaño - The Unknown University
Sarah Kane - Sarah Kane Complete Plays **
B.S. Johnson - Albert Angelo
Miranda July - No One Belongs Here More Than You

A fair few of these are graphic novels in a bid to make it to 52 books by the end of the year (and out of a genuine love of the medium, of course), but sadly this target was not met due to assorted catastrophe, negligence and dysphoria.

This year I just want to read more psychoanalysis and non-fiction in general as I can feel my brain rusting over. I'm also looking forward to more ILB finds and maybe trying the 'read a lot of books by one author' method that a lot of you seem to advocate.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon

how was this? i read about it, i think in the new yorker, and it sounded interesting.

I'm actually cheating a bit to include it on this list, since I haven't completely finished it yet. I've just finished the 2nd of the 3 parts. The first part, on changes in quality of life from 1870-1940 is fascinating, or was to me at least. It probably helps to be the kind of person who would be interested in an exhibit on the development of the local sewer system in your town. It reads a bit like a text book at times, but includes a huge amount of information that helps to quantify and put in perspective how people's daily lives changed. The second part is the same type of survey for 1940-the present. This is bit more familiar ground so it wasn't quite as fascinating. The third part I believe is more of an economic analysis and prescriptions for reversing the trend of slowing productivity growth.

Alfred, what did you think of Joseph and his Brothers?

first third of the Robert Gordon (thick description of how awful/itchy/stinky/short/&c&c life was in 1870, and how all of the small and under-appreciated innovations delivered us the cozy clean domestic life we now take for granted) is amazing, rest is ok