My Favorite Titles of 2016--Part One

I read a new record number of books this year--a total of 54, and I thoroughly enjoyed my reading year. I had very, very few duds. And I benefitted from having such a wide variety of reads, which I hope to demonstrate in the next series of posts.

Part One include my "Stellar" reads:

My all-time favorite read of this year receives this accolade largely because it was the right book at the right time. My best reading experience was The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. At the time, I had been stricken with a vicious sinus infection (last March), and I must say, this book and its characters' foibles and complicated lives made me forget, for hours at a time, most of my misery. Thank you!  Oh, I will definitely read this one again.
Excellent writing and spot-on, smart dialogue, yes. A wonderful escapist read, absolutely. And yes, the adult children who placed their hopes on "the nest," which would make their lives perfect forever after, were egotistical and self-satisfied, but Sweeney rendered them as superbly human. I found them all likeable, despite their predatory instincts. Their lives were, in my opinion, lovingly depicted by Sweeney, while simultaneously maintaining a sharp, satirical eye throughout.

My next two favorite reads were both by the same author--P.D. James. She never disappoints, and each of her novels I look forward to re-reading some day. Original Sin was the first novel by James that I read this year and I gave it 5 stars. The other James novel I hesitated  to call a favorite at the time I read it, but, in retrospect, The Black Tower was so well done, that I have recognized its value all the more several months later, largely because of its power to stay indelible on my mind  The latter was published 20 years before Original Sin. I am an undeniably impassioned P.D. James aficionado, as some of you know.

Equally a favorite as the two P.D. James novels, was The Lewis Man by Peter May. This thriller/crime/mystery is the second volume in May's "Lewis Trilogy," Lewis being the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides in Scotland. The first book in the trilogy, The Black House, is so deep, so profound, so wondrous in creating a landscape, so dark a noirish world, and so incredible an unspeakable crime, that it is one of my most spectacular reads of the past decade. But what makes all this darkness tolerable is the detective, who is the spirit of light, returning to his homeland in the Hebrides.

The Lewis Man continues the saga and the complicated personal life of the prime detective. This novel, too, was exceedingly well done, though probably nothing will ever top The Black House.
And now, I face the fact that there is the third book, The Chess Men, also set on the Isle of Lewis and featuring the same characters, but I'm blocked because I don't want to come to the end. I have noted numerable times in the past that this is a stumbling block for me.
After all, I haven't finished the third volume of Stieg Larsson's trilogy, though it's sitting on my shelf. I think I should read it. I think I can handle that it's the end of the trilogy, but I hate that it's the end of his work.