My Favorite Books of 2016

I am a great fan of Best Of lists, though I prefer the more expansive to the purportedly authoritative, and I'm always frustrated by how rarely translated or indie press works are included, or how small the lists are when they are - here are two good exceptions, one of indie presses, one of translations. Mine is slightly different, in that it's a list of the things that I most loved of books I read, and is not limited to things published this year.

So, without further ado, my 10 favorite things I read in 2016 (listed in the order in which I encountered them):

--A House of My Own, Sandra Cisneros
--The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli, Translated by Christina McSweeney
--The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara
--Here, Richard McGuire
--Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage
--The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
--Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay
--Killing and Dying, Adrien Tomine
--Little Labors, Rivka Galchen

Runners-up
--Beauty is a Wound, Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker
--Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
--The Seven Good Years, Etgar Keret, translated by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger, Jessica Cohen, Anthony Berris
--Scheherazade Goes West, Fatema Mernissi
--The Moor's Account, Laila Lalami

...and I reread Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, and it's still one of my all-time favorites.