In regards to reading, I had two goals this year. Actually, I’m going to refer to them as one goal and one hope.
The goal was to read one Shakespeare play each month. The few I had read before this year were school assignments, which I mostly wasn’t prepared to read and didn’t get much out of. I got a bit behind during the fall semester, but I managed to catch up just this week in order to complete my goal.
My hope was to read 100 books this year. Why 100? I don’t know. It’s a fairly arbitrary number, but it’s nice and round, and I thought this was the year that I could do it. Unfortunately, I’m a bit short, clocking in at only 91 books read this year (full list below). I admit that almost half of those books were poetry books, which means that many were a bit short. Still, 91 is a respectable number, or so I’m telling myself.
Here’s the full list. FYI, a few of these books are unpublished manuscripts. You won’t find them for purchase yet, but I hope you’ll find them one day soon.
- Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
- Diane Cook – Man V. Nature
- Steven Pressfield – The War of Art
- David Daniel – Seven-Star Bird
- Charles Dodd White & Larry Smith – Appalachia Now
- William Trent Pancoast – Valley Real Estate
- William Shakespeare – Othello
- William Kelley Woolfitt – Beauty Strip
- William Kelley Woolfitt – Charles of the Desert
- Richie Hofmann – Second Empire
- Jill McCorkle – Creatures of Habit
- Junot Diaz – The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- Michael Ondaatje – Divisadero
- William Shakespeare – The First Part of Henry VI
- Jeremy Jones – Bearwallow
- Elijah Burrell – The Skin of the River
- William Shakespeare – The Second Part of Henry VI
- Wesley Browne – Slice
- Pauletta Hansel – The Lives We Live in Houses
- Alex Taylor – The Name of the Nearest River
- Major Jackson – Holding Company
- Kyle McCord – You Are Indeed an Elk, But This is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze
- Jodi Lynn Anderson – Tiger Lily
- Brent Martin – Hunting for Camellias at Horseshoe Bend
- William Shakespeare – The Third Part of Henry VI
- Robert Zubrin – The Case for Mars
- Rose McLarney – The Always Broken Plates of Mountains
- Rose McLarney – Its Day Being Gone
- Lee Smith – Cakewalk
- Amy Willoughby-Burle – Out Across the Nowhere
- Darnell Arnoult – Galaxie Wagon
- William Shakespeare – Richard III
- Pasture Art – Marlin Barton
- Barrett Warner – Why is it so hard to kill You?
- New Stories from the South 2008 – ZZ Packer
- A Fox Appears – Jennifer Stewart-Miller
- Larry Brown – Joe (June)
- Bob Shachohis – The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
- Geoff Dyer – Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It
- Theodore Wheeler – Bad Faith
- Joanne Proulx – We All Love the Beautiful Girls
- William Shakespeare – The Tempest
- Ross Gay – Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
- Jim Elledge – Tapping My Arm for a Vein
- William Shakespeare – Two Gentleman of Verona
- Keith Stewart – Bernadette Peters Hates Me
- Cassie Pruyn – Lena
- Nathan Hill – The Nix
- Erica Anderson-Senter – Seven Days Now
- J.K. Daniels – Wedding Pulls
- Sue Weaver Dunlap – Knead
- Lauren K. Alleyne – Difficult Fruit
- Major Jackson – Hoops
- Brandon Courtney – Rooms for Rent in the Burning City
- Henry Real Bird – Horse Tacks
- Jen Leija – Good Bones
- William Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Lyrae Van Clief-Stafanon – Open Interval
- Ron Houchin – Death and the River
- David Armand – My Mother’s House
- William Shakespeare – The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Thomas Rain Crowe – Radiogenesis
- Dorianne Laux – The Book of Men
- Mark Eisner – The Essential Neruda – Selected Poems
- Richard Hague – Possible Debris
- Nathalie Handal – Poet in Andalucia
- Saeed Jones – Prelude to Bruise
- Joseph Bathanti – Anson County
- Jim Minick – Burning Heaven
- Jim Harrison – Letters to Yesenin
- Tim Peeler – Fresh Horses
- Mark Wagenaar – Body Distances
- Richard Hague – Alive in Hard Country
- Connie Jordan Green – Darwin’s Breath
- Grace Paley – Later the Same Day
- William Shakespeare – Measure for Measure
- TJ Jarrett – Zion
- Carrie Mullins – Night Garden
- William Shakespeare – Comedy of Errors
- William Shakespeare – Love’s Labour’s Lost
- -91. (11 poetry manuscripts I read for a contest)
I’d love to know what you read this year. If you don’t want to include your full list, what were your favorite books of 2016?
Denton Loving 