elliott holt

My annual list of all books I’ve read or reread (so far), in the order I read them. My favorite reads of the year are in bold, but everything on this list is recommended.

1. Arcadia by Lauren Groff (This extraordinary novel is in paperback now, so you have no excuse not to read it.)
2. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (I’m not alone in thinking that this is the best book that was published in 2012.)
3. The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn (The first four novels were published in a single volume by Picador and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I loved this book so much that I’ve already read it twice. A dark, blisteringly funny portrait of a privileged family in England.)
4. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (This essay collection was published last year and it is spectacular.)
5. Then Again by Diane Keaton (I listened to the audiobook, which the wonderful Keaton reads herself.)
6. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
7. Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie (A brilliant, powerful woman! Russia!)
8. The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont
9. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (A beautifully transporting fairy tale, but also a story of pioneers reminiscent of Willa Cather. The Alaskan wilderness is vividly described in beautiful, clean prose.)
10. Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman (gorgeous short stories)
11. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
12. Wild by Cheryl Strayed (A wonderful memoir—I cry just thinking about the scene with the horse.)
13. The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits (I love Julavits’s voice.)
14. Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
15. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Lovely, hypnotic novel.)
16. The Human Factor by Graham Greene (Greene is one of my favorite writers.)
17. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Even better than Wolf Hall, which I also loved.)
18. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
19. In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard (Beautiful voice.)
20. In the Woods by Tana French (This is the year I discovered Tana French’s atmospheric mysteries and boy, am I glad I did.)
21. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel (A graphic novel that is perfect for anyone with Mommy issues.)
22. The Likeness by Tana French
23. Brand New Human Being by Emily Jeanne Miller
24. The World Without You by Joshua Henkin
25. People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Perry (A gripping true-crime story—sensational, but not sensationalized—set in Tokyo.)
26. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (unputdownable thriller)
27. Heartburn by Nora Ephron
28. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
29. Faithful Place by Tana French
30. Travels With Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck (I listened to the audiobook, which is read by the excellent Gary Sinese, on a cross-country road trip.)
31. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (I reread it every summer—it’s that good.)
32. Broken Harbor by Tana French
33. What Happened to Sophie Wilder? by Christopher R. Beha (An elegant debut novel reminiscent of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair: love, Catholicism, and twenty-somethings in New York are handled deftly.)
34. The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro (I listened to the whole book on the aforementioned road trip.)
35. Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta (So sharp—I can’t wait to read it again.)
36. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
37. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed (An inspiring collection of the Dear Sugar columns from The Rumpus)
38. Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton (A beautifully illustrated, profound memoir about the author’s lifelong experience of swimming—this would make a perfect gift for swimmers.)
39. Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins (An extraordinary story collection.)
40. Where You’d Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (hilarious)
41. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (So brilliant, so haunting; this book blew me away. I recommend it to anyone who loved David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.)
42. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (reread—just as good the second time)
43. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012 (featuring gems by Yiyun Li, Anthony Doerr, Alice Munro, Jim Shepard, and Lauren Groff among others)
44. May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes (Darkly funny novel about the dysfunctional family that is America—and how much we need redemption.)
45. This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz (Break-up stories!)
46. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (A wry, moving novel about the way heroism is packaged; the writing is brilliant.)
47. NW by Zadie Smith
48. The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin (Reads like a timeless classic. Poetic and gorgeous.)
49. Desperate Characters by Paula Fox (now officially one of my favorite books)
50. Too Good to Be True by Benjamin Anastas (A memoir about losing everything.)
51. Safe As Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino (These quirky, voice-driven stories were written by a brilliant friend from grad school.)
52. All Art is Propaganda: Essays by George Orwell
53. A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins (The premise is fantastic: it’s about a man “conversing” with a computer programmed with his dead father’s diaries. A romantic book about what makes us human.)
54. Panorama City by Antoine Wilson (What a voice!)
55. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
56. Dear Life by Alice Munro (She’s my favorite writer, though I should confess that I haven’t yet read the last four stories in this collection.)
57. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

On deck (I’ve heard great things about these books):

• Kind One by Laird Hunt
• Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
• Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt
• Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
• Four New Messages by Joshua Cohen
• The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel
• Muck City by Bryan Mealer
• The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu
• The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
• How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

There’s no Thelma to my Louise, but I’m still hitting the road. I’m going to spend the month of July driving cross country alone. I’ll set out from Brooklyn on July 4th (independence indeed). I’ll be stopping to visit friends along the way and working on a new short story (not while I’m driving, obviously). And I’m bringing a lot of books, including:

1. David Maraniss’s new biography of Obama (audiobook—I love listening to non-fiction on road trips)
2. Robert Caro’s Passage of Power (audiobook—27 CDs! The voice who read this book aloud must still be tired)
3. Absalom, Absalom!, which I’m inspired to reread thanks to this riff by John Jeremiah Sullivan
4. A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark (I love Spark but haven’t read this one)
5. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012 (an exceptional anthology with stories by some of my favorite writers including Alice Munro, Jim Shepard, Steven Millhauser, Anthony Doerr, Lauren Groff, Kevin Wilson, and Yiyun-Li)
6. The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn (the first four were published in one Picador paperback, which I tore through and now want to reread)
7. Faithful Place by Tana French (I’ve been binging on Tana French this summer—I devoured her first two mysteries, am halfway through this one and very excited for her new book, Broken Harbor, to come out later this month.)
8. The Great Gatsby because I reread it every summer.
9. Bleak House because (I’m embarrassed to say) I’ve never read it.

And my iPad and Nook are coming, too, in case I have a sudden hankering for a new book when I’m far from a good bookstore, and so I can catch up on issues of The New Yorker (I love the iPad app).