Favorite Books I Read In 2016

These are not books that came out in 2016, but books I read in 2016. I read about 180 books in 2016, so I had some difficulty narrowing it down, so I broke it down into categories to make it more useful if people want to use them as recommendations. Here are some of my favorite reads for 2016.

Best Fiction:

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Tenth of December by George Saunders
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Read it for the first time this year)
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Nobody Is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey (technically I read this in 2015)
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (a reread I love)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Best Nonfiction:

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (anthropology)
The Case for God by Karen Armstrong (history/ anthropology/ religion)
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (anthropology)

Undeniable by Bill Nye (biology/ evolution)
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (biology/cancer)
The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker (biology/ nutrition)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (biology/ nutrition)
The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee (biology)

The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria (foreign policy)
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (psychology/behavioral economics)

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (psychology)
Attached by Amir Levine (psychology)
Waking Up by Sam Harris (psychology/ mindfulness)

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (memoir/ social justice)
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (memoir/ sociology)
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (memoir/feminism)
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem (memoir/feminism)

The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (physics)
The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking (physics)

Fun Fiction:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (SciFi/ Fantasy/ Dystopian)
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (SciFi)
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld (Chick Lit)
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis (Fantasy- a reread but one I love)




Fun Nonfiction: 

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
100 Things Virginia Fans Should Know by Brian J. Leung