My Literary 2016: An Analysis

As you can see from the Blog Archive to the right, I read 46 books this year (the 2016 total minus this meta-post). That's a decent number of books, but it represents my lowest total since 2012. It also includes a surprisingly high number of second readings: I re-read seven novels and two non-fiction books, representing 15% of the total.

I did a pretty good job of balancing fiction and non-fiction, reading 24 works of fiction and 22 of non-fiction. My highest rating went to a novel (Being Dead) as did my lowest rating (The Sellout, which later won the Man Booker Prize!). But overall I preferred the non-fiction: my average rating for non-fiction was 3.65 stars, which is a half-star higher than the 3.16 average for fiction. I read some disappointing novels this year, but all of the non-fiction got at least three stars.

Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement *** 1/2

The Man in My Basement is the second book in a row that I've rated lower than I did the first time I read it. I still appreciate its approach and its believably unpleasant characters, but the vagueness that I found tantalizing the last time I found annoying this time. The element of surprise was gone, and the book didn't set my mind a-buzzin' the way I hoped it would.

Robert Coover, Pinocchio in Venice *** 1/2

I'm rating Pinocchio in Venice one star lower than I did the first time I read it. I stand by everything I said in my earlier review, but the high rating really only applies to Part I ("A Snowy Night"). The rest of the book is a bawdy picaresque full of wordplay, which recapitulates the original adventures of Pinocchio. (It's amazing how many English expressions involve wood.) I found it tiresome and repetitive at times.

I really liked the first part, though, especially its Venetian atmosphere.

Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land **** 1/2

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a liberal sociologist from Berkeley; in Strangers in Their Own Land, she attempts to climb over what she calls the "empathy wall" and understand the world view of Tea Party conservatives. She visits communities in southwestern Louisiana and starts with a focus on one issue: environmental regulations. Louisiana has high levels of pollution from the oil and gas industries, but its people consistently vote against regulation. If she can understand this paradox, maybe she can understand the conservative mindset.

If you know me well, you know that I love to "try on" different world views. While Hochschild's approach is basically anecdotal, she does manage to present a compelling and sympathetic conservative worldview, and to identify areas where conservatives and liberals might find common cause if they talk in a collaborative way. (Other areas not so much, since the two sides can't even agree about the basic facts.)

So why are Louisianans against environmental regulation? Because they see it as ineffective, wrongly targeted, and an excuse for government overreach.

Take this bayou. If your motorboat leaks a little gas into the water, the warden'll write you up. But if companies leak thousands of gallons of it and kill all the life here? The state lets them go. If you shoot an endangered brown pelican, they'll put you in jail. But if a company kills the brown pelican by poisoning the fish he eats? They let it go. I think they overregulate the bottom because it's harder to regulate the top.