By year end, I’ll have read about 100 books in 2016. Any book I finish has merit, but only a few rock my world.
Note: Only a few of these books were published in 2016. So if you’re looking for “best books of 2016” lists, this isn’t that–though I have listed publication years, so the few that came out in 2016 may be worth a look.
1.) Title (Year): The Hidden Life of Trees (2016, English language ed.)
Author: Peter Wohlleben
I had no idea. Trees communicate, share, parent, form alliances, and I could go on. I’ll never look at a tree the same way.
2.) Title (Year): Being Mortal (2015)
Author: Atul Gawande
Beating one’s fear of death is not so hard as beating one’s fear of losing control.
3.) Title (Year): Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings (2006 [this ed.])
Author: Matsuo Bashō
Any time one can glimpse the mind of a haiku master, one comes away with an injection of clarity.
4.) Title (Year): Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (2008 ed.)
Author: Lewis Carroll
Killing my misogyny. I love “secret door to an alternate universe” stories. Gaiman’s Neverwhere is one of my favorite novels. And here I’m just getting around to reading this exemplar (and the mother) of all such stories. I suspect I’d dismissed it as a girl’s book–whatever that means.
5.) Title (Year): The Dharma Bums (1958)
Author: Jack Kerouac
A voyeuristic impulse across time, space, and culture. Kerouac’s use of language and way of describing events sometimes rattles loose sticky ways of thinking.
6.) Title (Year): Gut (2015)
Author: Giulia Enders
This may seem like a bizarre and morbid fascination, but Enders makes studying the alimentary canal both interesting and amusing.
7.) Title (Year): The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep (1998)
Author: Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Forget space. The subconscious is the final frontier, and this book offers insight into how to hack it.
8.) Title (Year): Touch (2015)
Author: David J. Linden
I was just reviewing a book (John Medina’s Brain Rules) that claimed that vision trumps all other human senses. Linden’s book made me rethink that belief.
9.) Title (Year): Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (2006)
Author: Mo Yan
Another kind of voyeurism across time, space, and culture–but this one giving one a taste of what it was like to live in China through the Cultural Revolution and what came after.
10.) Title (Year): Into Africa (2012 ed.)
Author: Martin Dugard
I bought this before my wife and I went to Zambia. Basically, I just wanted to know what “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” meant. However, I became fascinated with the challenges of exploring Africa in that era.
11.) Title (Year): The Little Prince (1943)
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I’m stunned by the ability to pack this much wisdom into a book and yet make it approachable to a child.
12.) Title (Year): The Emperor of All Maladies (2011)
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
I knew cancer was mean, but I had no idea of the degree to which cancers are both vicious beasts and clever disasters.
13.) Title (Year): The Things They Carried (1990)
Author: Tim O’Brien
This book freed my impression of what a novel must be.
14.) Title (Year): The Relaxation Response (1975, but I read the 2009 ed.)
Author: Herbert Benson
A classic. The book reminded me of what it must have been like to be doing research on meditation back then–and makes me wonder whether we’d be much further ahead if one hadn’t had to have cast iron gonads to take on such a research agenda in those days.
15.) Title (Year): Siddhartha’s Brain (2016)
Author: James Kingsland
I’d read the life story of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, and I’m constantly reading about the science of the mind. Still, this book that drops chocolate in the peanut butter got me thinking in new ways on the subject.
I like your picks! I’ve heard and suspected that trees communicate. I’m interested to read this book. Are there especially good “tree” places to go in India?
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In general, India seems to have a respect for trees that borders on reverence and goes beyond what one typically sees in the West. It’s quite common to see curbs built out into the street to avoid cutting down or usurping the space of big trees. It’s also more common to see buildings built around trees rather than to cut them down–of course, the tree often ends up injured nonetheless. All that said, nimrods still feel the need to carve their names, initials, and messages into trees, and there’s a lot of damage to trees from huge numbers of people.
But yeah, there are many large tracts of forests, all though shrinking. In the south, Kerala / Western Ghats have some old growth forests.
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Thanks for the info! That’s too bad about the people carving their names in the trees. I see that where I’m from in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. At least many people have the right idea in building around.
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Yeah, I think it’s just ignorance. People think of a tree as being like a rock or the sand in the beach because it’s [mostly] immobile.
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Great choices! The Little Prince has long been a cherished tale, and The Things They Carried is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Touch and The Hidden Life of Trees both seem interesting as well! Thanks for sharing 🙂
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Another thank you for your thoughtful reviews. I’ve read several of these, at least one on your recommendation. I’m currently wading my way through “The Polyvagal Theory” by Stephen Porges. Definitely not of the “science made readable” genre but I decided that it was time to get to grips with the depth of his work rather than dealing in other people’s interpretations.
I read “Being Mortal” ahead of a Quaker conference I attended on behalf of my Meeting on the subject of death and dying. I found it really incisive thinking and started me on a process of trying to work out what aspects of control are truly important to me. The trouble is I suspect that it changes both as one ages and as the reality of one’s health condition becomes apparent.
I’ve just ordered the Kindle edition of Siddhartha’s Brain for festive season reading 🙂
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