Here is my annual round-up of the 12 best books I read this year, one for every month. The list is alphabetical by author. For the first time since I started keeping annual lists (about 11 years, I believe), I cannot pick a single book to be my favorite. Several of them vied at times for the top spot, but I couldn’t settle on one, so I will not choose one absolute favorite this year*. Hey, if it’s good enough for the Pulitzer board, it’s good enough for me.
Happy reading!
*I retroactively awarded two novels this honor: Dave Eggers’ Heroes of the Frontier, and Toni Morrison’s Sula.
1. What It Takes (1992), Richard Ben Cramer
2. Heroes of the Frontier (2016), Dave Eggers
3. Eleven Hours (2016), by Pamela Erens
4. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016), by Arlie Russell Hochschild
5. Sula (1973), by Toni Morrison
6. After Claude (1973), by Iris Owens
7. The Wanderers (1974), by Richard Price
8. Mister Monkey (2016), by Francine Prose
9. Private Citizens (2016), by Tony Tulathimutte
10. What’s For Dinner? (1978), by James Schuyler
11. String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis (2016), by David Foster Wallace
12. The Underground Railroad (2016), by Colson Whitehead
A Dance to the Books of Time 
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