Advertisement
Our Favorite Reads Of The Year
Play
We've rounded up our favorite books, essays, poems and prose of the year. We're joined in studio by two local authors to hear what stood out to them and the trends they saw in 2016.
Guests
Jabari Asim, editor-in-chief of The Crisis, the journal of the NAACP, and a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. His latest book is "Preaching To The Chickens." He tweets @jabariasim.
Laura van den Berg, Briggs-Copeland lecturer in fiction at Harvard University. Her latest book is "Find Me." She tweets @lvandenberg.
Jabari Asim's Booklist
Children's
Freedom in Congo Square, Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie
How to Build a Museum: Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Tonya Bolden
Poetry
Olio, Tyehimba Jess
Counting Descent, Clint Smith
Collected Poems 1974-2004, Rita Dove
Adult Nonfiction
The World In Flames, Jerald Walker
We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation, Jeff Chang
Hidden Figures: The American Dream And The Untold Story Of The Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win The Space Race, Margot Lee Shetterly
Adult Fiction
Insurrections: Stories, Rion Amilcar Scott
Graphic Novel
March: Book Three, John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell
Laura van den Berg's Booklist
Books
What is Not Yours is Not Yours, Helen Oyeyemi
Heartbreaker: Stories, Maryse Meijer
Swing Time, Zadie Smith
The Vegetarian, Han King
Short Stories
What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah
The Next World and the Next, Alice Sola Kim
Essays
Who Gets to Write What?, Kaitlyn Greenidge
Joy Williams's Refractory Brilliance, James Wood
I Have No Choice But to Keep Looking, Jennifer Percy
Autocracy, Rules for Survival, Masha Gessen
How I Fell in Love with the Beautiful Art of Cruising, Garth Greenwell
Poems
A New National Anthem, Ada Limón
Social Skills Training, Solmaz Sharif
Radio Boston's Booklist
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance
- "I was looking for insight, a window into a culture and community I didn’t know well, and I found it." — host Shira Springer
Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town, S.L. Price
- "For me, sports is always a powerful lens for viewing society and history. And this biography of Aliquippa, its people, its football players provides exactly that." — host Shira Springer
Building Old Cambridge: Architecture and Development, Susan E. Maycock and Charles M. Sullivan
Invisible Man, Got The Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education, Mychal Denzel Smith
- "A beautifully written, personal account of what it's like now for young black men growing up in America in a post Michael-Brown era. A quick read. Mychal doesn't have all the answers to alleviating his struggles, but his willingness to be vulnerable and thoughtful is an inspiration." — producer Ashley Bailey
The High Mountains Of Portugal, Yann Martel
- "Driven by three interlocking stories, the novel follows a museum curator's journey to find a lost object, a pathologist who is mystified by a strange request, and a Canadian senator who moves to the High Mountains to escape from it all. I couldn't put it down." — producer Alison Bruzek
This segment aired on December 29, 2016.
