I have had the privilege to plough through many books this past year. Here are my 10 favourite reads of 2016. They range from Poetry anthologies, novels, non-fiction and collected essays . They are in no particular order, and many of them are not new publications … it’s just my 10 favourite books that I have read this past year, some left a profound impression, some I will continue reading in 2017 and beyond, whilst others where just a good rollicking read and the last in the list was just for fun 🙂 . The links are to goodreads.

• The Complete Strain Trilogy: The Strain, The Fall, The Night Eternal (The Strain Trilogy #1-3)  by Guillermo del Toro

• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• War by Sebastian Junger

• Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew by Max Egremont

• Map: Collected and Last Poems by Wisława Szymborska, Clare Cavanagh (Translation), Stanisław Barańczak (Translation)

• Resident Alien by Rian Malan

• Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: A Medical Odyssey from Vietnam to Afghanistan by Ronald J. Glasser

• The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot

• A Taste of Tomorrow – The Dystopian Boxed Set (11 Book Collection)

• Outlaw Pete by Bruce Springsteen, Frank Caruso (Illustrations)

The most thought provoking books in the list were War and Some Desperate Glory, the most enlightening was A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Painful reads were Resident Alien and Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds. I am still busy reading Map (and will continue with it for some time) so to with TS Elliot’s, Waste Land. There are some companion books that never leave my desk, I keep rereading those, but it would be unfair to add them to the list as they would be on the list every year 🙂

I would love to know what great books you have read this year, please share them, so we can expand our horizons with your reading pleasures. I look forward to sharing many more poems and creative writing articles in 2017 and hoping to have my anthology published in early 2017 … happy reading and writing for 2017. Much love and peace to all of the readers and followers of my journey.