Reading - 2016 & 2015 Year End Reviews

In 2016 I read 19 novels, 2 plays and 4 non-fiction titles (including the history tome The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle). My favorite fiction of the year is War and Peace and my favorite non-fiction title of the year is Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman.

Monthly favorites:-

January - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
February - The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
March - Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
April - Blood & Beauty: The Borgias by Sarah Dunant
May - The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia by C.W. Gortner
June - Unless by Carol Shields
July - Watership Down by Richard Adams
August - A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
September - Hypatia of Alexandria by Maria Dzielska
October - The Masterpiece by Émile Zola
November - The Book and the Sword by Jin Yong
December - The Peach Blossom Fan by Kong Shangren (a Chinese classical play)

 In 2015 I read 4 non-fiction books and 18 novels - a total of 22 books, which was not bad considering I was engaged full-time on a writing project for the first half of the year!

Of the non-fiction category, my favorite would be Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, with Marie Antoinette: The Journey trailing right behind.

Of the 18 novels that I read, these found their way to my heart (not in any order):-

Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
A Woman's Life and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Odyssey by Homer
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola
Wolf Of The Plains by Conn Iggulden