Best Reads of 2016

[kerry]

(01-05-2018 09:17 PM)Sally Wrote:  

(01-04-2018 05:46 PM)kerry Wrote:  The ones that stand out are:

Lincoln in the Bardo (still waiting to find another person who has made it through)
Lincoln's Melancholy
A Foreigner's Quest (highly recommend)
Trial by War
Grief by Andrew Holleran, which weaves Mary Lincoln into the story, also resonated a lot with me
The Trials of Mrs. Lincoln (reviews of this tend to dismiss it as inaccurate or non-historical, but while it has a certain narrative it is pursuing, I don't think it stretches or mistakes the facts more than other more well-received books, and I think it is a completely reasonable interpretation.).

I read way too many to list - almost all of them were very good.

Kerry:

I read “Lincoln in the Bardo”. Actually, I listened to the audiobook. It was a well done production. Each “ghost” character is read by a different reader, quite a few of whom are famous, like Ben Stiller, Julianne Moore, Bill Hader, Susan Sarandon, Keagan-Michael Key, and many others.

I can’t say I loved the book, but I liked it enough to finish it. It is very strange and, as you said in an earlier post, not to everybody’s taste. I wouldn’t recommend it to most people, but I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it if they had an interest in the topic and were open to a different literary concept. I found some scenes quite moving. Others were very funny. Some were a bit too vulgar for my taste. And some were just plain weird. But they were all interesting. It was clever the way the author used excerpts from actual newspaper accounts and letters to help tell the story. And some of the “historical accounts” he made up were pretty amusing. I really liked the ironic twist at the end of the book. I won’t give it away for anyone who plans to read it, but let’s just say Mr. Lincoln is not entirely himself when he leaves the cemetery after visiting Willie's tomb for the last time.

The whole time I was listening to the book, I kept thinking it would make a great Tim Burton animated film. (Think “The Corpse Bride” or “The Nightmare Before Christmas.) Then I read that the film rights have been optioned by Megan Mullally and her husband, Nick Offerman (both of whom are part of the audiobook cast.) I honestly don’t know how they could make a live action movie of this, but I supposed CGI could work. But it would be better in Tim Burton’s hand, IMO.

George Saunders was on C-Span’s BookTV recently to discuss how the novel came about. Here’s the link if you’re interested in watching it online.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?436776-22/lincoln-bardo

Glad to find someone else who read it, or rather, listened! The audiobook looks cool, but I'm not an audiobook person so I didn't listen to it. I'm very interested in what Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman will do - it seems impossible to do on screen, but they are far more imaginative than I am. I agree parts of it were too vulgar for my taste, but not enough to ruin the overall effect. I thought the impressions it made about the nature of the Civil War and Lincoln's mind were very good.