I read 112 books last year, across genres and themes, of varying thickness and respectability. It’s a decent number, but what follows is by no means a comprehensive overview of anything: while I have read some of the talked-about books of 2016, I haven’t read most, and exactly because I read very widely, my penetration of any category is by definition shallow. Below are simply the highlights of my reading year, nothing more, nothing less. If you want to follow my bookish exploits more closely, you can do it on Goodreads (Annikky) or Instagram (@lifeinacoldclimate).

1. Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. I was recently reminded by someone I deeply respect that reading should be about pleasure. And no book has given me more pleasure this year than the Saga comic series. I love the galactic scope, the attitude, the artwork and pretty much everything else about it. I talked about the first installment in more detail a while back and six volumes later, I’m still a fan.

2. Hanya Yanagihara. Pleasure is all very well, but it comes in many forms – sometimes only after pain. Occasionally, I need a book to shake me hard and Hanya Yanagihara’s novels did exactly that. A Little Life has become a publishing phenomenon and needs no introduction (or if you want one, my review is here). I’m inclined to think, however, that Yanagihara’s first book, The People in the Trees is in fact better, whatever that means. I believe it’s the most accomplished debut I’ve ever read and while it’s difficult to say I liked it – it’s detached and cold and unpleasant – it treats a myriad of important topics from colonialism to the ethics of science, from environmental concerns to relationships with an incredible assuredness. If you have read A Little Life and didn’t like it, don’t rule out The People in the Trees – it’s a completely different book and aside from the fierce intelligence that shows through both, they have hardly anything in common.

3. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout. It has been said many times that both A Little Life and The People in the Trees are about abuse and I have disagreed many times (although they are about that, too). You could say the same about Lucy Barton and it would be even less true. You could also say it’s about mothers and daughters and loneliness and that would be closer. Strout’s approach is completely different from Yanagihara’s: sparse, melancholy and more compassionate, but still powerful. (On a side note: do not read the review in The New York Times. What the fuck, NYT? Review does not mean a short retelling of the book! Seriously. Not that The Guardian is much better, so I’m not linking to any reviews.)

4. Linnade põletamine by Kai Aareleid. Talking about quiet storytelling, this is what Aareleid also exels at. I read very little in Estonian last year – something I need to work on – but this does not diminish the qualities of this book. Like Strout’s book, it’s about the past, about childhood and secrets and family. The language is beautiful (unfortunately accessible only to Estonian-speakers) and I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Soviet Tartu through the eyes of a child. Beautifully done.

5. The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré. Well, no-one does secrets quite like Le Carré. His memoir – or more accurately, “stories from my life” as it says on the cover – is compulsively readable. It’s also unreliable, but being a spy and a writer tends to do that to memoirs. As you’d expect, it covers the Germans and the Russians, the MI5 and the MI6, Arafat and Graham Greene – but also the author’s father and the price of deceit. Anyone who already likes Carré would most likely love it, but I’d recommend it to everyone interested in 20th century affairs and the players both on and off the stage.

6. Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary. If the 20th century was dominated by the Western powers, 21st looks to be a different – or at least more varied – story. I have spent a good chunk of my reading this year trying to understand the history of Islam and its consequences. It’s unfortunately extremely difficult to find English-language books on the topic that are written by actual muslims living in muslim countries. I am tired of hearing what the West thinks of Islam and Islamic civilization – I want to know what THEY think. Destiny Disrupted is the closest I’ve gotten (Ansary is from Afghanistan, although he lives in the US now) and as far as I can judge, it’s a great introduction to a subject we all should know more about. Very readable and enlightening.

7. Lost Japan by Alex Kerr. Reading about the history of Japan might be less obviously relevant, but it’s equally fascinating. I read a fair bit of Japanese literature and books about Japan this year, because we travelled there. For some reason, I enjoyed the non-fiction better than fiction and most of all, I liked Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan and Ivan Morris’s The World of the Shining Prince (not pictured). The first is a lament for the traditional Japanese culture, from Kabuki to calligraphy. The second is a wonderful introduction to Heian Japan, where in the 10th century, exceptional women produced such incredible literary works as The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book. These are not new texts and occasionally show their age a bit, but I thoroughly loved reading both.

8. Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. I very much enjoyed Bardugo’s first in this duology, Six of Crows and the sequel didn’t disappoint. I’m a difficult YA reader, not because I have exquisite taste, but because I don’t want the books to be silly, but I still want the YA fun. It’s hard to predict how many genre tropes I’m happy to live with, but this series (is two books a series?) hits the sweet spot for me. I liked the characters, I even liked the romances, I enjoyed the banter and I loved the scheming. The Dutch and Russian influenced world building was interesting and different enough to be fresh and I’m a sucker for a good heist. Try to ignore all the gushing on Goodreads, it’s not the fault of the books.

9. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. I don’t have much to add to what I said in my summer recommendations and Goodreads review. It’s the only horror book I read this year – unless you count Gaiman’s Black Dog -, so this probably disqualifies me as a judge of this text, but I enjoyed it very much. Gory fun.

10. Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. I read less science fiction this year than is usual for me, I suspect partly because not too many of my bookstagram friends read SF and I was influenced by their reading lists. In addition to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet that I also recommended for summer reading, my other favourite was this debut novel about giant robots, (possible) alien contact, geopolitical maneuvering, secret organisations and science. Unlike TLWTASAP (!!!), it’s an earth-based book and while I usually prefer space operas, I thought this was clever and intriguing and readable.

11. Summers Under the Tamarind Tree by Sumayya Usmani. Yes, it’s a cookbook, but it’s also a book about Pakistan and childhood and what food means. It was a good year for Middle World cookbooks (see some of my older and newer favourites here, plus I’ve since discovered Samarkand), but this was the one I liked best and also cooked the most from. I made the Kashmiri leg of lamb three times, despite its size and relatively time-consuming preparation (some other things I made are mentioned here). It is interesting – and by “interesting” I mean “pathetic” – how we have hundreds of cookbooks about Indian food, but finding one about Pakistan is so difficult.

These lists are always arbitrary and unfair – I could have easily included another dozen books (it hurts a bit to leave out Diana Athill or The Noise of Time by Barnes or City of Blades or Ta-Nehisi Coates or The Age of Wonder) or substituted some for others, but one has to draw the line somewhere. I believe this was a good year for literature, if not for anything else, and I’m looking forward to reading in 2017. The books are out there.

PS Some of the the books I read on Kindle and that’s why they are not pictured. And my sister stole The People in the Trees. And I simply forgot Lucy Barton.