> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The Best Books of 2016
- URL: https://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/blog/2016/12/26/the-best-books-of-2016/
- Published: 2016-12-26T14:24:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-02-23T17:39:06.000Z
- Description: Some of the best books I read this year including recently published books as well as classics, in a number of categories: best fiction, best science, best book about Claude Lévi-Strauss, best economics and more.
- Author: Ivar Hagendoorn
- Tags: Blog, Literature, Non-Fiction

### Best Fiction

Nicholson Baker: The Mezzanine  
Katja Petrowskaja: Vielleicht Esther  
Thomas Bernhard: Das Kalkwerk  
Primo Levi: If This Is a Man

You can't read everything at once and so it is that I only read If This Is a Man this year. Its status as a classic is totally deserved. One of the best novels about the Holocaust. I hesitate to file it under fiction. The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker is one of the funniest novels I've read in recent years. If you like the work of W.G. Sebald you'll love Vielleicht Esther by Katja Petrowskaja.

### Best Short Story Collection

Lucia Berlin: A Manual for Cleaning Women

### Best Book I Wish I Had Read Years Ago

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

If you're looking for a good introduction to stoicism there is no better place to start than right at the source.

### Best Science

Morten H. Christiansen: Creating Language. Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing  
Itai Yanai & Martin Lercher: The Society of Genes  
Andrea Wulf: The Invention of Nature  
Lawrence M. Krauss: A Universe from Nothing

### Best Book About Claude Lévi-Strauss

Philippe Descola: Par-delà nature et culture  
Emmanuelle Loyer: Lévi-Strauss  
Tom McCarthy: Satin Island

Philippe Descola is a former student of Lévi-Strauss and is currently chair of anthropology at the Collège de France, a position previously held by Lévi-Strauss. Beyond Nature and Culture is his magnum opus. Emmanuelle Loyer has written the definitive biography of Lévi-Strauss. I greatly enjoyed Satin Island. Its first-person narrator is a consultant ethnographer tasked with writing a Great Report that sums up our era. Had I seen the job description I would have instantly applied.

### Best History & Economics

Frank Trentman: Empire of Things  
Peter Frankopan: The Silk Roads. A New History of the World  
Timur Kuran: The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East

I learned a great deal from all three of these books.

### Most Disappointing

Laurent Binet: La septième fonction du langage

I loved *HhHH* but *La septième fonction du langage* is a joke stretched too far.