by Rita Baladad
Quick Summary
from Library Journal:
We nominated, debated, and discussed. Then the LJ 12 (yes, 12 of us, just like a jury) convened and voted. On a blustery October day, we got down to it, paring the list of titles from 33 possibilities to the Ten Best Books of 2016.
from Library Journal:
We nominated, debated, and discussed. Then the LJ 12 (yes, 12 of us, just like a jury) convened and voted. On a blustery October day, we got down to it, paring the list of titles from 33 possibilities to the Ten Best Books of 2016.
The arguments were heard, the 12 cast their ballots, and the nonfiction party won the majority: seven out of ten. The results reflect the particularly strong year for nonfiction, and our selections cover weighty issues, such as racial injustice, convoluted family histories, the sorry state of mental health care, advances in gene therapy, the nationwide housing crisis, the effect of single ladies on U.S. history and culture, and the phenomenon that is the Patty Hearst story. Stephanie Klose, who nominated Jeffrey Toobin’s account of the Hearst kidnapping and its aftereffects, calls his book “weirder and more compelling than any work of fiction,” and that observation could apply to any or all of the “true books” we chose this year.