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Mabuhay! I'm an Asian American writer (Back Kicks And Broken Promises, Abbott Press, 2012), martial artist and teacher who was born in The Philippines, raised in Hong Kong and ended up in New Jersey.

28 December, 2016

Top Ten Books Of 2016

My Top Ten Books of 2016

And, here it is. My list of the top ten books I read in 2016. If you follow my blog, you’ll know that I do this annually and that my list is based on the books I read that year, regardless of the year in which a book was published. Interestingly, 2016 saw me read more recently published books (mostly 2015 and 2016) than I usually do. This year also drew me towards reading more non-fiction books as well.

What gets a book on my top ten is the following criteria: whether it changed a part of me or my life or how I look at life, the book’s emotional impact on me, how unique and creative I though the book was. Each book’s level of entertainment, education and ‘page turnability’ also determines if it makse the list or not. And, again, as I say every year, this is purely my subjective list. You may not like it and some of the books may be the kinds of books that don’t normally draw you to them but they called to me and I gladly shared a good part of my 2016 with them.

So, without further ado, here they are.




1. The Latinos of Asia: How Filipinos Break The Rules of Race by Anthony Christian Ocampo, Ph.D. Stanford University Press, 2016.
2. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2016.
3. Incensed by Ed Lin. Soho Crime, 2016.
4. Arsene Wenger by John Cross. Simon & Schuster (UK), 2015.
5. Dog Man by Dav Pilkey. GRAPHIX, 2016.
6. The Sandwich Thief by Andre Marois, Patrick Doyon (illustrator). Chronicle Books, 2016.
7. Descender, Volume One: Tin Stars by Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen (illustrator). Image Comics, 2015.
8. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: A Novel by Salman Rushdie. Random House, 2016.
9. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong (Jason Pargin). Thomas Dunne Books, 2015.
10. The Thank You Book (Elephant & Piggie #25) by Mo Willems. Disney-Hyperion, 2016.

Honourable mentions:

One-Punch Man, Volume One by One, Yusuke Murata (illustrator). VIZ Media, 2015

Captain Awesome and the New Kid (Captain Awesome #3) by Jim Kirby, George O’Connor (illustrator). Little Simon, 2012.

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