This is my second year writing one of these and it has seen me in an interesting place personally. Book-wise, as well, I have seen my reading-choices change a bit. 
 Last year, my top read was The Souls of Black Folk (Everyman's Library. This year it was Tom King's The Vision: Little Worse Than A Man, Little Better than a Beast. As I talked about in my review of volume 2, I felt that the existential horror that The Vision family experiences and manifests into real horror reflected some of themes of The Souls of Black Folk and the plays of Eugene O'Neill. I am just so amazed at what King and the artists were able to do. 
 From this point on I will discuss the few regular books I read and then the comics I read. I did not read as many books as I wanted, but I did do something that I rarely do: read a new book. That book was Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. This ambitious, first novel was eagerly anticipated by me and an amazing and slightly frustrating first entry into what I hope is a long, maturing career. 
 I read some very good poetry this year. The Black Poets, an anthology book I happened on by chance in a thrift store, may be the best poem anthology book I have ever read. I also finally finished The Essential Rumi after 6 years and it was worth the slow read. 
 I did a lot better with play than novels and poetry volumes. I read my second and third Chekhov plays this year. Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters were both good plays but, to my great surprise, I preferred "Vanya" more. The emotional depth and overwhelming sense of human beauty in sorrow touched my heart and hit close to "home" for me this year. 
 I also read my first two plays by Henrik Ibsen. Hedda Gabler sees the Norwegian bourgeois become ensnared in a Kierkegaardian karmic cycle. It is an amazingly powerful and unsentimental play. The Master Builder was equally enjoyable and I may have liked the individual characters more than with Hedda Gabler. I can't wait to read An Enemy of the People. 
 I read three Shakespeare plays for the first time, this year. Henry VI, Part 3 was the third play by Shakespeare and the point where he finally finds and connects the traits that makes his plays iconic. As You Like It was an interesting look at what happens when Old Will phones it in and the finished product still turns out well. Of course, The Tempest was the big Shakespeare play I read this year. It is the play which, while being his, deviated the most from his usual formula and was meant to be his grand finale from the stage. 
 Glengarry Glen Ross was the most profanity-laden play I have read, and very fun in its own cynical and harsh way. I was very amused by its own universe of over-the-top mean-ness. 
 Last, but not least I saw August Wilson's Fences on Christmas. It was a stellar play and it takes its audience on an amazing ride. Wilson's cadence with the character's dialogue and the way that you were latched on to every action. All these characters in Wilson's Pennsylvania remind me of characters from my Maryland and Virginia. I still feel terrible for reading this so late in my life. 
 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus is the sole pure philosophical work I read all the way through. It was recommended to me after Brexit and its relevance would turn out to be very potent thru this year. 
 My non-fiction reading was a bit more fruitful than my fiction. I embarked on a personal mission in 2016 to read three books concerning three major hallmarks of African-American history in the 19th century: the apex of slavery in the United States, the war that brought slavery to an end, and the aftermath which saw the doomed attempt to seek equality for all men. I have so far read The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, an amazing, economically centered, but human-focused look at the history of Slavery in the United States and its legacy today. I am in the middle of Battle Cry of Freedom and will be starting Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 when I am done. 
 I also read Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000, one of the best histories of Afro-Latinos in english. It really helped fill in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of Black folk in Latin America. I hope to get some more up-to-date histories, but this will do for now. 
 I read La Carta de Jamaica by the Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar. This was a letter written while in-exile in Jamaica to a curious on-looker inquiring about the situation of Spain's rebellious colonies in South America.a very interesting read for anyone curious about the South American independence movement. 
 The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain is a timeless essay by Langston Hughes urging African-Americans of any profession to not be afraid or ashamed of their own identity just because white people would label them "black poet" or "black writer" etc. I wish certain minority writers today could take Hughes' words to heart. 
 I read James Baldwin's first published book of essays: Notes of a Native Son. This book, while not the masterpiece that was The Fire Next Time, is an amazing read that begins Baldwin's mission that he would labor on all his life. 
 After a year of trying to read it, I finally finished reading Race and the American Idea: 155 Years of Writings From The Atlantic. This ebook anthology was another secret gem that I stumbled along by accident. While searching Goodreads for an entry to review The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates I stumbled upon the page for this book and decided to download and read the whole thing. It was well worth it. 
 Now, for the comics: 
 Continued in comments section...stupid word count limit!