Hi friends. 2015 was a good reading year. These are my favorites:
Fiction:
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish (Review)
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Review)
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal (Review)
Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich (Review)
Nonfiction:
How to Cook a Moose by Kate Christensen (Review)
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer (Review)
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days on the War on Drugs by Johann Hari (Review)
Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot by Mark Vanhoenacker (Review)
There was very little middle ground with fiction this year: I mostly either loved what I read or found it just okay. These four, though–wow. They’re so different, but they’re all emotional, readable, and unforgettable.
Preparation for the Next Life is an intense read, not unlike A Little Life. Both these books tore me apart. I felt the characters and their struggles in an emotionally-gutted, visceral way. And the connection I had to these stories went deep: I thought about both books for weeks after I’d finished them. They’re difficult reads in that way, and also because both are rather lengthy (A Little Life puts George R.R. Martin to shame). Still, if you can make the time, please put these on your list.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest and Bull Mountain are very different than the other two. They’re designed to entertain and they do–they really do. The former is just a beautiful, sweet story, constructed so cleverly that you can’t help but smile by the end. Bull Mountain, on the other hand, is just packed with suspense and violence. Of everything I read this year, this book captured and held my attention in the most obnoxious–but wonderful–way. I don’t think I let go of this until I finished it. (Cooking while reading is not advisable.) Anyway, the story is heart-pounding and the twists are fantastic and hard to see coming. Really amazing story-telling.
I read a lot of fantastic, informative nonfiction this year too, but Missoula and Chasing the Scream easily topped the last. Missoula is hard to read, but it’s important to, if you can. I was skeptical of a man handling this topic at first, though I’ve always loved Krakauer’s books. I needn’t have worried: Missoula puts a grim spotlight on our country’s rape culture and its influence on the criminal justice system. Krakauer is careful with the victims he follows, and allows them to tell their stories honestly and compassionately. We feel for them, for ourselves, for our friends, daughters, and acquaintances. Chasing the Scream is a bit of a whistle-blowing operation in the same way Missoula is. Neither the drug wars or rape culture are new topics per se, but both books come at the issues in a way that allows us to internalize and bring more attention to them. Chasing the Scream, about the murky origins of America’s drug laws, and the devastating trickle-down effect they’ve had since their start, is a book of horrors and questions. Some chapters, the ones in drug-laden Mexican cities particularly, are violent beyond imagining. The genius of this book is how effortlessly Hari takes one of the most complex legal and cultural issues of our time and breaks it down into logical, comprehensible chapters. Ultimately, he offers a few possible solutions, while acknowledging the futility and frustration that exists even trying to posit them to the reader. Really amazing book.
How to Cook a Moose is very different: part culinary memoir, part personal journal. Christensen writes beautifully about her life, her loves, and the food that she eats along the way. It’s not groundbreaking territory, but she has a lovely way with words that makes this really enjoyable. I feel similarly about Skyfaring. It’s not a flight manual, but more of a longform poem about the mystery and magic of humans taking flight. It’s calming to read, almost meditative, and the imagery that he evokes–talking about the topography of the earth below his cockpit window, for example–is fantastic.
Well! That sums up my favorites. I hope you read and enjoyed some of the same ones this year.
In addition to these, I read many more that I loved, a few that I really liked, and a good number that I read and would not recommend. Find those after the cut. If you’d like to see my lists from previous years, click here: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011. To read my full reviews, you can browse back here.
READ TODAY:
After Birth by Elisa Albert - *****
All the Things We Never Knew by Sheila Hamilton - *****
All the Wrong Places by Philip Connors - ****
American Meteor by Norman Lock - ****
Barbara the Slut and Other People by Lauren Holmes - *****
Barefoot to Avalon by David Payne - *****
Beast: Blood, Struggle, and Dreams at the Heart of Mixed Martial Arts by Doug Merlino - ****
Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish by John Hargrove - ****
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates - *****
Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. - ****
Confessions by Kanae Minato - *****
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson - *****
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg - ****
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff - ****
Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid - ****
Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott - ****
Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum - ****
Into the Savage Country by Shannon Burke - ****
Lactivism by Courtney Jung - *****
Lila by Marilynne Robinson - ****
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet - ****
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit - ****
Mobile Library by David Whitehouse - *****
One of Us by Asne Seierstad - ****
Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah - ****
Revival by Stephen King - ***
Rising Strong by Brene Brown - *****
Ruby by Cynthia Bond - ****
Summerlong by Dean Bakopoulos - ****
Sweetland by Michael Crummey - *****
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King - ****
The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman - *****
The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato - ****
The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe - ****
The Given World by Marian Palaia - ****
The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock - *****
The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami - ****
The Revenant by Michael Punke - *****
The Rocks by Peter Nichols - ****
The Scamp by Jennifer Pashley - *****
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore - *****
The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp - ****
The Whites by Richard Price - ***
The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel, M.D., and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D. - *****
The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon - ****
The Wisdom of Perversity by Rafael Yglesias - *****
Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm - ****
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick DeWitt - ****
Until You’re Mine by Samantha Hayes - ****
Villa America by Liza Klaussmann - *****
When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi - *****
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer - ****
You Don’t Have to Like Me by Alida Nugent - ****
READ LATER:
A Beginner’s Guide to Paradise by Alex Sheshunoff - ****
A Field Guide to Awkward Silences by Alexandra Petri - *****
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews - ****
A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison - ****
Bad Faith by Paul Offit - ****
Before, During, After by Richard Bausch - ****
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert - ***
China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan - ****
Cleopatra’s Shadows by Emily Holleman - ****
Church of Marvels by Leslie Parry - ****
Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger - ****
Days of Awe by Lauren Fox - ***
Descent by Tim Johnston - ****
Disclaimer by Renee Knight - ***
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh - ***
Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose by Melanne Verveer and Kim Azzarelli - ****
Finders Keepers by Stephen King - ****
Foreign Faction by James Kolar - ****
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson - ****
Ghettoside by Jill Leovy - ***
God and Jetfire: Confessions of a Birth Mother by Amy Seek - ***
Housebreaking by Dan Pope - ****
In Every Way by Nic Brown - ****
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume - ***
I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections by Nora Ephron - ****
I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers - ***
Life in Motion by Misty Copeland - ****
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker - ****
Love and Other Ways of Dying by Michael Paterniti - ****
Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe - ****
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht - ****
Mystery on the Isles of Shoals: Closing the Case on the Smuttynose Ax Murders of 1873 by J. Dennis Robinson - ****
Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone by Scott Shane - ****
One Kick by Chelsea Cain - ****
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee - ***
Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith - ***
Orient by Christopher Bollen - ****
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf - ****
Perfidia by James Ellroy - ***
Pirate Hunters by Robert Kurson - ****
Playground by Jennifer Saginor - ***
Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Barry - ***
Red Notice by Bill Browder - ****
She’s Not There by P.J. Parrish - ***
Slice Harvester by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf - ***
Spinster by Kate Bolick - ***
Soul Mates and Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore - *****
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson - ***
Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch - ***
The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore - ***
The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney - ***
The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler - ***
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber - ***
The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant - ****
The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly - ****
The First Bad Man by Miranda July - ***
The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits - ****
The Green Road by Anne Enright - ****
The Hand that Feeds You by A.J. Rich - ****
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - ****
The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday - ****
The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman - ***
The Most Dangerous Animal of All by Gary L. Stewart - ***
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks - ****
The Plane That Wasn’t There by Jeff Wise - ****
The Prize by Jill Bialosky - ****
The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan - ****
The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac by Sharma Shields - ****
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker - ****
The Shore by Sara Taylor - ****
The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery - ****
The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen - ****
The Unspeakable by Meghan Daum - ****
The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall - ****
Thrown by Kerry Howley - ****
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris - ***
True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa by Michael Finkel - ****
Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter - ****
Unremarried Widow by Artis Henderson - ****
Voices in the Ocean by Susan Casey - ****
Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight - ****
Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be by Frank Bruni - ****
Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback - ****
You by Caroline Kepnes - ****
DON’T BOTHER:
After Perfect: A Daughter’s Memoir by Christina McDowell - ***
American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus - **
Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont - **
A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan - **
Casebook by Mona Simpson - ***
Dark Rooms by Lili Anolik - **
Doctored by Sandeep Jauhar - **
Find Me by Laura van den Berg - **
French Coast by Anita Hughes - ***
God’ll Cut You Down by John Safran - ***
Her by Harriet Lane - ***
Hostage Taker by Stefanie Pintoff - ***
How to be both by Ali Smith - ***
Hush Hush by Laura Lippman - ***
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware - **
Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott - ***
Into the Valley by Ruth Galm - **
I Take You by Eliza Kennedy - **
Living with Intent by Mallika Chopra - ***
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll - **
Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian - ***
One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis - ***
Paris, He Said by Catherine Sneed - ***
Permission to Parent by Robin Berman, MD - **
Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell - **
Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin - ***
Re Jane by Patricia Park - ***
Scary Close by Donald Miller - ***
Second Life by S.J. Watson - ***
See How Small by Scott Blackwood - ***
Tales from the Back Row by Amy Odell<