2015 Awesome Reads
It’s going to be New
Year in a few hours so I thought about the 10 best books I read it 2015. Trust
me I would recommend these particular ones to you if only you wish to get acquainted.
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
The best so far, though, has been
Elizabeth is Missing. It interweaves two passages in the life of Maud: in the
first she is an elderly woman in the grip of dementia who has lost contact with
a dear friend; in the second, a young girl in wartime whose sister disappears
suspiciously. In Maud’s confusion, the fractured memories of the earlier loss
instill in her mind the belief that her modern-day friend, Elizabeth, has been
the victim of a crime.
How to Be an Alien by George Mikes
How to Be an Alien by George Mikes.. As funny and insightful
as it is, though, the book is a masterpiece of editing. There isn’t a wasted
word in the whole thing. It’s a talent I only wish I had.
Fantastic Night
Zweig
exquisitely skewers an almost lost culture of the Vienna between the wars. And
he does so with the precision of a master short storyteller: concisely,
intimately and dramatically. Immersed in his highly mannered world, you simply
can’t resist the sharply observed characters and crises of Fantastic Night and
Letter From an Unknown Woman. They may not have the slapstick of the Grand
Hotel, but Zweig – just like Ralph Fiennes’ concierge – sustains the illusion
with a marvelous grace.
Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult
When Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe’s
daughter, Willow, is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, they are
devastated – she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime
of pain. The story was told through multiple points of view, this suspenseful
story explores questions of medical ethics and personal choice, pinpointing the
fragile and delicate fault lines that span out from personal tragedy and
disability.
Station Elevenby Emily St John Mandell
It is, in some ways, a compendium of
every dystopian cliche you have already read, but done with a swiftness and
urgency that makes it hard to stop reading. It is very clever about
impermanence, and the delusions of security we maintain in order to live.
Goodreads helps you keep track of
books you want to read.
Start by marking “The Girl on the
Train” as Want to Read:
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
A debut psychological thriller that
will forever change the way you look at other people’s lives.
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Best book I’ve read this year? NO
CONTEST. Lila’s a novel immersed in Christian theology. I’ve always believed
that if someone’s religion makes them a better, more decent human being, then
their faith is of great value, but if it doesn’t, then it’s worthless. Does
Marilynne Robinson’s Christianity make her a better person? I don’t know. What
I do know is that she’s written a beautiful novel with a particular gift for
paring her words down to their emotional essence. Lila ostensibly takes place
in 1940s Iowa, but I so often felt that Robinson’s characters were inhabiting
an 1880s world. There was almost nothing 20th-century about their lives. The
only thing that actually bothered me, though, was the book’s sequential nature.
I found Robinson’s use of intermittent flashbacks diminished the force of her
narrative. Once Lila finds sanctuary, looking back at her harsh past no longer
retains the same dread, the same power ... how could it? No matter. Marilynne
Robinson is a magnificent stylist whose sentences often carry the force of
blows to your heart.
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
There are very few similarities
between my top two books for the year. I really enjoyed Murakami’s 1Q84, and
was very pleased to have the time to devote to it earlier in the year. I liked
the slow build of the relationship between Aomame and Tengo, the idea that a
novel could have the power that Air Chrysalis did and the weirdness in the
plot, among other things.
Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli
Reading the first novel by Mexican
writer Valeria Luiselli was a surreal, exhilarating experience that took me on
subway trips through the New York of the 1920s, with Gilberto Owen, Ezra Pound,
Federico García Lorca and other delightful literary cameos; to 21st-century
Mexico City; and inside the lives of several narrators whose lives and voices
layer up and intertwine. It has doubtless literary merit, and it feels like a
weirdly addictive race – also, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before.
Which was exactly what I needed this year.
Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency
by Charlie Savage
Seven years into the Obama
presidency, with Guantanamo still open and multiple wars in the Middle East
seemingly further away from ending than ever, New York Times national security
reporter Charlie Savage has written both the most comprehensive and the most
engrossing look at how Obama morphed from a candidate beloved by the civil
liberties community into what many saw as a continuation of George W Bush (as
well as a good argument that, in fact, he didn’t change much at all). Now at
the twilight of the Obama administration, as politicians again compete over who
can call for more drastic action against terrorists, as well as new laws that
would lay waste to the Bill of Rights, this book could not be more timely.
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Happy New Year in advance fans I love
you all for been the best this season.
- Which book did you enjoy reading the most this year (regardless of when it was published)? Share it in the comments below!
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