The Seventy Books of 2015

This past year I read with eagerness and intensity, and read a lot of spectacular books. It's been a long time since I've read so much, or with so much joy, (even though many of these books are not uplifting), and I look forward to reading more broadly and more intentionally in the years to come. I'll write a bit about ten of my favorites but you can read my reviews on nearly all of these books on Goodreads. I also made a video about some of the books I've been reading as I've been thinking about the role of race in America, and if you'd like to watch that, it's right here. 

The vast majority of books I read this year were new books to me, but the ones I reread (mostly listening to them on audio book with Owen) are marked with an asterisk.

For a prettier version of this list click here. 

Fiction:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

This book is perfection. I love the narrator--just when you've formed your ill opinion of a certain character you get drifted some private thoughts or feelings of that character that make you want to like them better. The plot twists! The insecurities people feel about each other! I'm not sure I've ever loved a character as much as I love Dorothea. Reading a one hundred page book is nice sometimes, but reading the last hundred pages of a thousand page book? That is just joy. All the work you put in (sometimes literally making charts of the characters so you remember who's who) all the work the author put in of setting up expectations, drawing characters together to a climax, all of it comes together so beautifully.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Passion by Jeannette Winterson

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Remains of the Day by Kasuro Ishiguro

This book is so incredibly beautiful. The story is simple: A butler looks back at his life in service while driving across England on his first vacation in decades. But the telling is complex and tender: so much of emotion, of Englishness, of nationalism, of blue blood and new money, and the sympathies and prejudices between the two world wars. Sad and tender.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides

The Unexpected Mrs. Polifax by Dorothy Gillman

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

This is not the sort of book I usually love. It's super gritty, irreverent, violent, and it's fantastic. The writing is so good, and I learned a lot about the Dominican Republic while reading it. That seems to be one of Junot Diaz' main intentions, with his hilarious and informative footnotes, making fun of his white readers for not knowing anyone else's history, and telling the story with the zip of a comic, and the craft of a poet. Looking forward to reading more of his writing. 

(Not recommended if you don't like to read about: violence, characters who swear all the time, friendzones, or corrupt governments.)

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

A Room with a View by E. M. Forester

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This book is not only beautiful sentence by sentence, even the structure is stunning. There's a central event (the bombing of St. Malo in WWII) and two central characters, and you live through that day of the bombing hour by hour. Between those hours you jump back in time for rich, colorful backstory, so that as you get each successive piece of that day in St. Malo the characters matter to you more and more as their situations become increasingly dire. This book also focuses a lens on the light of humanity. Not always shone, not always seen, but beautiful.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Maytrees by Annie Dillard

Nonfiction/Memoir:

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris

Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer

Bossypants by Tina Fey

I listened to Tina Fey read her own audiobook and just laughed so hard I cried a little. So much of her humor is in handing us the unexpected, but I was also charmed by her voicing her own fears and her own perspective on them.

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

Pilgrim at Tinker Creak by Annie Dillard

I want to own this book and pull it off the shelf and read it again and again. Biking over the fields near Leiden in January, I would try to frame what I could see in words, and then I'd hear Annie Dillard had the words already. “Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet.”

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King Jr.

It is difficult to say how much this book moved me. The message, the fearless pursuit of justice through nonviolence and love, the exquisite writing, everything about this book left me hungry for more. Not only more of Martin Luther King Jr and his writing, but more of his vision enacted in our world today. Read it. Even if all you read is his letter from the Birmingham Jail, read this book.

Drama:

Our Town by Thornton Wilder*

Beginning Chapter Books:

The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater

Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel by Nikki Grimes

Middle Grade Fiction:

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park*

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo*

Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead

I love this book. When people talk about "contemporary realistic fiction" for young people the books sometimes the ground is shaky. Maybe they're already dated like the books I read growing up where none of the teenagers have cell phones. The books that really mattered then still matter today because they dealt with bigger issues than phone styles, but here is a book of today. A book I think will last a long time, and which represents a lot of current issues really beautifully. It deals with PTSD, with mysterious and the scary in social interaction, with mean kids, but also with really beautiful siblings and friendships. I was particularly touched by her sensitivity with issues of school dress codes, and "slut shaming" and exploring how these issues come out, and what they mean. It's also just great. You should read it. And also everything Stead has written because it's all fantastic.

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner*

The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner*

Frindle by Andrew Clements*

The House of the Scorpian by Nancy Farmer

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry by Mildred D. Taylor*

I remember this book being both sad and scary from when I was young. I remember asking, "but why?" a lot of times, but I wasn't expecting it to be so incredibly moving as I reread it now as an adult. The story is just beautifully laid out, plot and character, twists and history, and it makes me happy and pains me to read it. I know a lot of people are rereading To Kill a Mockingbird this year with Harper Lee's "new" book coming out. Let me suggest that this is also a book that could use a read or a re-read. There are many ways in which it twins To Kill a Mockingbird, but I love that it tells the story of a black child coming to terms with the implications of her skin and what it means. The questions this book raised about how much property matters startled me. Again and again people talk about--who owns what--be it land or a new car or people or coats or pearl handled pistols, ownership seems to central to this story.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau*

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

The Crossover by Alexander Kwame

Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke

The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Young Adult Fiction:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

East by Edith Pattou

A nostalgic, emotional five stars for this book. I really, really, liked it. The fable of east of the sun and west of the moon told in a novel form, it reminds me of fairytale retellings I read as a young teen, (Robin McKinley and such), and it was very easy to submerge myself in the story. I found it... cozy. Reading it at a bus stop in the freezing rain was comforting, and reading it cozied up with blankets and tea was exactly what I wanted. If you had mixed feelings about His Dark Materials, but still really like polar bears and legends from the far north? This is the book is for you.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Part 1: The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Part 2: Kingdom on the Waves by M. T. Anderson

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman*

Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Flight by Sherman Alexie

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Allegiant by Veronica Roth