Hi friends. 2015 was a good reading year. These are my favorites:
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)
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.
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