2015 started with a bang and ended with a bang -- two fantastic books on either end. Not everything in the middle was as wonderful, though, and I certainly did not keep up with last year's book-a-week pace. Nor did I read the two books I pledged to read, which are still perched, dauntingly, on my nightstand. But War and Peace and The Power Broker are on tap for this year, I promise (myself). Resolution #1 is to read both before the year is out.
In the meantime, I started 2016 with something light, which I desperately needed after those two final books of 2015. More about that later. In the meantime, here is the 2015 final tally (books I particularly liked have an asterisk):
1.
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters *
2.
Euphoria by Lily King
3.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant by
Roz Chast *
4.
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande*
5.
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
6.
Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano
7.
Plays: Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, ‘Night
Mother by Marsha Norman, The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman, Other Desert
Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
8.
Home by Marilynne Robinson
9.
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
10. Empty
Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great
American Fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr.
11. Shirley
by Charlotte Bronte
12. The
Lost Estate by Henri Alain-Fournier
13. The
Whites by Richard Price
14. The
Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
15. All
the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr *
16. The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark *
17. Mrs.
Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn
18. Going
Clear by Lawrence Wright
19. The
Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
20. The
Chateau by William Maxwell
21. Are
You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
22. The
News from Spain by Joan Wickersham *
23. On
the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
24. The
Turner House by Angela Flournoy *
25. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters *
26. Cutting
for Stone by Abraham Verghese
27. Mennonite
in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen
28. Girl,
Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
29. Thinking
About Memoir by Abigail Thomas
30. Wild
by Cheryl Strayed *
31. Lucky
by Alice Sebold
32. Prozac
Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
33. The
Art of Time in Memoir by Sven Birkerts
34. They
Came Like Swallows by Joseph Mitchell *
35. Negroland
by Margo Jefferson
36. The
Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
37. The
Kiss by Kathryn Harrison *
38. I,
Claudius by Robert Graves
39. As
You Wish by Cary Elwes
40. City
on Fire by Garth Risk Hallburg
41. A
Little Life by Hanya Yanagaihara *
