Helllllloooooooooo? Anyone out there? Sorry, I completely disappeared on you. Blame work! I managed to read – not as many books as usual – but no time to blog. But I wouldn’t leave you without my now-traditional musings on my favourite books of the year. Here goes…

Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay

There seemed to be a rash of “feminisim” books out this year. Which normally wouldn’t be up my alley. But I love Gay’s writing (remember last year I raved about An Untamed State?). This collection of essays made me feel alright about being the flawed human that I am.

The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity, by Dr. Norman Doidge

Fascinating stories of the things the human brain can do, and the avant garde medical technology that people way smarter than yours truly are using and inventing to harness that power. Mind = blown!

A History of Loneliness, by John Boyne

Warning: This is not an easy subject matter! (Sorry Jennie, I didn’t know you would take it to THE BEACH!) But it’s another tour de force by Boyne, who gets into the head of a very conflicted protagonist – an Irish priest who finds himself entangled in the Catholic Church’s decades-long unholy mess of child abuse. 

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free, by Héctor Tobar

Remember the unbelievable story of the Chilean miners? We know they got out, but Tobar weaves together the story of how they got in, what went on under that mountain for 69 days, the rescue efforts, and a glimpse into the lives of “los 33” and their families.

The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton

I kept hearing amazing things about this 2013 Booker Prize winning book, and I kept picking it up and starting to read and not getting very far. And then all of a sudden it happened for me – and I was hooked. It’s very dense, and there are many characters and events to keep track of. Plus, there’s deception and mystery at every turn in this tale of the New Zealand gold rush. So, don’t attempt to read it on your Kobo, you WILL have to flip back to refer to earlier events and the list of characters. I feel like it took me a hell of a lot of brainpower to read it – so I’m still not sure how Catton managed to write it. (Before she turned 30 no less!)

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection, by Michael Harris

Guess what you guys – we are part of a very special group! We’re the only generation in history who will know life before and with the interwebs. We know what we’ve gained from it (instant knowledge, communities, book blogs), but also what we’ve lost because of it (space to be in our own minds, and the wonderment, reflection, creativity, and yes, sometimes boredom that brings). Being one who pines for the “good ol’ days” while at the same time frantically clutching my iPhone lest it somehow end up more than three feet away from me, I was enthralled with Harris’s reflection on the before and after, and charmed by his attempt to resurrect the before in his own corner of the world.

The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild, by Lawrence Anthony

God how I want to visit Africa and see the elephants. Sigh… I will probably never visit Africa and see the elephants. I will have to content myself with Anthony’s regaling of life on a South African game reserve with these magnificent creatures.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

So. Harper Lee publishes a book in 1960 that goes on to become one of the biggest sellers and beloved stories of ALL TIME. Harper Lee then becomes a recluse, and doesn’t want to publish another book, and doesn’t want to talk to anyone about the one she did publish, and eventually ends up infirm, in a nursing home. Harper Lee’s sister takes care of her for decades. Harper Lee’s sister dies. Shortly thereafter, Harper Lee’s friend and/or lawyer and/or executor and/or possible evil villain suddenly “finds” an unpublished manuscript that is a first draft of TKAM. And of course it gets published to much fanfare; with or without Harper Lee’s knowledge and/or approval no one knows. But why would they shelve it when there are gobs of money to be made from publishing it, instead of just leaving us our happy memories of Atticus and Scout and Jem? And so. To read Go Set a Watchman, or not to read it? Well, I didn’t. I debated it – but the excerpt and the reviews and the fact that no one will ever be able to prove that Harper Lee really wanted it to see the light of day turned me off. But, I did re-read TKAM. And I was nervous about it – would it stand the test of time? Yes! The gorgeously crafted sentences, Scout’s observations of the world around her, Atticus’s heroics, and Boo… all still awesome.

The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma

It’s without a nanosecond of hesitation I tell you this is the best book I read this year. Two of you read it already so I’m not even going to say much about it. Everyone else, bring Kleenex.

Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales, by Margaret Atwood

My alternate title for this captivating book of short stories is “Seniors Gone Wild.”

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

I picked this one for the “banned or challenged” category on the Reading Adventure. It’s one of the most frequently banned or challenged in the U.S. I wasn’t expecting to like it that much because I didn’t love the one and only other Morrison that I’d read, Song of Solomon. But this one is stunning, in the way Morrison captures young protagonist Pecola Breedlove.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien

Not quite a novel, not quite a collection of short stories, The Things They Carried is a sublime work of Vietnam war literature. It arcs between characters’ pre-war years, the jungles of Vietnam and post-war America. O’Brien writes so masterfully that even sequences of death and violence are somehow… beautiful. Amazingly, it’s not a tear jerker – I didn’t shed a single one, I was just in awe the entire time.

Circling the Sun, by Paula McLain

Remember McLain’s The Paris Wife? That was really good, and this one’s even better. Set in 1920s Kenya, the novel centres on Beryl Markham, famed aviatrix, horse trainer and general thumber-of-nose at high society. I also read the memoirs Out of Africa by Karen Blixen and West with the Night by Beryl Markham as companion pieces to this – both are excellent, but the fictionalized version has the slight edge.

The Heart Goes Last, by Margaret Atwood

I know you’re shocked to see yet another Atwood book on my 5-star list. No, it’s not automatic – she’s truly a literary goddess. She’s also the master of the speculative dystopia, and she ventures there again in The Heart Goes Last. Only this time there’s a comedic bent to it (with Elvis impersonators and everything), so that you laugh while in the back of your mind you’re thinking, “Oh shit.”

Road Trip Rwanda: A Journey Into the New Heart of Africa, by Will Ferguson

God how I want to visit Africa and see the gorillas… and the rolling hills of Rwanda, and its genocide memorials, and a country that has made very impressive strides in recovery from the gruesome events of 1994, so that it now outshines most of its African neighbours. Over the years I’ve been drawn to books about the genocide, but Road Trip Rwanda is unlike any I’ve read before. Ferguson recounts his travels throughout the “new” Rwanda with his friend Jean-Claude, who escaped just before a machete-wielding populace killed 800,000+ of their countrymen in 100 days. The book is funny and awe-inspiring and heartbreaking, and really makes me want to see it all for myself. But yep, STILL probably not venturing to Africa.

Did You Ever Have a Family, by Bill Clegg

Bill Clegg is a big-deal New York literary agent, and memoirist and essayist – and now also a novelist. The book tackles what happens to a family after a tragedy, and how far the tragedy reaches, from many perspectives.

The Prison Book Club, by Ann Walmsley

Alias Grace, Three Day Road, Jane Eyre, Don Quixote, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Wars, The Book of Negroes, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Life of Pi, Angela’s Ashes, The Devil in the White City, Slumdog Millionaire, Animal Farm, The Glass Castle, The Grapes of Wrath… Sounds like your typical book club fare, right? Only the men reading them aren’t your typical book-club mates… they’re inmates. They take part in book clubs in medium- and minimum-security penitentiaries in Ontario run by volunteers, part of the Book Clubs for Inmates initiative founded by Walmsley’s friend Carol Finlay. Walmsley brings together her own, Finlay’s, and some of the inmates’ stories – and of course, their takes on the books.

Slade House, by David Mitchell

An good ol’ fashioned haunted house story, eerie as can be! For you fans of Mitchell, I think this short book spun out of characters or a storyline that never made it into his last novel, The Bone Clocks. And of course, there is Marinus!

Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope, by Wendy Holden

Nazis. War. Ghettos. Pregnancies. Trains. Auschwitz. Separation. Mengele. Starvation. Freiburg. Freezing. Forced labour. Mathausen. Death marches. Gas chambers. Babies. Liberation. Recovery. Reunion. These. Things. Really. Happened.

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb

I feel I’ve achieved a big accomplishment when I do laundry. Then there is Malala, just a teenager, but an international advocate for women and girls and education, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. So, she’s no slouch. But to say she didn’t come by it all easily is an understatement. She loved her life in Swat Valley in Pakistan, going to school, worrying about exams and competitions, spending time with family and friends, and blogging and speaking about the importance of girls’ education. Yet despite being a child – a CHILD – she was so much of a threat to the extremists they shot her in the head as she rode home on the schoolbus. She survived, and recovered, thanks to an international outpouring of assistance, and continues to work to make the world a better place.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson

Finished this one on December 31, just in time to make this list! And it’s a doozy. This is the best non-fiction I read in 2015. How can a nation consider itself a democracy, and civilized, and a shining city on a hill blah blah blah, yet let its criminal justice system run amok and do these things to its own citizens? Stevenson chronicles his time with the Equal Justice Initiative (over the course of which he progresses from young lawyer to nationally acclaimed attorney), interweaving his own story with that of Walter McMillian, who spent years on death row for murder he didn’t commit. It made me alternately shake with rage and weep. But it was hopeful, too, because Stevenson and others like him have the strength to persevere with these causes, and are seeing success with them. All of you hooked on the Netflix series Making a Murderer, go read this next.

 

So that’s it for 2015! I’ll try and do a Reading Adventure round-up next week to give you a few more recommendations. But I’m not sure when I’ll be back on the bookternet with any regularity, work in 2016 looks to be crazy busy again. One day when I can retire I’ll spend all my time reading and recommending books!