2015 reading list

maura @ 5:42 pm

Sometimes I wait until the new year to do this, and sometimes I don’t. But I’m not going to finish any books in the rest of today and I have some down time right now and I’ve been jonesing to get my list out there since reading Alycia’s, Jenna’s, and Meredith’s lists, so here goes.

Just like last year I made a conscious effort to read more this year, and I managed to read 39 books in 2015 (up by 3!). I feel pretty good about this number, though; I read an actual book most days this year, which is truly my main goal. I didn’t have many explicit content goals for reading this year. I still have a few reading projects I’m planning on — including more on feminism and racism — plus some author goals: reading the stuff I haven’t read yet by Nnedi Okorafor, reading the Ursula LeGuin books I haven’t read, and rereading all of Octavia Butler’s books. But these feel like projects I can chip away at over time (or maybe I’ll go all in next summer like that one summer years ago when I read everything by Willa Cather). I didn’t make an official We Need Diverse Books pledge this year but I did continue to try to read mostly books written by people of color and women. Like last year this was an easy win — all of my favorites this year were written by people of color or women.

Not to be all negative but I did finish a few books I didn’t like this year (which is sort of unusual because recently I’ve tended to abandon books that I don’t like rather than force myself to finish). I wanted to like VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and there were aspects of it that I did — the biological stuff was cool and X-Files-y and the character study of the biologist and director were great. But I ultimately found the lack of answers unsatisfying. I also barely finished the Very Short Intro to critical theory, which I picked up feeling like I needed a bit more theoretical grounding for my interest in critical pedagogy/librarianship, but which was just too dull for me to get into (though I did take notes, go me).

It took me a while to read Station Eleven because the hype was so very hypey, but I finally did and it was hands down my favorite book this year. I’m generally a fan of the postapocalyptic story and this one was realistic and melancholy in its plot and description of what things would actually be like, and not overly depressing or scary (though occasionally so, but not awfully). Really great, I just devoured it staying up too late on school nights. Other faves for fiction this year were Planetfall, Get in Trouble, and Everything I Never Told You. I also loved My Real Children — alternate universes/timelines have always interested me, but with my mother-in-law and a close friend of ours both dying suddenly late last year I think I was especially primed to be grabbed by this book.

For nonfiction my favorite book was Between the World and Me, 100% worth all the accolades and attention. Devastating.

As in past years this list is in reverse chrono order (because that’s how I keep my reading journal), ebooks are starred, tilded are books we own (vs. library books). I read more ebooks this year than last year, which is interesting — I’m not sure why that is, other than that it’s easy to request them from the library as soon as I learn about them and then just wait for them to come in (though I still hate that they’re only able to be checked out for 2 weeks rather than 3).

~ The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson
The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, by Anna North
* Planetfall, by Emma Newman
~ Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction, by Maria Accardi
Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov, by Kirin Narayan
Horrorstor, by Grady Hendrix
* In the Unlikely Event, by Judy Blume
Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction, by Stephen Eric Bronner
* Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby
The Bone People, by Keri Hulme
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
* My Real Children, by Jo Watson
~ Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay
~ Critical Journeys, edited by Robert Schroeder
~ Get in Trouble, by Kelly Link
The Librarian Stereotype: Deconstructing Perceptions and Presentations of Information Work, edited by Nicole Pagowsky & Miriam Rigby
* Find Me, by Laura van den Berg
Digital Technology and the Contemporary University, by Neil Selwyn
~ Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor
* Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan
* Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain
~ Lines, A Brief History, by Tim Ingold
~ Acceptance, by Jeff VanderMeer
* Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, by Brene Brown
Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham
* Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng
~ Authority, by Jeff VanderMeer
* Zarah the Windseeker, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
~ Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
* Citizen, by Claudia Rankine
* Inheritance, by Malinda Lo
* Adaptation, by Malinda Lo
The Almost Nearly Perfect People, by Michael Booth
* Echoes of Us, by Kat Zhang
*~ Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel (So originally I got this from the library but then I loved it so much and Jonathan wanted to read it so we bought it.)
~ Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson
Panic, by Lauren Oliver
* Once We Were, by Kat Zhang
* What’s Left of Me, by Kat Zhang

Started, not finished:
The Country of Ice Cream Star, by Sandra Newman — I only got about 20 pages in and realized I wouldn’t be able to deal with the slang that this book is written in.

one comment on “2015 reading list”

Why not add a comment of your own?

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Δ