Books I read in 2015

1. The Paris Wife

A fictionalized account of the years Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris in the early 1920s from the point of view of his first wife, Hadley. Read for research, but I really enjoyed the parts about skiing in Austria. The author surmises that with no access to lifts, and instead having to hike to the top of hills to ski down, it gives skiers stronger legs to avoid injuries. I think there’s some truth in that.

By Paula McLain.

2. A Moveable Feast

Just wanted to hear the same story from Hemingway’s point of view. Very funny and I like the writing style. 

A part I highlighted: “Is Ezra a gentleman?” I asked. “Of course not,” Ford said. “He’s American.”

By Ernest Hemingway

3. Songs of Love and Death

Surprisingly good collection of short stories all based around love. But also all fantasy or science fiction themed.

By various authors. Edited by George R.R. Martin.

4. Hall of Small Mammals

Awesome collection of short stories. There’s a great one in the middle that’s a series of vignettes that all have to do with falling, but are interconnected by random elements. Very clever. Very entertaining. I also liked the story about the miniature wooly mammoth.

By Thomas Pierce

5. Safari

A pulpy murder mystery set on a safari in Africa. Not sure why I read this one.

By Parnell Hall.

6. The Perfume Collector

An interesting read set in the 1950’s, telling the story of a women trying to discover why a stranger from Paris has left her an inheritance. The story jumps around through different decades and cities all over Europe. 

By Kathleen Tessaro

7. Losing It

Have you ever tried to critically read a romance novel? I don’t recommend it.

By Cara Carmack

8. The Ghost Bride

I loved this book. It’s sort of a coming-of-age story with heavy elements of Chinese and Malay folklore. Very well written and interesting. And romantic.

By Yangsze Choo

9. King Solomon’s Mines

Allan Quartermain is the literary character Indiana Jones is based on. Awesome book.

By R. Rider Haggard

10. A Highly Unlikely Scenario

A fun little sci-fi book about a dystopian future where fast food restaurants control the philosophy of society. I though the set up for the book was great and super interesting, but didn’t really like the turn into Jewish mysticism. The ending felt rushed.

By Rachel Cantor

11. Allan Quartermain #2

There’s 10 Allan Quartermain books. I’ll probably read them all.

By H. Rider Haggard

12. Arranged

Read for research. Meh.

By Catherine McKenzie

14. Breathe

Dumb.

By Kate Bishop

15. You

I liked this one. Kind of a fantasy drama about people making video games in the 90s. I wish the games were real as I want to play them.

By Austin Grossman

16. Vanity Fare

Research. Really surprisingly well written for a book in this genre. I wish she would write more books.

By Megan Caldwell

17. Wallbanger

This book was almost TOO sassy. But I liked it. Especially the last chapter which was written from the point of view of the main characters cat.

By Alice Clapton

18. Ten Days: Benjamin Franklin

Research.

“With no fact to report, people imagine all sorts of things. Franklin will use mirrors to aim the sun at British ships and set them on fire; Franklin will send a bolt of electricity over the water of the English Channel to shock the whole country; Franklin is building a machine to create earthquakes with electricity and storms at sea.”

By David Colbert

19. Must Love Breeches

I know the author. No regrets.

By Angela Quarles

20. Seducing Mr. Knightly

I wanted to hate this book. But it was so good.

By Maya Rodale

21. The Big Time

Yes.

“You can’t time travel through the time you time travel in when you time travel.”

By Fritz Leiber

22. Ghost Canoe

Found this one by accident while looking for a book on something else. I’ve always had a thing for flying canoes since first hearing the Chasse-galerie story about a group of French Canadian fur transporters who make a deal with the devil so their canoe can fly them to a New Years Eve party.

This book, sadly, was not about that. And it was set near where I grew up and made me homesick.

By Will Hobbs

23. The Wicked Wallflower

Ugh. So bad, but so good.

By Maya Rodale

24. The Anubis Gates

This is probably one of the best books I’ve ever read. Time travel, ancient Egyptian mythology, an evil clown, a brainwashed Lord Byron, evil sorcerers. Holy cow.

By Tim Powers

25. A Sound of Thunder

I love Ray Bradbury, and realize this one was written in the 60s, but I was a little sad to find the note in the middle dedicating the stories to little boys everywhere. F that. I’m a girl and love stories about space and dinosaurs and time travel.

By Ray Bradbury

26. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Pretty good.

By Lauren Willig

27. Natural Born Charmer

Not bad. But the characters were so unbelievable.

By Susan Elizabeth Phillips

28. The Masque of the Black Tulip

I discovered a genre of books written for people whose favourite author is Jane Austen.

By Lauren Willig.

29. Benjamin Franklin

I read the Quicklets outline of this book first, and made a list of the chapters relevant to my research because this book is loooooong. Then read almost the whole thing because Walter Isaacson is such a good writer. 

By Walter Isaacson

30. The Bestseller

This book was great. I was slightly disappointed at the ending as it was happy. Which I secretly wanted. But was still disappointed to get.

“Unhappy endings in books are better than happy ones because readers believe life is sad and feel less manipulated that way.” - Maureen Egen

By Olivia Goldsmith

31. The Accidental Time Machine

I really liked this one.

By Joe Haldeman

32. The Reality Dysfunction

Great book. So long. 

By Peter F. Hamilton

33. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Not bad. I thought there was a lot of cruel and unusual death though.

By Gabrielle Zevin

34. The Island

Terrible.

By Jill Jones

35. City of Bones

Couldn’t really figure out why the main character wasn’t freaked out at all after finding out the boy she kissed was actually her brother.

By Cassandra Clare

36. On Writing

Awesome.

By Stephen King

37. After Dark

I thought I hadn’t read this one, but after starting it, realized I had. I think it might be the early musings that lead to IQ84.

By Haruki Murakami

38. The Dreamer

Nice little Y/A story. I liked the world building.

By E.J. Mellow

39. Voodoo In New Orleans

I liked this book. It was like a typical academic history, only the author legitimately believed voodoo was real and magical.

By Robert Tallant

40. Under The Mountain

A much loved children’s book from New Zealand. Still great as an adult.

By Maurice Gee

41. Getting Over Jesse Franklin

Pretty good first novel. I thought the middle was a bit long though.

By Stephie Chapman

42. The Time Hunters

This book was so fun! Nice easy read.

By Carl Ashmore

43. The Princess Bride

I somehow missed reading this one when I was younger. Great book!

By William Goldman

44. We Should All Be Feminists

Last year I pretty much only read non-fiction. I started to find myself in this rut where I still loved reading, but was only picking up books on topics I wanted to learn about, or needed to do research on. This was good, but I was missing the emotional education and joy of a good story. This year I decided to lighten up and stick to fiction and genres I hadn’t really gotten into before.

But, I picked this one up as a gift for a friend and couldn’t resist reading it first. Great little piece for someone looking for a more high level introduction to the subject. I love her writing a lot.

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

45. The Vorrh

It’s nice to read something in the fantasy genre that doesn’t involve elves or dwarves or epic quests. It channels Tim Powers with the referencing to actual historical events, but not as well. While I was really into the magical forest, I really could have done without the graphic cyclops sex and zombie babies.

This book was also nearly tortuous to read. There are no nouns that aren’t modified at least three times.

By Brian Catling

46. Howl’s Moving Castle

Bet you didn’t know this was a book by a British woman, and not invented by Miyazaki. The book is just as magical and amazing. And there’s 3 of them!

By Diana Wynne Jones

47. Castle in the Air

The least good of the three Howl books, but also the shortest.

By Diana Wynne Jones

48. House of Many Ways

Now I am done all three :’(

By Diana Wynne Jones

49. Chasing Harry Winston

Ugh. I hate books where the most interesting characters (sassy gay hairdresser, Balinese green card wife, gruff book editor) are only mentioned in flashbacks to explain holes in the plot.

By Lauren Weisberger

50. Nimona

Lovely. It’s a graphic novel, but I’ll count it.

By Noelle Stevenson

51. Books v. Cigarettes

I wasn’t aware George Orwell wrote anything besides books on high school reading lists, but this was very good. A short collection of essays written in the 30s and 40s about working in publishing, freedom of press and what patriotism means. 

By George Orwell

52. A Tale For The Time Being

Sometimes you get lucky and pick up a book that’s perfectly relevant to where you are at that particular time. I don’t want to get all cliche and say this book was written for me, but I’m sure you know the feeling. Great read, really poignant, funny at some points. 

“Sometimes, if a person has been treated really badly, she can even become an ikisudama, and her soul leaves her sleeping body and wanders around the city doing tatari. That was my goal for the summer vacation. To become a living ghost.”

By Ruth Ozeki

53. Ruby Red

This kept coming up on Oyster so I decided to give it a try. A nice, easy read. I think it’s YA? I suspect it is based on the lame romance scenes. 

By Kerstin Gier

54. The Ghost Bride

Re-read this on vacation. Still good.

By Yangsze Choo

55. Our Tragic Universe

I don’t know about this one. I hated all the characters except Andrew, the good-natured barkeep in the seaside town who believed in ghosts. Everyone else was depressed in a read too much Victorian literature and thought they were smarter than everyone else kind of way. Maybe the book should have been about Andrew.

By Scarlett Thomas

56. How to Sharpen Pencils

Lol what was this even though?

By David Rees

57. Good Omens

What a great book. 

By Neil Gaimen & Terry Pratchet

58. Northern Lights

Total mom book, but I liked it. 

By Nora Roberts

59. Alif The Unseen

Love me some magical realism, and this was a good one. It’s set in an unnamed Middle East country during the Arab Spring and focuses on hackers, but also jinn and magic. As well as entertaining, there’s some really solid observations about the nature of religion in the modern world, Islam, and being a foreigner abroad.

By G. Willow Wilson

60. Wind/Pinball

Well, that wasn’t what I had expected at all.

The worst part of this book was the introduction where he talks about how he found a wounded pigeon in the bushes (gross) and while carrying it to the police station (what are the police going to do with a pigeon?) has a premonition that he will become a world class author. Probably one of those stories you tell countless times over the years, exaggerating each time till you eventually believe your own lie. That combined with the steady increase in the amount of weird and creepy sex scenes over the years has maybe put me off Murakami for awhile.

By Haruki Murakami

61. Smoke and Mirrors

Some pretty fucked up shit in this book.

By Neil Gaimen

62. The Short Stories of HP Lovecraft

I’ve read all these before, but it’s been awhile. I’m always surprised when discussing books with other frequent readers and it comes up they haven’t read Lovecraft. So good. So scary.

My favourite HP Lovecraft stories:

1. At the Mountains of Madness

2. Call of Cthulhu.

3. The Shadow of Innsmouth.

63. Shadows Over Baker Street

I had a Lovecraft weekend. This is a book of short stories by various authors about Sherlock Holmes, but set in the HP Lovecraft universe. Extremely good if you’re into both these worlds.

64. The Creative Habit

A nice little dive into the process of choreographer Twyla Tharp. I’m not big into the whole ‘rise at 5:30am while the world is quiet’ school of creative thinking and I thought the book had maybe just a bit too much name dropping, but I did make a few notes:

• When Twyla Tharp is stressing about something, she visualises her fears as wild pigs and boars and has them jump off a metaphoric cliff, crushing them to death on the rocks below.

• Twyla Tharp suggests picking a person at random each day and spending a good amount of time describing their face in your chosen medium.

• Twyla Tharp thinks we want artists to take the mundane materials of our lives, run it through their imaginations and surprise us.

By Twyla Tharp

65. Night Watch

Another solid suggestion from Oyster - which I’m pretty gutted is shutting down in January. 

This book came out awhile ago, and I remember seeing it in a store, but the English cover at that time was so horrible - like a super terrible vampire romance novel. At some point they updated it with some super nice Victorian Russian constructivism type stuff and I was like yeah, this looks cool now. The book was pretty good. It’s not, in fact a vampire romance novel, but a neat secret government society type story with magic and a lot of drunken debate over the war between good and evil. The writing style was very nice also, probably due to originally being written in Russian. I’ll likely read the rest of the series.

By Sergei Lukyanenko

66. Black Amazon of Mars

I picked up some nice 50s Sci/Fi pulp and man, so good. Leigh Brackett is basically considered the queen of pulp space opera and best know for writing the screenplay for The Empire Strikes back.

I like picking up the older pulp stuff occasionally. There’s very little ‘philosophy’ going on in these stories. Just good old fashion evil aliens, handsome barbarians from Venus and kickass women warlords on Mars.

By Leigh Brackett

67. Rendezvous With Rama

I suspect this might be the most perfect sci/fi book ever written? I can’t think of anything wrong with it.

Also I like that all sci/fi authors seem to have come to an independent agreement that people from Mercury will be weird and crazy in the future.

By Arthur C. Clarke

68. Errantry

I started and stopped several books this week but finally finished this one. A collection of short stories, kind of fairy tale magical realism. I liked a few but overall there were too many themes of loss (widowers, dead parents, dying friends) for me to really go yeah!

My favourite story from the bunch, Hungerford Bridge, is available online ↠ http://www.conjunctions.com/archives/c52-eh.htm

By Elizabeth Hand

69. Kabu Kabu

A collection of short stories with heavy Naijamerican influences. I really liked it. My favourite was about an illegal, magical Nigerian cab driver who takes an unsuspecting Chicago lawyer on an insane ride on a monster highway. I also really liked that every main character was a woman.

By Nnedi Okorafor

70. The Strange Library

I had such high hopes. They weren’t met.

By Haruki Murakami

—————-

This was the important one for me this year. I really tried to branch out from the predominantly non-fiction I had been reading in previous years and think I did a pretty good job. It was good to get back into sci/fi and magic, which I’ll continue on with next year.

Top 5 books I read this year:

The Ghost Bride - By Yangtze Choo
Rendezvous With Rama - By Arthur C. Clarke

Howl’s Moving Castle - By Diana Wynne Jones

The Anubis Gates - By Tim Powers

King Solomon’s Mines - By R. Rider Haggard