What Were Your Favorite Books Read in 2015

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by Pablo

Fiction

The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid

I really enjoyed Moth Smoke when I read it. TRF has been on my potential list ever since.

[DiapDealer]

The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway
The Master (The Gameshouse #3) by Claire North

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

Best books of 2015. A real mixed bag. Surprisingly, several of them were Advance Readers' Copies. Listed in the order that I read them:

How to Fly with Broken Wings by Jane Elson
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
Master of Formalities by Scott Meyer
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie Czerneda

There are as many or more in the second tier of highly recommended books. And then there are over 100 books enjoyed but nothing special. Many of these are in one or more series ... enjoyable stories with characters that I have come to like, but which don't stand out from any others in the same series.

Arghhh! Posted too soon. I just finished one of the best books I have read all year -- Cards of Grief by Jane Yolen. It's a recent eBook re-publication by Open Road Media. I borrowed it from the library, but I discovered that it's also available through Kindle Unlimited if you have an Amazon USA account.

[treadlightly]

The Dublin Murder Squad (series) by Tana French
Sebastian St-Cyr (series) by C.S. Harris
Gone Girl and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Shogun by James Clavell
Mistborn (series) and The Stormlight Archive (only #1 read so far) by Brandon Sanderson

[Rizla]

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk.
Simply a damn good story with a lot of nice prose touches. Possibly the only Pulitzer winner that is simply a damn good story without trying to communicate a particular theme.

Spartacus by Howard Fast.
A near-forgotten classic. Inspired during the author's imprisonment by the McCarthy Witch-hunts for refusing to release the names of individuals collecting funds to help starving refugees trapped in the mountains between Spain and France. A remarkable and beautiful book that received the popular but not establishement recognition it deserves. Poetic writing with one hell of a story. A rare combo.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
A ripping yarn for sci-fi buffs.

The Guardians by John Christopher.
A forgotten young-adult classic by the author of the Tripods trilogy. It is refreshingly and courageously political.

Dead Mountaineer's Hotel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Weird, but you can't beat the Strugatsky brothers, even at their oddest.

[soulfuldog]

Top three in order:

Swan Song, Robert McCammon - McCammon's prescient and "shocking" vision of a post-Apocalyptic nation, a grand epic of terror and renewal. By far my favourite book of the year.

I Am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes - Billed as a spy novel pushed screaming and kicking into the twentieth-first century and a thriller that's a journey into the future of terrorism. It's long and has its faults, but still a real page turner.

The Wire in the Blood, Val McDermid - This tense psychological thriller is the second in the series but my first experience of the novels featuring Dr. Tony Hill and his team of profilers.

Best freebie:
Inheritance, Thomas Wymark - One of a loose series of psychological suspense and mystery thrillers in which Thomas Wymark delves into the dark and hidden places of our minds.

Notable series I've been reading this year, as well as my usual faves (Jack Reacher & Harry Hole):
Shetland Quartet - Ann Cleeves
Department Q - Jussi Adler-Olsen

On my TBR list thanks to the suggestions in this thread:

The Kind Worth Killing, Peter Swanson
The Guilty One, Lisa Ballantyne
The Road Cormac, McCarthy

[booklover6]

Some of my five star reads this year -

Fiction

Symbiont by Mira Grant
The Cyborg Seduction series by Laurann Dohner
Books 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 of the Hell's Eight Series by Sarah McCarty
The Flu, Torn, Cry by Jacqueline Druga
Behind the Lies, Game of Fear by Robin Perini
The Rake to Rescue Her by Julia Justiss
Light My Fire by G.A. Aiken
Thunder and Ashes by Z. A. Recht
Promise of Jenny Jones by Maggie Osborne
Ecstasy in Darkness, Dark Taste of Rapture by Gena Showalter
Lean on Me by Cherise Sinclair
Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey
The Stolen Mackenzie Bride by Jennifer Ashley

Nonfiction

Haven by Ruth Gruber
I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson
The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn-Beer
Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies (audio)
Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank (audio)
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord (audio)
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (audio)
Finding Me by Michelle Knight
Hope by Amanda Berry
Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb
Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally


Audio books

The entire Love at Stake series by Kerrelyn Sparks
The entire Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Many of the Argeneau Vampire series books by Lynsay Sands
Books 1-14 of the Jack Reacher by Lee Child
Instinct by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Shades of Earth by Beth Revis
Pretty When She Dies by Rhiannon Frater
Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry
Protectors series & Men of Midnight series by Lisa Marie Rice
Dragonbane by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Sealed In by Jacqueline Druga
The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
Rot & Ruin series 2, 3 by Jonathan Maberry
White Trash Zombie Gone Wild by Diana Rowland

[Lynx-lynx]

I've instituted a new reading category (for self) this year 'The Sheer Entertainment Value Category' and my hands down winner is:
E F Benson's Mapp and Lucia series (6 books) - I'm only up to book 4, Mapp and Lucia, but these books are such a gloriously delightful, absolutely hilarious read that I'm reading the whole series through in one go. (And even contemplating the later editions published by new authors after the death of Benson) (Public domain book in Aus, free and available from Adelaide University)

My other 'best reads' this year include:
Aus authors
The Torch - Peter Twohig (mystery of sorts involving a 12/13 old youth in the late 1950's, early 1960's Melbourne)
Give the Devil His Due - Sulari Gentill (mystery, part of a series)
The Sentimental Bloke - C J Dennis (Aus classic written in 1915, described as a 'verse novel')

Classics
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Train - Georges Simenon
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokof
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

Literature
Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones

Non-fiction
Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain

I've been very interested in everyones lists and have followed up many books.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

I've been very interested in everyones lists and have followed up many books.

I like love a lot of your books! Simenon made my ten-best list last year, with Dirty Snow. Other favorites of mine you listed include Testament of Youth, Lolita, Jean Brodie and the sheer delight of the Mapp and Lucia books.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by issybird

I like love a lot of your books! Simenon made my ten-best list last year, with Dirty Snow. Other favorites of mine you listed include Testament of Youth, Lolita, Jean Brodie and the sheer delight of the Mapp and Lucia books.

Well ..... I got a lot of my reading list from the Best of the 20th century decades threads earlier this year. (And I'm reasonably sure that some of the books I got directly from your input. )

[AnotherCat]

I cannot say what my favourite books read in 2015 were as I cannot for the life of me recall which books that I liked were read in 2015 and not, perhaps, actually in read 2014, or were even so back in 2013 . Time flies here as the moon rushed through its 24 odd lunatical to sane phases.

But I can use a few categories that managed to have books read in the sane phases and so remembered :

Best Australasian Book:

Well to the best of my recall I only read one, so no contest really. I looked at one or two others but discarded them before starting e.g. discarded Eleanor Catton's Booker winning The Luminaries for which my reaction was along the lines of one book critic's after his looking at it "I won't be reading that book any time soon" when asked what he thought of it. So the winner, unopposed, was: the novel Brother Fish, Bryce Courtenay (suggested by my 87 year old, ex English teaching mother who has long been a resident of Ozland).

Best Pleasant Surprise:

I am not a fan of war memoires and very rarely read them, but came across a copy of Steel Boat, Iron Hearts-A U-boat Crewman’s Life Aboard U-505, Hans Goebeler which I had heard of but never read (those with Enigma machine interests will know that the story of the U-505 itself is well known). Turned out to be a surprise, somewhat like an All Quiet on the Western Front's no exaggerated drama, but real life rather than fiction, and set in the World War II German U-boat service (not recommended by anyone in particular).

Best MobileRead Forumite's Recommendation Surprise:

Many MR recommendations I have read before but among those that I had never got around to reading was a surprise. I had imagined its being a multigenerational family history meant it might be good but with the penalty of being long and tedious as well; rather like Bleak House, worth a read sometime but not necessarily sometime soon or, perhaps, anytime at all). Turned out to be a capturing read. The winner was Buddenbrooks-The Decline of a Family, Thomas Mann (recommended by knuthmeyer).

Best Lazy Read, Perhaps Trash Even, Pleasant Surprise:

My wife and I sail during the summer and I usually aim at a few longer heavier read books off my electron pile during a cruise having plenty of time to read. But last summer while away for 4 weeks, I changed tack and aimed at including two series for light reading:

Both were winners, tied, being the Battlestar Galactica Original Series, Glen Larson et others (yes, I know, rubbish but served its purpose, and read the lot), and the Scarlet Pimpernel Series, Baroness Emma Orczy (still have 4 of them to read). Was lead to Battlestar by the TV series and to Pimpernel by, well, it is famous .

And tied with those during the year I have fitted in between weightier items and enjoyed the first 8, so far, of the James Bond Series, Ian Fleming (recommended by Stephen Fry).

For this category during 2016 I am going to try Lynx-lynx's E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia Series recommendation, looks interesting thanks.

[SteveEisenberg]

I cannot say what my favourite books read in 2015 were as I cannot for the life of me recall which books that I liked were read in 2015 . . .

That's one reason I keep a list. Another is that after three or four years, I'll forget I read a book before until I'm a couple chapters in.

For non-fiction, these are tied:

Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
Peter Hessler, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

I only read one work of literary fiction in 2015, but it is an outrageous gem:

Samuel Shem, The House of God

I read a bunch a mysteries and thrillers, but none approached perfection, Casino Royale included. As always, the entry from this series was most entertaining:

Faye Kellerman, The Theory of Death

[astrangerhere]

I did a countdown for another site, so I will replicate it here:

10. Everything I Never Told You | Celeste Ng (Modern Lit)
9. Mara | Words by Brian Wood, Pencils by Ming Doyle, Colors by Jordie Bellaire (Comic Book Trade Paperback)
8. Persuasion | Jane Austen (Classic Lit)
7. Just So Happens | Words, Pencils and Colors by Fumio Obata (Graphic Novel)
6. Hardboiled and Hard Luck | Banana Yoshimoto (Translated Japanese Modern Lit)
5. Ancillary Mercy | Ann Leckie (Science Fiction)
4. When the Emperor Was Divine | Julie Otsuka (Modern Lit)
3. Showa: A History of Japan 1926-1939 | Words and Pictures by Shigeru Mizuki (Translated Japanese Manga)
2. One Foot in Eden | Ron Rash (Modern Lit)
1. Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye | Marie Mutsuki Mockett (Non Fiction)

My number one has never been nonfiction before, so this was a very interesting list for me.

[bfisher]

My top dozen for this year were:

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
The Untouchable by John Banville

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
The Bombing War by Richard Overy
Congo by David Van Reybrouck
Christ Stopped At Eboli by Carlo Levi
An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by Nick Bunker

[BenG]

My favorites in no particular order.

The Martian by Andy Weir
The Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker
The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandemeer
Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Mapp and Lucia by E. F. Benson
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz
2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino
Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack (The title might turn off the kinds of readers that would like this.)
Aberstwyth, Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham