My 2015 list was long, and now that I look at it, kind of crazy. Apparently, I'll read just about anything. Most of these books were library book sale books, purchased for less than a dollar. A few of them made enough of an impression that I actually wrote about them; on the other hand, a few of them made so little impression that I forgot about having read them until I re-read my list. The rest of them fall somewhere between those two extremes. My 2015 list:
The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I had to look up the English spelling of his name, again.
Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III, C.S. Lewis
Holy Days and Gospel Reflections, Heather King Read her blog, and then read everything else she has ever written.
Men at Arms, Evelyn Waugh
Officers and Gentlemen, Evelyn Waugh
The End of the Battle, Evelyn Waugh
That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
Wallenberg, Kati Marton. No good deed goes unpunished.
Anthem, Ayn Rand. Silly. Just ridiculous. I had never read anything of Ayn Rand's and felt that I should. Too stupid for words.
How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran. 1/3 genuinely funny and heartfelt memoir; 2/3 beat-you-over-the-head doctrinaire feminism. The 2/3 part made me tired.
Whose Body? Dorothy L. Sayers
The Elements of Style, E.B. White and William Strunk, Jr.
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, Lynne Truss. I approve of a zero-tolerance approach to punctuation.
Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey
American Heritage History of the United States, Douglas Brinkley
De Profundis, Oscar Wilde
Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut, Jill Kargman
The Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy. This was one of my 14-year-old's summer reading selections--we took turns.
The Soviet Communist Party, Ronald J. Hill and Peter Frank. I don't know what I was thinking. Lent maybe? Penance? Anyway, I knew more about the Soviet Communist Party after I read this than before I had read it. So there's that.
To Asmara, Thomas Keneally
Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald. My favorite Penelope Fitzgerald, but they're all so good. I don't know how she did it.
Circle of Friends, Maeve Binchy
Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin. I liked this so much better than I expected to.
Who Killed My Daughter? Lois Duncan. I loved Lois Duncan's paranormal YA novels when I was growing up, and was so sorry to learn that her daughter had been murdered. Sadly, this book is a scatter-brained foray into occult psychic phenomena, and I couldn't finish reading it. Too crazy.
The Secret Letters, Abby Bardi. Abby Bardi was one of my college instructors; I took three classes with her. I liked this novel a lot; believable and very funny.
People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Jen Mann
Memories of the Good and the Great, Alistair Cooke
The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook, Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht
The Chaneysville Incident, David Bradley
If You Can't Say Something Nice, Calvin Trillin. Useful 1980s political and cultural background for something I'm writing.
A Way of Life Like Any Other, Darcy O'Brien
Life Lessons from the Hiding Place, Pamela Rosewell Moore
The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh
The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh
Well, that actually looks even weirder in (electronic) print than it does in my chicken-scratchy handwriting in the back of my 2015 planner. Not really a unifying theme here, although the list does tend to skew in favor of dead English authors and 20th century killing fields. The party never stops.
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