Here are my favorite books from 2015. To make the list, I had to have read the book for the first time in 2015 so that old favorites don't clog the top spots. I'll post a complete list of the books I read in 2015 plus some "fun" stats in a few days.
Dead Mountain, by Donnie Eichar. As much as I've read about this case online, as much as I thought I knew about all the crazy crackpot theories and bizarre details out there, this case is actually WEIRDER than I ever knew. Everything written on the internet about this story is stupid and incomplete, but this book starts at zero and goes right to the primary sources to figure things out.
The Winner's Curse, by Marie Rutkoski. I'm having a hard time coming up with a pithy way to explain why I loved this book, so just know that it was so good that I tried to read it during church but was thwarted (by God??) when my Kindle app wouldn't open it.
The Indifferent Stars Above, by Daniel James Brown. How lucky are we as a society to have a preponderance of good books about the Donner Party? So lucky.
The Martian, by Andy Weir. I loved how even if I couldn't always follow the minutiae of the science, I could always understand the general arc of what the author was trying to tell me.
It's What I Do, by Lynsey Addario. THIS BOOK. SO GOOD. THIS WOMAN. SO AMAZING.
One of Us, by Åsne Seierstad. The magic of this book was that after finishing a it - a book about a mass murder - I didn't feel dirty or weighed down or depressed. Instead, I felt the goodness and light and cheer of those murdered kids and their families. Perfection.
Now for some fun distinctions.
Most unexpectedly good book: The Cinder series. I've known about these books for years but never picked them up until Miriam wanted to read them. And I found I enjoyed them quite a bit! Also: Heir of Fire. It is so much better than book 1 of its series that it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.
Most unexpectedly bad book: Walk on Earth a Stranger. It wasn't bad, necessarily, just not as good as I hoped, considering its topic (girl with a magical ability to sense gold in the ground on the run from her villainous uncle who wants to exploit her powers for evil), setting (Gold Rush-era USA), and author (Rae Carson, of The GIrl of Fire and Thorns).
Longest book: This category and the next are increasingly hard to gauge since I read on my Kindle so much now. But according to Goodreads, the longest book was Queen of Shadows at 648 pages.
Shortest book: This Night So Dark, at 109 pages.
Most-read book: I read O Pioneers! and Enna Burning for the third time this year. Second-time reads were: The Scorpio Races, Code Name Verity, Global Mom, and World After.
Best bad book: I don't usually mean this category in this way - "best bad book" should mean a book that is vaguely trashy but totally fun to read. This year, though, I'll use the term more literally and award it to The Secret Holocaust Diaries. It was sometimes maddeningly unclear and poorly edited and left an unreasonable amount of unanswered questions at the end, but wow, was it a powerful book and a gripping story!
Worst good book: The Winner's Crime. If it had been a physical book instead of my Kindle, I probably would have thrown it across the room after every chapter.
Worst book I didn't finish: I only had two DNFs this year, Wave and Lost at Sea. Of the two, I suppose Wave was the worst.
Worst book I DID finish: The Heir! It was my only one-star review this year. But it's good to have a healthy dose of FLAMES. FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE every now and then, and this book certainly delivered!
Worst cover: Still Star-Crossed. I read this book in SPITE of its cover. Salt & Storm's cover was pretty amateur, too. Otherwise, this was an OK year for covers!
Best covers: The Wrath and the Dawn. Red Queen.
Worst title: The Heart of Betrayal (the sequel to last year's winner in this category, The Kiss of Deception).
Best title: The Indifferent Stars Above. Lovely title for a difficult subject (the Donner Party).
Book that I am most afraid to re-read: This category is meant for books that I fear I overrated immediately after reading. Looking at my ratings, I'm questioning whether Ember in the Ashes was really that good.
Most forgettable book: Seriously I read a book called Newt's Emerald this year...?
Book that gave me the worst case of logorrhea: One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway. So much to discuss: Nordic culture, immigration policies, emergency survival, etc.
I swear I thought of a similarity between Bringing Adam Home and American Heiress, but when I woke up in the morning I couldn't remember it, and so maybe it was a dream. :(
Books where moms want to marry off their daughter to the future Edward VIII: The Romanov Sisters, The Secret Rooms.
Books where someone writes in their diary day after day, during WWI, that nothing happened today: The Romanov Sisters, The Secret Rooms.
Books in which journalists freak out about memory cards: Without You There Is No Us, It's What I Do, Red Notice, No Place to Hide.
Books in which a young German boy looks through bird enthusiast field guides: Code Name Verity, All the Light We Cannot See, Wave (but OK, he wasn't German).
Books in which someone thinks they died and asks, "so this is what death is like?" but really they're still alive: ALL THE BOOKS.
Books in which someone smiles but it doesn't reach his or her eyes: ALL THE BOOKS.
Books in which someone turns out to be THE HEIR: Cinder, Crown of Midnight, Uprooted.
Books in which a woman attends a party kind of against her will, and she has some kind of paint on her body, and an old boyfriend who she's trying to get over/keep secret shows up and maybe they kiss a little bit in a closet/enclosed balcony, but the body paint is smudged, and someone else has to help them cover up the fact that the body paint is smudged or else they'll be BUSTED: A Court of Thorns and Roses; The Winner's Crime; almost The Heart of Betrayal (very similar but not quite). Bonus: romantic assignation on a balcony where if they're caught, they're dead: The Wrath and the Dawn, Still Star-crossed.
Books in which someone earns their livelihood by their hands and someone else threatens to crush, or actually crushes, their hand: Red Queen, The Winner's Curse.
Books in which a young woman discovers a secret passage leading from her room, and encounters fantastical beings therein: Throne of Glass, The Heart of Betrayal.
Books in which paradoxical undressing is discussed: Dead Mountain, The Children's Blizzard, The Indifferent Stars Above (I read these in a row, by the way).
Books in which a female character is threatened with marriage to someone she doesn't like: The Winner's Crime, The Wrath and the Dawn, Still Star-crossed.
Nonfiction books that have scenes right out of a Hollywood movie: It's What I Do, Red Notice (specifically, these books feature dramatic proposals or breakups between romantically involved individuals).
Books in which a character is held captive in a slave ship and then decides to someday acquire their own ship and hunt down pirates: My Name is Resolute; Six of Crows
Books in which someone seeks refuge in a safe house in Russia: Red Notice, Tsarina, No Place to Hide.
Books I read in a row where a woman has a tattoo on her arm to show that she works for a certain house of ill-repute: Queen of Shadows, Six of Crows. Books that mention brothels, period: the above two plus Vengeance Road.
Books in which a woman must dress as a man in order to pursue something that belongs to her, and the man she teams up with in order to do so notices that something's a little off, and then they're attacked by the enemy and in the process her disguise is discovered: Vengeance Road, Newt's Emerald, Walk the Earth a Stranger.
Books that I would have liked to be MORE or LESS - to have really gone for it, or to have pulled back and been a bit lighter: An Almost Nearly Perfect People, Vengeance Road, Newt's Emerald.
Books that used that disproved frog in boiling water analogy: An Almost Nearly Perfect People and All The Light We Cannot See.
Books in which a team of misfit rebels stages a diversion and then breaks people out of a prison wagon: Six of Crows, Queen of Shadows.
Books in which a young woman with masculine facial features is out on her ranch performing man's work and then goes home and finds her parent(s) murdered. So she sets out on a mission of escape/revenge dressed as a man, the first stage of which culminates in her knocking on the door of an outhouse: Walk the Earth a Stranger, Vengeance Road.
