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My year-in-review post will be up on Monday, with reading stats. But first, as usual, I want to share the list of my favorite things I read this year. (You can see past years’ best-of lists at this tag.)

My very favorite books of the year, which received ratings of 10 and (in one case) 9.5:

• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow – fiction
• Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life, Lulu Miller – nonfiction
• H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald – nonfiction
• The Once and Future Witches, Alix E. Harrow – fiction
• Lookout, Christine Byl – fiction (book & review forthcoming in the spring).

These books received ratings of 9:

• They’re Going to Love You, Meg Howrey – fiction
• Dawn, Octavia Butler – fiction
• Elsewhere, Alexis Schaitkin – fiction
• Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – fiction
• An Odyssey, Daniel Mendelsohn – nonfiction
• Aurora Rising, and the series!, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – fiction
• Odder, Katherine Applegate – fiction
• Revenge of the Librarians, Tom Gauld – cartoons
• The Last Karankawas, Kimberly Garza – fiction
• Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi – fiction (review coming in just a few weeks!)

Honorable mentions:

• Mother Country, Jacinda Townsend – fiction
• Ithaca, Claire North – fiction
• The Old Place, Bobby Finger – fiction
• Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue – fiction
• The World’s Wife, Carol Ann Duffy – poetry
• Gilded Mountain, Kate Manning – fiction
• The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal – fiction
• Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes – fiction (review & book forthcoming in the spring)
• anything by N.K. Jemisin.
• anything by Alix Harrow.

I feel lucky to see so many exemplary books each year. This post is always an inspiration. Happy New Year, friends.

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My year-in-review post will be up on Monday, with reading stats. But first, as usual, I want to share the list of my favorite things I read this year. (You can see past years’ best-of lists at this tag.)

Best of the year:

• Gone to the Woods, Gary Paulsen
• The Changeling, Victor LaValle
• Olga Dies Dreaming, Xochitl Gonzalez (also one of the best author interviews I’ve ever done)

Honorable mentions:

• Rabbit Cake, Annie Hartnett
• The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
• Honeycomb, Joanne M. Harris
• We Are the Brennans, Tracey Lange
• The Mothers, Brit Bennett
• The Everybody Ensemble, Amy Leach
• Under the Whispering Door, TJ Klune
• Into the Heartless Wood, Joanna Ruth Meyer
• The Sun Is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon
• The Memory Collectors, Kim Neville
• The People We Keep, Allison Larkin
• Yolk, Mary H. K. Choi
• Through the Woods, Emily Carroll
• The Turner House, Angela Flournoy
• A Sense of the Whole, Siamak Vossoughi
• Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes
• Aurora Rising, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (review forthcoming)

Other special mentions outside the world of books:

• S-Town
• Summer of Soul

This post is always an inspiration. Happy New Year, friends.

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My year-in-review post will be up on Friday, with reading stats. But first, as usual, I want to share the list of my favorite things I read this year. (You can see past years’ best-of lists at this tag.)

To state the obvious, this year has been different from those that have come before. Every year something’s different: I started an MFA program, finished an MFA program, moved across the country, back again, into a van and then to a new state, started teaching college, etc. This year has seen upheaval and pain and tragedy nationally and globally, and that probably skewed my preferences and ratings some: I gravitated somewhat toward fiction that took me away, even when that fiction handled heavy themes. It’s also worth noting that personally, while I saw some difficulties this year (a serious bike wreck, and the challenge of teaching online), I’m in a fairly good place. I’m still really in love with my new home in West Virginia. And the trails group I’m a part of here has had a banner year of fundraising, land acquisition, trail maintenance and the building of new trails. I’m thrilled to be riding and working with such a great group and in such a cool landscape. The larger world is distressing. My small one here has been fairly good. My reading feels like it reflects that dichotomy some.

With no further ado, back to the business at hand: some of my favorite reading of the year. I’ve divided these into a few tiers, and mentioned some narratives I encountered outside of books that I loved, too. And as is tradition, please also check out Shelf Awareness’s best-of-the-year list here, too (with a couple of titles in common with my own, naturally!).

My two favorite books this year were both novels, and both new publications:

• The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin – fiction
• The Prettiest Star, Carter Sickels – fiction

First honorable mentions:

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson – nonfiction
• World of Wonders, Aimee Nezhukumatathil – nonfiction
• Leave the World Behind, Rumaan Alam – fiction
• The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune – fiction
• Chicago, Brian Doyle – fiction
• Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid – fiction
• The Wet Engine, Brian Doyle – nonfiction
• From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell – graphic fiction
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds – nonfiction

Next round honorable mentions:

• Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward – nonfiction
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee – fiction
• Talk on the Wild Side, Lane Greene – nonfiction
• Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, Paul Lisicky – nonfiction
• What Is the Grass, Mark Doty – nonfiction
• Sophomores, Sean Desmond – fiction (review forthcoming)
• Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here, Nancy Wayson Dinan – fiction
• Forty Million Dollar Slaves, William C. Rhoden – nonfiction

Other special mentions outside the world of books:

• The Wire – television series
• Shameless – television series
• The Red Line – television series
• Orphan Black – television series
• “Seeing White” on Scene on Radio – podcast
• The Dark Divide – movie

And a few charities close to my heart just now:

• the usual suspects: Planned Parenthood in TX and WV, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, and various BLM chapters
• BINC
• Nuçi’s Space
• and the Black Student Union at my own West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Whew. That was a lot of content. I think it’s a good thing that I had so much good stuff I appreciated to share with you. It’s always interesting putting this list together. While I give books a numerical rating when I review them, I don’t do this best-of-the-year list based off those numbers; I try and go back and review the ratings but observe which titles stuck with me over time. (So the books read in the last month or so don’t get the same kind of cooling-off period that earlier reads too. It’s not a perfect system.) I think it reflects patterns not only in my reading but in my thinking. These are the books (etc.) that have proved most memorable over time. I hope you find something here to appreciate, too.

See you Friday with those statistics. I hope you read something awesome this week.

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My year-in-review post will be up Wednesday, as per usual. But first, also as usual, I want to share the list of my favorite things I read this year. (You can see past years’ best-of lists at this tag.)

The short best-of-the-best list:

• Appalachia North, Matthew Ferrence (new release)
• A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki (audio)
• The Ghost Clause, Howard Norman (new release)
• Homesick, Jennifer Croft (new release)
• The Third Rainbow Girl, Emma Copley Eisenberg (new release)
• Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Honorable mentions:

• The Wild Boy, Paolo Cognetti (new release)
• When Brooklyn Was Queer, Hugh Ryan (new release)
• The Plover, Brian Doyle (audio)
• Cygnet, Season Butler (new release)
• Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl (new release)
• Savage Gods, Paul Kingsnorth (new release)
• Heaven, My Home, Attica Locke (new release)
• The Innocents, Michael Crummey (new release)

Note that these are overwhelmingly new releases, which bodes well for the publishing industry in general (and probably reflects my reading habits) (and credit to my lovely editor Dave who sends me such great books to review).

Bonus: Shelf Awareness’s Best Books of the Year is available at that link. It includes none of my choices but that’s okay – more to choose from! Bonus-bonus: their Best Children’s and Teen Books.

Hooray for good books always! What are some of the best things you read this year?

Come back Wednesday to see a further breakdown of my reading habits in 2019.

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Note: I’m out of pocket during my final residency period at school. I love your comments! But it may take me several days or a week or more to respond.

My year-in-review post will be up next week, as usual. But first, also as usual, I want to share the list of my favorite things I read this year. (You can see past years’ best-of lists at this tag.) None of these were audiobooks, but a few were new releases, so I’ve marked those with *.

These three books and one essay got a rating of 10.

• Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore*, Elizabeth Rush – nonfiction
• Sock, Kim Adrian – nonfiction
• A Song for the River*, Philip Connors – nonfiction
• “The Fourth State of Matter,” Jo Ann Beard – nonfiction (reread)

And while I gave rather a lot of 9’s this year, I’ve chosen my favorites (from today’s perspective, at least) for you here, for a shorter list.

• Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process, John McPhee – nonfiction
• The Rope Swing: Stories, Jon Corcoran – fiction
• Souvenir, Rolf Potts – nonfiction
• Pieces of White Shell, Terry Tempest Williams – nonfiction (reread)
• Still Life With Oysters and Lemon, Mark Doty (reread)
• The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Charlotte Pence, ed. – nonfiction

Bonus: Shelf Awareness’s Best Books of the Year is available at that link, and includes two that I had the good luck to review (Everything Under* and Convenience Store Woman*).

Hooray for good books always! What are some of the best things you read this year?

Come back next week to see a further breakdown of my reading habits in 2018.

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My year-in-review post will be up tomorrow. But first… I always like to list my favorite books I’ve read in the closing year. As in the past, these are not necessarily new publications, although several are. Without further ado:

I rated just one book with a 10, so the best book that I read in 2016 was

• Notes from No Man’s Land, Eula Biss – nonfiction.

I gave several a rating of 9:

• Fun Home, Alison Bechdel – nonfiction
• Smoke, Dan Vyleta – fiction
• Lily and the Octopus, Steven Rowley – fiction
• Joe Gould’s Teeth, Jill Lepore – nonfiction
• Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Nick Flynn – nonfiction
• Maps to Anywhere, Bernard Cooper – nonfiction
• Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital, David Oshinsky – nonfiction.

There were, happily, as ever, lots of 8’s. Special mentions go to:

• Detroit Hustle by Amy Haimerl and This Is Where You Belong by Melody Warnick, two rather different books, for their work with place, which resonates with me.
• from a couple of favorite authors, The Mighty Currawongs by Brian Doyle; Make Me by Lee Child; and Jesus Out to Sea by James Lee Burke.
• For evoking worlds I lost myself in, all fictional but realistic: The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Change; A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; A Robot in the Garden by Deborah Install (I love the name ‘Install’ for the author of a robot book!); and The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder.

I also voted this year for The National Book Critics Circle Awards. Five for fiction: Smoke, Lily and the Octopus, The Wangs vs. the World, A Robot in the Garden, and The Throwback Special; and five for nonfiction: Joe Gould’s Teeth, Bellevue, Detroit Hustle, Gods, Wasps & Stranglers… and, for that final slot, I struggled between four titles and settled on The Song Poet. (Runners up were The Girls in My Town, Every Last Tie, and The Narrow Door.) I skipped the categories for poetry, criticism, biography, and autobiography, where I didn’t feel I’d read much.

Finally, I wouldn’t want you to miss Shelf Awareness’s best of list. You’ll notice one nonfiction and four fiction titles that cross over from that list to this blog post (or vice versa).

It’s been another amazing year, and I can’t wait to see what 2017 holds. Thanks for coming around again, friends.

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My year-in-review post will be up tomorrow, of course, as usual. But first, as the year ends, I always like to review the very BEST books I read in the last year. As ever, these were not necessarily published in 2015 (although many were).

Those that received a rating of 10:

• Martin Marten, Brian Doyle – fiction
• All Over But the Shoutin’, Rick Bragg – nonfiction
• Things That Are, Amy Leach – nonfiction
• Norman Maclean, edited by Ron McFarland and Hugh Nichols – some of both

Those that received a rating of 9:

• Of Things Gone Astray, Janina Matthewson – fiction
• Travels in Vermeer, Michael White – nonfiction
• Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter, Nina MacLaughlin – nonfiction
• The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander – nonfiction
• Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott – nonfiction
• Mislaid, Nell Zink – fiction
• Wondering Who You Are, Sonya Lea – nonfiction
• Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel – fiction (and the only audiobook on this list)
• My Southern Journey, Rick Bragg – nonfiction
• Home Is Burning, Dan Marshall – nonfiction
• Pieces of White Shell, Terry Tempest Williams – nonfiction
• The Tender Bar, JR Moehringer – nonfiction (link to come when my review posts in the new year)

There were, as always, lots of 8’s. I won’t list them all here for fear of exhausting you, although a search on this page for “Rating: 8” should take you there, if you’re that interested. I need to note just a few here, though. Honorable mention goes to Paul Kingsnorth’s strange and singular debut novel, The Wake. I can’t stop thinking about Wallace Stegner’s The Big Rock Candy Mountain. And, cheers to Rick Bragg, whose name appears twice on the lists above.

What did YOU read this year that’s blown you away?

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My year-in-review post is coming, but first, as the year ends, let’s take a look at the very BEST books I read in 2014. As usual, these were not necessarily published in 2014 (although several were).

(* are audiobooks.)

Those that received a rating of 10:

• Have You Seen Marie?*, Sandra Cisneros – fiction
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry*, Rachel Joyce – fiction
• Gretel and the Dark, Eliza Granville – fiction
• Grizzly Years, Doug Peacock – nonfiction
• The Dark Tower, Stephen King – fiction, standing in for the whole Dark Tower series
• MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman – nonfiction

Those that received a rating of 9:

• Wizard and Glass*, Stephen King – fiction
• Turtle Island, Gary Snyder – poetry
• Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner – fiction
• Fives and Twenty-Fives, Michael Pitre – fiction (the only one to make the Shelf list)
• The Brothers Lionheart, Astrid Lindgren – fiction
• The Untold, Courtney Collins – fiction
• The Vacationers, Emma Straub – fiction
• How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran – fiction
• So We Read On, Maureen Corrigan – nonfiction
• Sex on Earth, Jules Howard – nonfiction
• The Story of My Heart, Richard Jefferies, Terry Tempest Williams, Brook Williams – nonfiction
• The Jaguar’s Children, John Vaillant – fiction
• All the Wrong Places, Philip Connors – nonfiction
• Great Bear Wild, Ian McAllister – nonfiction
• Luigi’s Freedom Ride, Alan Murray – fiction
• Maus I, A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, Art Spiegelman – nonfiction
• Maus II, A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, Art Spiegelman – nonfiction

There were lots of 8s, too – it’s been a great year. I had a very hard time choosing a short list of examples for you, so please be satisfied with The Drunken Botanist*, Euphoria, Wayfaring Stranger, The Fish in the Forest, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, The Kind Worth Killing (by Peter Swanson, review to come)…

What did YOU read this year that’s blown you away?

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