MarissaKings' 2015 Reading List

I somehow managed to read 70 books last year, which is nothing short of a miracle for me. I'm aiming for 50 books this year, which I hope is doable.

2015 Reading List

1. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
2. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris
3. The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
4. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
5. Malformed: The Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital by Adam Voorhes
6. The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan
7. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
8. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Slum by Katherine Boo
9. The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War by Samuel Hynes
10. The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration by Richard Barnett

11. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
12. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
13. Angelica by Arthur Phillips
14. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
15. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
16. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
17. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
18. Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
19. Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World by Ella Frances Sanders
20. One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

21. Paperboy: An Enchanting True Story of a Belfast Paperboy Coming to Terms With the Troubles by Tony Macaulay
22. The Martian by Andy Weir
23. Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman
24. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
25. Ripper: A Novel by Isabel Allende
26. The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Tales by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth
27. Three Minutes in Poland by Glenn Kurtz
28. Rad American Women A-Z by Kate Shatz
29. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
30. Project Lives: New York Public Housing Residents Photograph Their World edited by George Carrano, Chelsea Davis, and Jonathan Fisher

31. Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick
32. The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman
33. Dubliners by James Joyce
34. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
35. Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø
36. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan
37. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
38. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
39. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
40. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

41. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
42. Metadata for Digital Collections by Steven Miller
43. Selecting & Appraising Archives & Manuscripts by Frank Boles
44. No Innocent Deposits by Richard Cox
45. The Colony by John Tayman
46. Foulsham by Edward Carey
47. A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith
48. Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings by Shirley Jackson
49. The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz
50. Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records by Amanda Petrusich

51. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
52. The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray by Robert Schnakenberg.
53. "Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?" by Lemony Snicket
54. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
55. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
56. The Story of My Tits by Jennifer Hayden
57. Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson
58. Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
59. The Terror: A Novel by Dan Simmons
60. Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie

61. On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
62. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
63. M Train by Patti Smith
64. Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

Welcome back!

1. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

I devoured this book, and it creeped me out big time. I loved it. I found the whole book unsettling and definitely couldn't read it alone at home. Even without the suspense/supernatural element, the story was interesting - the decline of an aristocratic British family after WWII and the changes in all classes. But throw in the "Is this house evil?" element, and it was great. Definitely for anyone who loved The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

Mmmmm. Sounds good!

Oooh, The Haunting of Hill House is one of my all-time favorites, so it looks like I need to add the Waters book to my wishlist...

drneutron & scaifea - definitely add it to your 'to read' lists! It's just over 500 pages long, but it really flew by. I keep thinking about the ending and found myself reading a published paper on one interpretation of events, so it definitely sticks with you...

>6 MarissaKings: I just bought The Night Watch for the British Author Challenge and I'm really looking forward to reading some of her stuff. I've added The Little Stranger to my wishlist!

2. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris

I loved the essays on living and traveling abroad in this one (especially as I got my visa from the exact same office that he described when I lived in the UK, and he nailed it). Also, his description about his colonoscopy almost had me crying with laughter. I'm not such a big fan of his fiction though, and I wish he hadn't included it in this book.



3. The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

This was a really interesting novella. I loved the plot - a young man finds himself locked in a cell in a library's basement and has to memorize several books for a strange reason. The story was good, but what really made it was the book's illustrations and presentations. It's a really interesting concept and definitely worth a look at.

4. The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic by Steven Johnson

This was an interesting read - I'd learned a little about the map created during the 1854 cholera outbreak in London in a GIS class, but I'd never read the full story. I have to admit that I became temporarily obsessed with the Broad Street outbreak source: a woman named Sarah Lewis tossed the water used to wash her cholera-stricken baby's diaper in the cesspool beneath her house, where the contaminated water seeped into the well providing drinking water to the neighborhood. Hundreds died in the ensuing outbreak, including Sarah's husband and baby. Her house's cesspool was identified as the source in the following months, so she would have known that her actions inadvertently set off the chain of events. I looked her up in UK census records, and she apparently never remarried and stayed in the same house as the outbreak for at least 10 years after. Anyway.....interesting read.



5. Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital by Adam Voorhes

This photography book is about the collection of preserved brains belonging to Texas State Mental Hospital (or at least the ones left - half of the collection went missing). Unfortunately the documentation accompanying the brains went missing too, so what some of the patients were suffering from is unknown. The hospital seemed to start out being somewhat progressive - trying to provide the patients with safe, clean, and healthy environments - but seemed to live up to every negative and scary stereotype about asylums by the 1970s. The photos of the brains were beautifully shot.

6. The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan

I definitely did not make it past the forward in this book without shedding a few tears. Marina Keegan had so much talent and potential that in other circumstances would have left me with serious career envy. Instead, I find myself haunted by a lot of her stories and essays writing about what she would have been like when she was old, when she was on her deathbed, when she would be pregnant, etc. This book is one that will stay with you.



7. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I found this one to be just ok. I hadn't realized that before it was a book, this was a radio broadcast, so maybe that is the best medium in which to appreciate this. I definitely laughed out loud at some parts, but overall, I just wasn't that into it.

Hi! You've already done a lot of good reading this year. Ghost Map has been on my TBR list for years and I had never heard of Adam Voorhes' book before, but it is now on the wishlist.

8. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Slum by Katherine Boo

I had to keep reminding myself that this was non-fiction. The poverty and corruption that the author wrote about seemed unreal....which made me feel grateful and guilty at the same time.



9. The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War by Samuel Hynes

With the centennial mark of the start of World War I having just passed in 2014, there have been a lot of interesting WWI-related books coming out, and this is one of them. The author is a World War II pilot turned historian, so his insights are really interesting. As sad as it was reading about the pilots who lost their lives during the war the those who died after the Armistice in preventable accidents, it felt almost as sad reading the remarks one of the pilots made decades later that he and his friends and colleagues really, truly thought that this war would end all wars...which must seem very bittersweet in hindsight.

10. The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration by Richard Barnett

This is a very well-done book. The illustrations are beautifully presented, and the author gives concise introductions to the history of medical art and the diseases that they captured. Very, very interesting.

11. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi

This was one of my favorite books as a teenager, and I needed a quick and easy read between class readings. It was just as fun of a read as I remembered - kind of cheesy, but fun.



12. The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story by Susan Hill

This book was ok. The creepy atmosphere builds up, but the plot is pretty predictable and there are no major surprises. Still, it was an enjoyable and quick read.

13. Angelica by Arthur Phillips

I liked the premise of this book, but I just didn't like the book. It sounded interesting - a Victorian quasi-ghost story told from four different viewpoints - but I just couldn't get into it. There were some truly creepy passages in it, but I didn't like any of the characters and wasn't happy with the ending.

14. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
15. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
16. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Basically, I've been really stressed out with grad school, work, and my cat dying, so I needed something engrossing to read in snippets on my lunch breaks. These fit the bill.



17. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

The audiobook version of this was highly recommended to me by a volunteer at my library, so I continued on my YA binge. I thought it was good and served as a reminder that I'm so glad I'm not a teen anymore.

18. Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is very hit or miss for me, but this collection was a really nice variety of his writing. My favorite stories were "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains...", The Sleeper in the Spindle, and The Black Dog (which is a continuation of characters from American Gods and inspired a very bizarre nightmare for me last night).



19. Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World by Ella Frances Sanders

This is a beautifully illustrated guide to words unique to their languages. My favorite word was the Welsh word hiraeth, which means "a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past".

20. One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson really can do no wrong. I loved the broad scope of this book - there really was a lot going on in 1927 - and the fact that he managed to always bring it back to Charles Lindbergh. I think that one of my dream jobs would be to work as his research assistant.



21. Paperboy: An Enchanting True Story of a Belfast Paperboy Coming to Terms With the Troubles by Tony Macaulay

I got this book as an Early Reviewer copy. It was interesting and lighthearted for telling a true story set in a very tumultuous period in Ireland, but it didn't feel very cohesive. It had some funny parts, and I had to Google what parallel pants looked like (and had a giggle over it), but overall it felt disjointed and uneven.

I really liked One Summer when I listened to it not too long ago - glad to see that you did, too! I agree that Bryson can do no wrong!

scaifea I'm so excited for his new book that's coming out this year! I think it's being released really soon in the UK and hopefully will be released soon after in the US.

I noticed on your thread that you're reading Rebecca right now - is this your first time reading it? It's one of my all-time favorites! I could read that over and over again.

It *is* my first time reading it! The movie has been one of my all-time favorites for years, though.

scaifea I hope you like it! I love the movie too but wish (as always) that it was more faithful to the book (but in this case, I think there were some extenuating circumstances).

22. The Martian by Andy Weir

This book had been on my to-read list, and when a friend highly recommended it, I made it my next read. I read the first page, and I was hooked. I completely devoured it. Even though it's classified as science fiction, it didn't read like that at all. The premise is that a manned mission to Mars has to abort on it's sixth day (or sol, since Martian days are different lengths to Earth days), and one crew member is left behind for dead...except he's not. The book is mainly told through his log entries and describe his efforts to remain alive in time for the next manned mission to Mars. It's being made into a movie to be released later this year, and I can't wait.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the movie too!

23. Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman

I didn't pick this book up because I've read any of the His Dark Materials books - I'd actually never read anything by Philip Pullman before - but because it took place in Oxford. I miss that place, and it was nice reading a story where I could visualize the exact path that the characters were taking. I felt like I was missing a back story with this book, though, so the His Dark Materials series is now on my to-read list.



24. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Everyone's been talking about this book, and finally I had to bite. I listened to it on audiobook and was immediately drawn in. It's been compared to Gone Girl, but I thought that it was much better (I didn't like GG at all). I loved the differing timelines and how they all weaved together in the end, and I couldn't help feeling sorry for and empathizing with Rachel all throughout. So glad I finally read it.

drneutron The cast looks great! I'm happy about Kristen Wiig and Donald Glover being in it.

25. Ripper: A Novel by Isabel Allende

I was intrigued about Isabel Allende writing a thriller, and I finally got around to reading it. It turns out it wasn't so much a thriller as a book about the relationships between characters with a serial killer in the background. It was ok; by the time the big reveal(s) at the end came around, it seemed a bit ridiculous.

26. The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Tales by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth

I definitely let out an angry sigh when reading the introduction, where the fairy tales were described as being discovered after "languishing" in an archive for over a century (Really? Seems like they survived pretty well). Introduction aside, it was interesting to see the different motifs and themes in these stories and to read fairy tales where females aren't always playing the damsel-in-distress roles.

27. Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film by Glenn Kurtz

This book was really incredible. The author discovered that a family film shot during his grandparents' European holiday in 1938 depicts roughly 3 minutes of the Jewish quarter in a Polish town which was decimated during the war. He donated it to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, who sent the film away for preservation and put a digital copy of the film online. It was seen by a woman who recognized her grandfather in the film, and from there the author was able to identify many other people in the film and piece together what pre-war life was like in the town. This story was incredibly interesting...that being said, it really could have benefited from showing some family trees for the individuals discussed in the book and maps of the streets identified as it got really hard to follow the different names and where people lived in relation to others.



28. Rad American Women by Kate Schatz

I loved this new kids' book! It highlights the lives of a diverse set of women for each letter of the alphabet. I think that X was my favorite letter: "X is for the women whose names we don't know". The book also gives a list of 26 things that the reader can do to be rad. All-around great.



29. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

To be honest, I put off reading this book as I knew it wouldn't exactly be a happy story. It wasn't, but I'm so glad that I finally read it. I listened to the author read this on audiobook, which was a really great way to experience the story. I will definitely not be watching the movie.



30. Project Lives: New York Public Housing Residents Photograph Their World edited by George Carrano, Chelsea Davis, and Jonathan Fisher

This is a really interesting participatory photography project that seeks to allow the residents of New York Public Housing projects to portray their worlds through their own perspective to contrast with the mainstream perceptions of project life. The photographs taken by residents are interspersed with information on the NYC Housing Authority's history and future. I'd love to see more participatory projects like this.

31. Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

I loved this book. The author talks about her own experiences with figuring out what she wants in her life and also discusses the lives of other inspirational 'spinsters'. I can't stop recommending this to other people.



32. The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman

This was an audiobook listen, narrated by Sarah Silverman herself, which was perfect. Her impressions of her family members were hilarious, and just her delivery made some of the stories. I probably shouldn't have laughed so hard at how she ended up losing her psychiatrist, but I did.



33. Dubliners by James Joyce

I'm slightly embarrassed to say that this was the first work by James Joyce that I've ever read. I need to catch up. I like this collection of short stories, all joined by the common thread of being about people living in Dublin (and sometimes overlapping). My favorites were "The Dead" and "A Painful Case".



34. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This book was really haunting - I'm still thinking about it a week after I finished it. It makes you think about the ethics of science and what it means to be human. The more I read by Ishiguro, the more I love his work.

35. Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø

My work colleague loves this author, and I've been meaning to read some of his books. This one was narrated on audiobook by Patti Smith, who could read a phone book and make it sound interesting. I loved the story - very bleak and violent but also kind of poetic. I'll definitely be reading more of Nesbø's work.

36. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher : The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan

This book was a very interesting read about how Edward Curtis created some of the most famous photographs of Native Americans in the 20th century. That being said, I wish that the author didn't skirt around the ethics of how Curtis got some/many of his photos and that he didn't vilify Curtis' wife Clara so much.



37. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua

I had never read this comic before. The comic was good, but the real gem was the footnotes. So much research went into this, and each joke was so cleverly thought out! Not to mention, the author was able to convey a lot of (I thought) really complicated workings of Babbage's machines.

38. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Reading member reviews of this book, I was surprised at how polarizing it seems to be - people either love it or hate it. I belong in the former camp. I felt like I was holding my breath the entire time I was reading (well, listening to) this. The story was bleak, the writing was bleak, and I really loved that. It was so haunting and has left me thinking about it over a week after I finished it.

I'm in the love-it camp too. The writing was just gorgeous. Bleak, but gorgeous.

39. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

This was interesting to hear how the US men's rowing team ended up winning a gold medal at the Berlin Olympics and particularly the life of Joe Rantz. I listened to this on audiobook during my commute to work and can't count how many times I yelled at Joe Rantz's father in my car. The fact that Joe Rantz didn't turn out to have crippling psychological damage is incredible.



40. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

I really wanted to like this but in the end found it to be just alright. I liked the theme of memory and memory loss but just couldn't settle in with this book. It seemed like every time something was happening, the chapter would end and the next would jolt forward with a different character recalling what just happened. I did really like the ending and particularly the last line.

41. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

I thought this book was fascinating. Dating in the digital era is quite frankly bizarre and so unlike dating and courtship in the previous decades or centuries. Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg examine dating practices in previous years and currently in different cities, and whether you're in a relationship or single, this is really, really interesting (and often funny).

42. Metadata for Digital Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual by Steven Miller
43. Selecting & Appraising Archives & Manuscripts by Frank Boles
44. No Innocent Deposits: Forming Archives by Rethinking Appraisal by Richard J. Cox

Two words: summer school.

45. The Colony: the harrowing true story of the exiles of Molokai by John Tayman

Although I think that the title of this book is overly sensational, it was a great read and I appreciate the amount of research that went into it. The history of the forced exile of people afflicted with Hansen's disease was heartbreaking and hard to read at times. The recent history of Kalaupapa was incredibly interesting as well - I had no idea about the fight to award it National Park status in the 1970s. Definitely worth the read.

46. Foulsham by Edward Carey

I read the first book in this trilogy last year, and I found it a bit hard to get back into this series. After the first few chapters, I remembered why I liked it - what a dark, strange story set in an alternate-history London borough. Edward Carey's illustrations are so so creepy and really make the story. Definitely for fans of darker YA reads.

47. A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith

This book should really be required reading for all Floridians past and present. I've been meaning to read this for years and am so glad that I finally did. Three generations of Florida crackers starting with nothing and ending with everything - what more could you want in historical fiction?

48. Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings by Shirley Jackson

I've been trying to think of a good adjective by which to describe Shirley Jackson, and I just can't. Eccentric? Twisted? Dark? Droll? Whatever the right word is, she's amazing. Her works of fiction are just so -off- and I often can't quite put my finger on what makes them feel so uncomfortable to me. I had never read any non-fiction by her, so her accounts of her family life and writing style were eye-opening and often quietly hilarious. Must-read for any fans of her work.

49. The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz

I didn't have particularly high hopes for this book, which turned out to be a good thing. The plot was ok, but the dialog could be cheesy at times (maybe that was the translation? I don't know.). I wish that Stieg Larsson's estate had made his long-time partner his successor.

50. Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records by Amanda Petrusich

If music genres like pre-war Cajun blues or Ukrainian laments and the prospect of scuba diving in a murky river in the hopes of finding rare old discarded records sound good to you, then you should probably read this book. The history of music recorded on 78 rpm records is really, really interesting, as are the lengths that collectors go through to obtain them. The author lost me a little bit when she tried to place hardcore collectors on the autism spectrum, but this was nevertheless and interesting read.

51. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai



52. The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray by Robert Schnakenberg

53. "Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?" by Lemony Snicket

I didn't realize that this was the last book in the All the Wrong Questions series, so I was a bit sad when I finished it. However, it wrapped up a lot of the plot points but kept up the mystery and even referenced characters from the Series of Unfortunate Events, which was a nice VFD link. I really love dark children's books, and this was easily the best in the series. This review really summed up all what made this book great.

54. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

I think that I liked the concept of this book more than I liked the actual book. The present-day story line was pretty cheesy, and at the beginning of the story when the book conservator starts sucking on the fingers of her colleague, I wanted to yell at her to get her professional self together. The thought of knowing the entire history of a historic record and how it found its way to an archive is wonderful, but I thought the book was just ok.



55. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

I loved this book. This was a post-apocalyptic story that wasn't all bad news. I really liked how all of the past, present, and future story lines tied to the one character and how the post-disaster focus was on the preservation of human culture. The post-disaster motto "Because survival is insufficient" was really fitting, and for some reason that quarantine plane has continued to haunt my thoughts since finishing the book.



56. The Story of My Tits by Jenifer Hayden

I've been getting more and more into graphic novels at the urging of my friend, and this was a pretty good one. This was inspired by the author's double mastectomy and tells the story of her life through the context of her breasts. It was often funny but sad at times, and I loved the author's revelations of the 'mother goddess'.

57. Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson

The beginning of the book made me want to travel, and by the end I was feeling homesick along with Bill Bryson.



58. Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

I enjoyed this, but after the first few chapters I became pretty desensitized to Jenny Lawson's sense of humor, and it started to feel a bit repetitive. Still worth a read.



59. The Terror: A Novel by Dan Simmons

I can't emphasize how consumed I was by this book. I completely ignored all of my other commitments to stay up all night reading it. This is classified as science fiction in my library, which I don't really agree with as it's 90% historical fiction with a smaller supernatural element. I can't wait to read more by this author.

I *loved* The Terror. Give Drood a try - it's my second favorite.

drneutron I've heard that Drood is amazing too! I can't wait to be done with my semester so I can do nothing but read!

60. Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie

I devoured this book after my hangover from The Terror. This had to have been Dan Simmons' inspiration as he incorporated nearly every fact found by the forensic anthropological team into the novel. I've just put the updated copy on order, which I'm beyond excited to read as Franklin's flagship, HMS Erebus, has been discovered since the previous edition of this book. I've also become slightly obsessed by the presence of a camera on the expedition.

61. On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee

I wanted to really like this, but I just couldn't. The storytelling format was interesting - the plot is recited as if it's a legend to be passed down, but after a while it got kind of annoying as it felt so sterile. I kept waiting for a huge plot twist and to get hooked, but it just never came. In the end I didn't much care for what happened to any of the characters.

62. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein



63. M Train by Patti Smith



64. Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell