2015 - Your Best Five Reads of Q1 (January - March)

Please share the best five books you've read in the last three months.

Happy list making!

I enjoyed most of the books I read this quarter. These are the ones that stand out:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
The Red Gardenby Alice Hoffman
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

Van Gogh: A Power Seething by Julian Bell
The Matisse Stories by A. S. Byatt
The Gallery by John Horne Burns
One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
Honeydew by Edith Pearlman

Honorable Mentions:

Percival's Planet by Michael Byers
The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan

In the order I read them:

The Shining by Stephen King (reread)
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg
Naptime with Theo and Beau by Jessica Shyba

Happy April! The first crocuses are in bloom in my garden, hurrah!

My top five, in the order I read them:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Push by Sapphire
The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett

Wishing all a great April (and start of the second quarter).

My top first quarter reads were...

4 1/2 star reads
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Wait for Me! by Deborah Mitford Cavendish

4 star reads
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Writers' Block by Judith Flanders
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

There were a couple of other 4 star reads, but I went with just mentioning these three.

I can't do just five, I have 12 or better reads.

What about eight?

Best Reads of January-March 2015

He Is There, and He Is Not Silent by Francis Schaeffer

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

Memoirs of a Twentieth Century Circuit Riding Preacher by Peter S. Ruckman

Don't Give Up, Don't Give In by Louis Zamperini

Escape From Reason by Francis Schaeffer

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Find Momo Coast to Coast by Andrew Knapp

No 5-star scores yet this year, and no 4.5's, so I'll list all six of the 4's:

Fiction

Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan
Orfeo, by Richard Powers
We Need New Names, by NoViolet Bulawayo
The Singer’s Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel

Nonfiction

A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand's Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, by Andrew MacGregor Marshall
Without You, There Is No Us, by Suki Kim

I didn't read as much in the first quarter as I usually do (real life kept interrupting) and had more books I wasn't crazy about than I usually do, but I really appreciated:

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
and
The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac

My tastes might be a bit odd compared to most of the serious readers here.

(Touchstone for Ghettoside isn't working for some reason.)

>9 TooBusyReading: I have Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America on hold and will be reading soon as I am finally #1 on the holds list.

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell was one of my favorite reads of 2014. I just learned the author, Nadia Hashimi has written a new book When the Moon Is Low that due to be released in July 2015.

That Sasquash book sounds awfully fun and quirky.

>10 MsMaryAnn: I didn't know Nadia Hashimi has a new book coming out. I'll have to put it on my TBR list. Thank you! I thought The Pearl... was excellent.

The books that kept me turning the pages the fastest were...

✏ The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen
✏ The Color of Water by James McBride
✏ Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
✏ This is How by M.J. Hyland (no idea why touchstone isn't working)

I have trouble splitting hairs just to pick a fifth one.

The Name of the Wind
Blue Horses
Small Victories
The Invasion of the Tearling
City of Thieves

5 Books I Liked Best. . .So Far

Euphoria by Lily King
Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku

My top 5 in the order read:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 4.5 Stars

The rest are all 4 Stars (I chose my fav from 7 books I rated at 4 Stars)

The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith H. Beer
The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman
Henry & Clara by Thomas Mallon
Peyton Place by Grace Metallious

Once Upon Our Times by M. A. Kairos
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Old Neighborhood by Avery Corman
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

My top five reads of the quarter were (in no particular order):

1. Ghettoside by Jill Leovy (non-fiction and Early Reviewer copy)
2. May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes (fiction)
3. Touched by Fire by Rajmani Tigunait (non-fiction)
4. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (fiction)
5. There's Something I Want You To Do by Charles Baxter (fiction - short stories)

17 CarolynSchroeder - I loved The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and everything else I've read by Murakami. I found this on the internet:

Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender
On Life After Death by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Out Came the Sun by Mariel Hemingway
The Interstellar Age by Jim Bell

The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
The Likeness by Tana French
In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

I read some other good stuff, but they were mostly a tie. I might have put In the Woods on the list (predecessor to The Likeness), but I liked it's successor much more!