Here is how it is with me and reading – Sometimes I start to panic, and I have to talk myself off the ledge with this reminder: “You don’t have to read ALL the books.”
Because, lordy, I surely do want to read all the books.
Anyway, here are the books I read last year. I highly recommend the five star ones; regular-recommend the four star ones; and say “eh” on the three star ones. Fiction titles are in green. Please note: not all of the books I read are “G-rated,” so if you have any questions about content, feel free to ask me.
If you pinched me really hard and MADE me pick one “best book” of last year, it would be the very first one on this list.
The Best (5 stars)
All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
Eventide, Kent Haruf
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht
The Humans, Matt Haig
Four Seasons in Rome, Anthony Doerr
Lila, Marilynne Robinson
A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler
The Translator, Daoud Hari
Twilight, William Gay
Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It, Maile Meloy
An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor
Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese
A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
One Man’s Wilderness, Sam Keith
Destiny and Power, Jon Meacham
4 stars
The Good Lord Bird, James McBride
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Dark Places, Gillian Flynn
The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud
Complications, Atul Gawande
Bird Box, Josh Malerman
Blue Diary, Alice Hoffman
Maude, Donna Mabry
A Thousand Lives, Julia Scheeres
Still Life With Bread Crumbs, Anna Quindlen
Grace: a memoir, Grace Coddington
Home, Marilynne Robinson
Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy
Still Alice, Lisa Genova
Things That Matter, Charles Krauthammer
One Kick, Chelsea Cain
Good Kings, Bad Kings, Susan Nussbaum
The Great God Pan, Arthur Machen
Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
Finding Me, Michelle Knight
The Triple Agent, Joby Warrick
Seal Team Six, Howard Wasdin
The Smartest Kids in the World, Amanda Ripley
The House Girl, Tara Conklin
Memoirs, Elie Wiesel
Five Chiefs, John Paul Stevens
Liars and Saints, Maile Meloy
Full-Rip 9.0, Sandi Doughton
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
The Oregon Trail, Rinker Buck
The Time of my Life, Patrick Swayze
Chasing Down the Dawn, Jewel
Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg
Born To Run, Christopher McDougall
My Own Country, Abraham Verghese
Cyndi Lauper, Cyndi Lauper
Finders Keepers, Stephen King
The Reaper, Nicholas Irving
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, Heidi Durrow
Tower, Nigel Jones
Lost in the Taiga, Vassili Peskov
Frederick Manfred, A Daughter Remembers, Freya Manfred
Duel with the Devil, Paul Collins
Stiff, Mary Roach
This Time Together, Carol Burnett
Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah
For The Time Being, Annie Dillard
The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
On The Move: A Life, Oliver Sacks
Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas
Love, Lucy, Lucille Ball
The Quiet Room, Lori Schiller
This Just In, Bob Schieffer
My Brief History, Stephen Hawking
Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
Deep Down Dark, Hector Tobar
The Stories We Tell, Patti Callahan Henry
3 stars
The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
The Mockingbird Next Door, Marja Mills
Then Again, Diane Keaton
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
American Sniper, Chris Kyle
Jesus Land, Julia Scheeres
He Wanted The Moon, Mimi Baird
Say Her Name, Francisco Goldman
Sound Bites, Alex Kapranos
The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall
The Martian, Andy Weir
Drama, An Actor’s Education, John Lithgow
Stronger, Jeff Bauman
Revival, Stephen King
The Circle, Dave Eggers
Look At Me, Jennifer Egan
Thunderstruck, Erik Larson
My Story, Elizabeth Smart
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
41, A Portrait of my Father, George W. Bush
All Things At Once, Mika Brzezinski
Wool, Hugh Howey
Benediction, Kent Haruf
A Head Full of Ghosts, Paul Tremblay
Chase Your Shadow: The Trials of Oscar Pistorius, John Carlin
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
Beyond Belief, Jenna Miscavige Hill
Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell
In the Name of God, Cameron Stauth
Alcatraz, The True End of the Line, Darwin Coon
The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters
Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee
See No Evil, Robert Baer
Cathy LaGrow 