On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:35 AM, Thaths <[email protected]> wrote: > For the seventh year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book > recommendation > this holiday season. > > What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What are > you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's > holidays? > > > Books enjoyed in 2015:
Ali and Nino by Kurban Said - the great Azerbaijani novel, may not actually have been written by an Azerbaijani. You can never really tell if it's sincerely describing life in WW1 Baku or just dramatising the worst stereotypes about the period. Tremendous fun to read. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville - because I started China Mieville with The Scar, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Perdido Street Station actually has a plot. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson - after the disappointment of Reamde and and the Mongoliad, I thought Stephenson was back to doing what he does best ie sweeping and maximalist epics. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I took two years to finish this, but enjoyed it far more in 2015 than 2014. Tolstoy has this under-the-surface mild sarcasm that suddenly leaps out, bites, and then goes back to rest. The House that BJ Built by Anuja Chauhan - I don't know if I am overly biased towards this because of my own Delhi-family-with-scheming-relatives-background, but I hugely enjoyed this. Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot - the happiest and funniest book I read in all 2015. Attempting frugality, most of my reading this year was free longform writing from www.longform.org instead of books. The few nonfiction books I did read this year (two on the history of European Christianity and one which was a public transport design handbook) did not impress me very much. What I'm hoping to read in 2016: Beowulf (after hearing an impressive BBC In Our Time podcast about it) Fanny Burney (same reason) catching up with my scifi reading queue/ stack, especially the climate-scifi ones Michael Chabon
