2015 Best and Worst

[Lip Service]

We have been reminded of an old Eons tradition of celebrating the best and worst selection of your reading effort in the past year

Feel free to laud your favorites and pan the ones you hated

My favorite is Joe Nesbo's The Redbreast

There were many bad ones that I barely remember but I disliked The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras the author kept showing off his vocabulary of obscure words   

[Carci]

I had planned to start this discussion if no one else did... I really missed it last year as I get many new reads from others favorites...  lol

So Thank You Lip Service and since you didn't insist that there be only one, I will list the top 4 of my 70+ books for 2015. They were all read in the first 1/2 of the year & I have been searching for another as good since then.

BEST: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman  (edged out the other 3 by 2 points) 

         The Pecan Man by Cassie Dandridge Sellek

         The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

         The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

There were about 1/2 dozen that I started and didn't finish... not worth listing them.  

[Mandy Muffin]

Though not a very scientific analysis with a forced ranking discipline, a glancing look at the 125 or so books I read this year resulted in the following:

Best: "The Martian" Andy Weir

Probably the best sci-fi book I have read in a while, with great technical description and angst on every page.  The motion picture may also vie for the Academy Awards.

Worst: "The Silkworm" Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)

This attempt at an English detective novel was drenched in unnecessary filthy words, the likes of which would have burned another scar in Harry Potters' forehead.  IMHO, it was just a bad book but others may have liked it.  

I'm in the midst of "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis.  This true account of the traders who helped to almost bring down the US economy just eight years ago, is scary.  That "young Turk" traders shorting the mortgage-backed derivative market could have gotten away with the stunts they pulled to make billions by betting against people paying their bills on time or ever, is a story of Wall Street and banks out of control. A major movie is also being made on this story.      

Though not a very scientific analysis with a forced ranking discipline, a glancing look at the 125 or so books I read this year resulted in the following:

Best: "The Martian" Andy Weir

Probably the best sci-fi book I have read in a while, with great technical description and angst on every page.  The motion picture may also vie for the Academy Awards.

Worst: "The Silkworm" Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)

This attempt at an English detective novel was drenched in unnecessary filthy words, the likes of which would have burned another scar in Harry Potters' forehead.  IMHO, it was just a bad book but others may have liked it.  

I'm in the midst of "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis.  This true account of the traders who helped to almost bring down the US economy just eight years ago, is scary.  That "young Turk" traders shorting the mortgage-backed derivative market could have gotten away with the stunts they pulled to make billions by betting against people paying their bills on time or ever, is a story of Wall Street and banks out of control. A major movie is also being made on this story.      

[rapa]

Although several fiction books were terrific reads I must say that my best read of the year was BEING MORTAL by Atul Gawande. This book shares how we can better live with age-related frailty and approaching death of loved ones as well as ourselves, which is inevitable. There is great philosophy and wisdom expressed in these pages.

One book that disappointed me was MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE'S SORRY by Fredrik Backman. His previous book A MAN CALLED OVE totally charmed me but this one never piqued my interest.

[Carci]

I'm 3/4 way through 'Grandmother' right now and having a hard time with it... what a strange story... I keep reading because I loved 'Ove' so much.  I was hoping for some grand finish but I guess that's not gonna happen.

[Carolyn Tewell]

CARCI....loved The Life We Bury!
MANDI...read The Big Short in 2014...liked it a lot!

I went back over the year...GEESCH!!! We had some bizzy reading Months...Aug and June and March!

Favorite Fiction:
Leaving Time~Picoult
Girl On the Train
Doing Harm~Kelly Parsons (male)
The Fixer~Joseph Finder

Favorite Non-Fiction:
The Triple Package
Better Than Before~Gretchen Rubin

Worst:
Radient Angel~Nelson DeMille