2015: an illustrated bookish retrospect

2015 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“I get it," said the prisoner. "Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?"
"If you like," said Vimes. "But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?"
- Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett (1948-2015)

2015, in all its mind-numbing heart-breaking teeth-kicking glory, is not a year that I will look back on fondly, apart from a few things. The first among these things is the time spent with my sweet dog, and the second is the marvelousness of the books that I read. (The third is the discovery that icecream can be eaten with pretzel thins in place of spoons.) My 2015 shelf will tell you what my favorite and least favorite books were this year, with the caveat that an unrated book is not a book I disliked, just one that I didn't think it made sense to rate. So, I won't reiterate all that. Instead, pictures!




If I were to pin down a type of book that I found myself gravitating towards this year, it would be science fiction by female authors. Margaret Atwood, Joan D. Vinge, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, G. Willow Wilson, Catherynne M. Valente, and E.E. Giorgi were all authors that I was floored by, and all except for the last were new to me.


While this graph may have more bars than it would have had in past years, the proportion of books in each category is not exactly anything to be proud of. So, there's something to work on.


This is, perhaps, the graph that I find most interesting because of its tidily predictable climb towards the present. It resulted from of a couple of things: 1) This was the first year that I ventured into the NetGalley rabbit hole, and 2) I dabbled in a couple of bandwagons, attempting to rectify the fact that I'd read almost nothing that's currently popular. Although they weren't all hits for me (ok, almost none of them were hits - looking at you, Ready Player One, Red Rising, Rat Queens, Vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery), I did get to read Brandon Sanderson, so I can't complain too much.

Also, what were people writing between 1900 and 1940? That's evidently something I need to learn about. As well as all those eons before the 19th century


Most of my books this year were free, thanks to my library and ARCs from publishers. My wallet rejoices. I also read some books that I'd bought in previous years (old purchases), leaving relatively few books that I had to buy in 2015 (new purchases).


It surprised me that this year, ebooks and audiobooks made up about a third of what I read, because both formats are new to me. I only got a kindle in the middle of the year. I'd never listened to an audiobook prior to this fall, but I've become fond of them. They make such good company.

I went on a bit of a comic book/graphic novel binge, which resulted in some great finds. Particularly The Arrival, which joins The Complete Maus as the only graphic novels I've ever given 5 stars to.

Things that the graphs don't tell you:
- As much as I enjoy my fantastical and futuristic stories, some of the best books I read this year were about a quiet, thoughtful life on the countryside: Gilead, Lila, and A Month in the Country. In fact, the author of the first two (Marilynne Robinson) is possibly my favorite author of the year.
- Two books that I had DNF'd in the past, Crime and Punishment and Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, I returned to this year and rated 4 and 5 stars respectively.
- I wouldn't have thought I'd be singing the praises of a lesbian vampire novella (Carmilla), a video game novelization (The Book of Atrus), or a comic book about depressed and cliquish highschoolers (Skim), but that's exactly what I did.
- There's something immeasurably good about having the right book at the right time. On cross-country flights I had astonishing adventures thanks to Libba Bray and Anne Bronte. During a hard transition, Gilead was there for me and I read it extra slowly because its dwindling page count felt like the deflation of a life jacket. And when worst came to worst, Crenshaw extended a helping paw, and Hold Your Own reminded me to do just that.

Thank you, books.

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