{"id":2958,"date":"2016-01-16T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T12:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/?p=2958"},"modified":"2016-01-16T02:24:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T02:24:18","slug":"10-favorite-books-from-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2016\/01\/16\/10-favorite-books-from-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Favorite Books from 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">2015 was a good year. Here are my favorite books from 2015 (books that I read in 2015, not necessarily books that were published in 2015).<\/span><\/p>\n<ol class=\"ol1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>2666<\/em>, Roberto Bola\u00f1o<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">After working my way through the shorter works of the Bola\u00f1o oeuvre last year, I took on this behemoth (at approximately 900 pages, I don\u2019t think \u201cbehemoth\u201d is too much of an exaggeration) at the beginning of the year and loved it so much that I read it again.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><em><span class=\"s1\">The Virgin Suicides<\/span><\/em><span class=\"s1\">, Jeffrey Eugenides<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">Not the easiest thing to read about, virgin suicides, but Eugenides writes with such effortlessness that you can\u2019t help but become engrossed. Stylistically, the novel recalls William Faulkner\u2019s &#8220;A Rose for Emily.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0<span class=\"s1\"><em>Cosmos<\/em>, Witold Gombrowicz<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">In\u00a0this philosophical novel, two men find a hanged sparrow in a forest and descend into madness (or else they achieve a profound understanding of existence). Of course, it\u2019s about so much more, and features one of the most mocking final lines I\u2019ve read. Plus, it\u2019s short, which makes it easy to read again.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0<span class=\"s1\"><em>Blindness<\/em>, Jos\u00e9 Saramago<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">In this novel, an \u201cepidemic of \u2018white blindness\u2019\u201d descends on a city. Early victims of the blindness are confined to a deserted asylum. And then things get worse. <em>Blindness<\/em> is a depiction of human depravity too graphic for eyes, which is fitting.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"s1\"><em>The Painted Bird<\/em>, Jerzy Kosinski<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">Speaking of graphic depictions of human depravity, <em>The Painted Bird<\/em> is an unapologetic record of the horrors visited on a vagabond boy during the Holocaust. The veracity of the account is contested, but it\u2019s nevertheless a shocking, beautifully written work. It\u2019s like watching your first rated R movie. Read with caution.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0<span class=\"s1\"><em>A Farewell to Arms<\/em>, Ernest Hemingway<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">The first time I read <em>A Farewell to Arms<\/em> I hated it. When I read it for the second time this year, for a seminar on Hemingway, I loved it. I think that this fact attests to the skill of my professor. More than anything, I appreciated the quality of Hemingway\u2019s prose more the second time around than I did the first. Boasting a well-plotted story and Hemingway\u2019s penchant for scene, <em>A Farewell to Arms<\/em> takes on the quality of dreams and is as light.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"s1\"><em>A Guide to Being Born<\/em>, Ramona Ausubel<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">Actually a collection of short stories, <em>A Guide to Being Born<\/em> is unlike anything I\u2019ve read. My favorite story, \u201cPoppyseed,\u201d is as touching as it is unhinging. (You can read it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2013\/05\/11\/fiction_poppyseed_by_ramona_ausubel\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0<span class=\"s1\"><em>Snow<\/em>, Orhan Pamuk<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">This novel was recommended to me by a professor of mine. The novel wrestles with the relationship between secularism and faith, and tries to deduce the place of God in the postmodern state. Excellently paced and complex with engaging characters.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"s1\"><em>A Little Life<\/em>, Hanya Yanagihara<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">This book should come with trigger warnings. Nevertheless, it\u2019s been the most fulfilling reading experience I\u2019ve had this year. This novel gutted me; it\u2019s graphic, overwhelming, and subversive. And, inexplicably,\u00a0it\u2019s tender. Everything in this novel is irrational, yet potent. My favorite description of the book comes from the jacket: \u201cAn epic about love and friendship in the twenty first century that goes into some of the darkest places fiction has ever traveled <i>and yet somehow improbably breaks through into the light<\/i>\u201d (italics mine). \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"s1\"><em>Bluets<\/em>, Maggie Nelson<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"s1\">Only a poet could write so compellingly about her love for the color blue.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2015 was a good year. Here are my favorite books from 2015 (books that I read in 2015, not necessarily books that were published in 2015). 2666, Roberto Bola\u00f1o After working my way through the shorter works of the Bola\u00f1o &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2016\/01\/16\/10-favorite-books-from-2015\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[539,118,117],"class_list":["post-2958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-10-favorite-books-from-2015","tag-chun","tag-cody"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2959,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions\/2959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}