Favorite Books of 2015

Right now the suitcases are out, and piles of this-and-that cover the floor. Early tomorrow morning we board the plane for our flight to Bolivia and two months of field work on the history project. An important part of our preparation is making sure our Kindle is loaded up with enough good books to sustain us while we’re away.

Which reminds me, of course, of some of the great books I’ve read this year. I’ve had to pick and choose for this list. Again, it’s not a list of good books published in 2015, but a list of what I especially appreciated of the books I read during the year, whenever they were published.

Fiction:

--Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings (2014): Based on the history of the Grimké sisters, abolitionists and fighters for women’s rights in the early 1800s. Also part of Quaker history. The heart of the story is the relationship between Sarah Grimké, a slave-owner’s daughter, and Handful, her personal slave.

--Marilynn Robinson, Home (2013) and Lila (2014): These follow Gilead and each focuses on one of the characters who live in the small town of Gilead. Beautifully written. Themes are home and family, grace, sin, repentance, forgiveness, and the possibility of transformation.

--Jenna Blume, Those Who Save Us (2004): A holocaust novel about baring the burden of a hidden story and how the revelation brings forgiveness and grace between generations.

--Dorothy Sayers, Clouds of Witnesses and Whose Body?: I love Lord Peter Wimsey! Once again intelligence and intuition combine to solve the crime. A favorite quote from Clouds has Lord Peter reflecting on his mother: “Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.”

--William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace (2014): From the point of view of a 13 year-old boy reflecting on the tragedies in his family. Themes include war and violence, marginalization, and friendship, but once again grace and forgiveness have the final word.

--Ruchama King Feuerman, In the Countyard of the Kabbalist (2013): Fascinating story of the unlikely friendships between an intellectual New Yok Jew, a firey Jewish woman in Jerusalem, a Kabbalist, and a poor Muslim worker, all involved in the discovery of an ancient relics site near the Dome of the Rock and the question of who owns it. “If I tell you my story, you will listen for awhile and then you will fall asleep. But if, as I tell you my story, you begin to hear your story, you will wake up.”  “Nobody knows who he is until he tells his story to God….”

--Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (2011): Good romance about two older people who refuse to be limited by other peoples’ (including their own children) concepts about what’s good and proper at their age.

--Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick RestaurantI (1996), Back When We Were Grown-ups (2001), and Digging to America (2007): I keep coming back to Anne Tyler’s novels.

--Darragh McKeon, All that Is Solid Melts into Air (2014): Fascinating story about different people affected by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Brings in the tragic and heart-breaking human factor.

--Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs (2003), Birds of a Feather (2004), and Pardonable Lies (2005): Another woman detective with wit and humor, a British version of Botswana’s Mma Ramotswe (who is actually herself a British version of an African detective). This has been the year of British detective novels!

Non-Fiction:

--Lamin Sanneh, Called from the Margin: Homecoming of an African (2012): More of an accounting of the development of his thought than of his life experiences. I loved the section on his Muslim childhood and conversion to Christianity without being “evangelized,” his rejection by Christians, his encounters with the West and his eventual conversion to Catholicism. He brings together the pieces of his life, staying African, yet finding his true home in Christianity.

--Dominika Drey, The Twelve Little Cakes (2006): Memoir of growing up in communist Prague, the child of dissidents. Chronicles the joys of childhood in spite of the oppressions surrounding the family. “The system was unfair but the human spirit triumphed on a daily basis….”

--Joahua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (2005): Excellent and well documented study of Lincoln’s depressions, set in the context of contemporary perceptions of mental health and its treatment. I was interested that two ways Lincoln coped with his predisposition to depression were humor and poetry.

--Leanne Payne, Heaven’s Calling: A Memoir of One Soul’s Steep Ascent (2008): Her awakening to a healing ministry, through experiences, relationships, experimentation.

--Katherine Patterson, Stories of My Life (2014): I love reading the memoirs of writers I love, and Patterson’s book did not disappoint. Her early experiences in China and Japan, daughter and then wife of missionaries, and the struggles with adaption to life in the West certainly enriched her spirit and, consequently, her writing.

--Phillip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (2006): This was a re-read of a book I need to re-read every year. Very insightful and motivating and I try to learn to pray in ways that might make a difference.

--Joy of Zentangle: Drawing Your Way to Increased Creativity, Focus, and Well-Being: Putting aside the hype of the title, zentangle is so much fun! The “Joy” part of the title is correct.

Poetry:

--William Jolliff, Twisted Shapes of Light (2015): Possibly my favorite book of the year, a collection written by a friend and Friend, bringing together memories of life on a farm, family, and growing up in a fundamentalist church. Bill should be more famous than he is.

--Billy Collins, Aimless Love—New and Selected Poems (2013): I love how Collins uses humor to do social criticism and explore reality and relationships.

--T.S. Elliot, Four Quartets (1943): I love this book, even though I can’t say I totally understand it. I love the language, and how Elliot plays with time and eternity. I’ve been reading it over and over, sort of rolling around in the words.

I would love to hear about the books that touched or challenged you in 2015.