2015 Favorite Books

Posted on Posted in 2015 Favorites, Books 8 Comments

Collected New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2015

(Some comments ours, some not…Happy Reading!)

  • Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages. Tom Holt
  • Meet Me Halfway: Milwaukee Stories. Jennifer Morales
  • The Name of the Wind. Patrick Rothfuss
  • The Hounds of the Morrigan. Pat O’Shea
  • Putting Out of Your Mind. Bob Rotella
  • The Whites. Harry Brandt
  • Brushback. Sara Paretsky
  • The Invention of Wings. Sue Monk Kidd
  • Body of Truth. Harriet Brown
  • The Troubles Trilogy. Ian McKinty
  • Just Mercy. Bryan Stevenson
  • Smila’s Sense of Snow. Peter Hoeg
  • The Road to Dallas (best book ever about first Kennedy assasination)
  • Black Against Empire (on the Black Panthers)
  • Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror. Phyllis Bennis
  • The Half that Has Not Yet Been Told (on slavery)
  • Desert Queen (about Gertrude Brooks and the founding of Iraq)
  • Biographies of Margaret Sanger. Ida Tarbell (note: I could not find a book by this name by this author)
  • An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Series. Chanda Hahn
  • Teach Us to Sit Still. Tim Parks
  • Burning Beethoven: The Eradication of German Culture in the US During WW I
  • The Children. David Halberstam
  • The Invisible Bridge. Julie Orringer
  • Corelli’s Mandolin. Louis de Bernieres
  • 20 Chickens for a Saddle. Robin Scott
  • Accidental Saints. Nadia Bolz Webber
  • Massacre at Memphis: The Race Riot that Shook the Nation One Year After the Civil War. Stephen Ash
  • All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

8 Comments on “2015 Favorite Books”

  1. Sorry Pat & I missed the annual fete. My favorite books: Empire of Destiny by Greg Grandin; Gerald Horne’s Counter-Revolution of 1776.

  2. It’s possible that the listing for Margaret Sanger/Ida Tarbell is referring to two different books. Both Tarbell and Sanger wrote autobiographies and biographies of both were written by others.

  3. Granin’s book is actually tilted “Empire of Necessity”. An marvelous history/illumination on what the slave trade was in the early 19th century.

  4. ——————-
    A couple of books about race in America

    Title: Ordinary injustice
    Author: Bach, Amy,
    Examples of both over-incarceration and under-incarceration

    Title: Between the world and me.
    Author: Coates, Ta-Nehisi
    The book we read for weekly gathering – gets to the feeling of over policing
    good to read in collaboration with The New Jim Crow

    Title: The Selma of the North
    Author: Jones, Patrick D.
    Not the best writing, but notably is mostly a history of Father Gropi working on fair housing in Milwaukee
    Interesting in part by location and in part because of the Not-Violence philosophy
    which is different from Non-violence

    ——————-

    The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Paperback
    by Jonathan Haidt

    ——————-
    A couple of science fiction.

    Title: Seveneves
    Author: Stephenson, Neal
    Starts with the moon breaking up, the earth becomes unihabitable, for a few thousand years.

    A couple of sci-fi novels exploring what it means to have a body.
    Title: Old man’s war
    Author: Scalzi, John,

    Title: Lock in
    Author: Scalzi, John,

    ——————-
    Young adult novel

    Title: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
    Author: John Green & David Levithan

  5. I have to add some poetry: Application for Release from the Dream by Tony Hoagland. Very accessible, sometimes beautiful, funny, sad.

  7. The Lotus and the Storm, by Lan Cao tells the story of the American withdrawal from Vietnam, as seen by a Vietnamese family who is resettled here. Phenomenal read.

  8. the two books i would have put on the list had i been there are: stan cox, losing our cool (about our addiction to air conditioning), and an older book, chris hedges, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

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