One of the Best Books I Read in 2015: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm just now concluding my third -- yes, third -- consecutive listen to the audiobook Between the World and Me, written and read by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The book has been receiving a lot of sometimes-controversial buzz and some big awards ever since its publication in July of this year, and it is now popping up on all sorts of year-end "Best of" lists. I decided I better check it out, but I was wholly unprepared for its enormous impact on me.

The book is written in the form of a letter from the author to his 15-year-old son Samori, and its subject is living in a black body in a country built on slave labor and too often disposed toward the destruction of those bodies. Coates grew up in a gritty neighborhood of Baltimore, where the streets, his family, the police, and even the schools inculcated in him a pervasive sense of fear. A curious young man, he set out to "interrogate" his situation, turning to books, professors, poetry, and his own journalistic writing to make sense of the world. And what a stunning job he does of the making-sense.

Learning to write is learning to think, Coates contends, and his mastery of both is evident on every page. This book is so very intelligent -- and honest, sad, perceptive, poetic, profound, and radical. Its 176 pages are suffused with one thoughtful 40-year-old man's meticulously-examined life and hard-won wisdom. It is not a hopeful book, but it is not despairing either. What it is is truly counter-cultural and these days that's so rare.

~Ann, Adult Services 

One of the Best Books I Read in 2015: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr both is and isn’t about World War II.  It is set in the years leading up to and during the war, but it’s as much about each character’s intense longing for the people and things they are most passionate about.  There are two main characters, a German boy and a blind French girl.  Marie-Laure is blind since early childhood, and her father loves her so much he builds her an intricate scale model of their Paris neighborhood to help her learn it.  She perceives the world in vivid detail, “seeing” colors everywhere.  With the Germans on their way to Paris, her father tries to take her away to safety.

Werner is an orphan in a German mining town with nothing to hope for but a life in the mines.  He is exceptionally gifted with technology and builds a radio out of scraps.  He wants more than anything to learn science, and the Nazi regime offers him this opportunity.  Will his love for his sister be enough to keep him grounded as he becomes a German soldier?  How will these two stories become connected?

As soon as you open this book, you’ll feel the danger, and the love, in these people’s lives.  There are hints of the more horrifying aspects of Nazi Germany, as well as caring and tenderness from the most unexpected people.

~Laura, Circulation

One of the Best Books I Read in 2015: Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Uprooted starts with a fairly predictable fantasy novel set up: the unremarkable main character, Agnieszka, has lived an unremarkable life, in an unremarkable small village, and has every reason to believe that her talented and beautiful best friend is the one destined for greatness. Of course it's Agnieszka who is tapped by fate for something more, assuming she can learn to trust in her own abilities.

Uprooted is Naomi Novik's first stand-alone fantasy novel (she's well know for her Temeraire series), and it is a delightful story with tons of appeal. I was impressed by the way she captured the feel of a familiar fairy tale while still telling an inventive and original story. I especially enjoyed the way that Novik handled the romantic subplot (warning: things do get rather steamy).

And because I can't limit myself to just one fantasy recommendation, here are two of my other favorites from 2015:

• The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

~Sarah, Adult Services