2016 Great Reading Challenge

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New Year, New Reading Challenge! Sign up for the Great Reading Challenge at Carnegie-Stout Public Library: https://www.dubuque.lib.ia.us/394/Great-Reading-Challenge

Can you read 24 books in 2016? Share your progress with the #24reads2016 hashtag!

One of the Best Books I Read in 2015: The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball

Kristin Kimball and her now-husband Mark are the founders of Essex Farm in upstate New York. The CSA (community-supported agriculture) shares they sell to their members provide a diet for an entire year - meats, eggs, vegetables, grains, syrup and beans. They raise all of this on their 500 acres of land. The Dirty Life is the story of how Kristin and Mark met, fell in love, and made this incredible farm come into being with very little funding, even less experience, and enough enthusiasm and dedication to make up for it.

Kimball's narration of the first years of the farm and her relationship with Mark is mesmerizing. Within months, she goes from living in the East Village, to a home without electricity or toilets, to leading a team of draft horses, and everything in between. Her style is witty and descriptive, and I often had trouble putting the book down. I was captured on the first page by a mouthwatering depiction of a home-grown, home-cooked meal. There is plenty of adventure and suspense as well: although Kimball states from the beginning that she is now married to Mark, reading about the many months that planning their wedding took the back burner to farm chores was nerve-wracking. I understood how they became so distracted, though, with farm life. Kimball and her fiance barely had time to sleep between caring for the animals, staying ahead of the weather, and acquiring complicated equipment to manage their land.

Every chapter offers a new anecdote: juicy gossip among small-town neighbors, a frigid day at an Amish auction, visits from skeptical mainstream friends, and various misadventures with animals, including Kimball being charged by a bull, are just a few of my favorites. Within pages, Kimball swings from heartwarming to hilarious to heartbreaking and back again, luring you to read on and continue the cycle. Whether you're a foodie, a farmer, a vegetarian city-dweller (as Kimball was before she met Mark), or just someone who finds yourself captivated by a sunset or a birdsong, Kimball's story will keep you cozy and entertained on a long, cold winter evening.

~Rachel, Circulation

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

One of the Best Books I Read in 2015: You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day

Celebrity memoirs are a sort of guilty pleasure for me, but unlike the creepy paparazzi pictures of a celebrity's beach vacation, a memoir allows the author a choice in what details to share about their life and mind. Which is why I especially love to listen to a memoir when the author narrates the audiobook herself. My favorite of 2015 was You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day.

When it comes to specifics, Felicia Day and I don't have much of anything in common. I'm not a violin prodigy. I wasn't homeschooled. I'm not a fan of math. And I'm definitely not a famous television actress. But I do have my own experiences as a quirky, awkward, perfectionist misfit, which made her story very easy to relate to. Her writing was both entertaining and inspirational, and her narration added to the book's overall warmth.

If you only listen to one celebrity memoir by a comedic actress this year, I highly recommend Felicia Day's. But if you're like me and one isn't enough, I can also recommend:

• Yes, Please by Amy Poehler
• Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation by Aisha Tyler

 ~Sarah, Adult Services