What I read in 2015:

So 2015’s already come and gone and I… only read… a miniscule amount of… 26 books. Hahahaah… and to think that I had already dropped my reading goal to what I thought was a more realistic number of 40 books. OTL

As usual, my favourite and stand-out books for the year are in bold. …and I just realized that I didn’t read any Australian authors at all this year!!! I’m actually horrified at myself.

1: It's Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini 

2: South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami

3: A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki

4: Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates

5: Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson

6: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie

7: Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

8: Flipped – Wendelin Van Draanen

9: The Seventh Day – Yu Hua

10: How to Be an American Housewife – Margaret Dilloway

11: Hotel Iris – Yoko Ogawa

12: Us – David Nicholls

13: 84, Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff

14: Good Wives – Louisa May Alcott

15: The Waiting Years – Fumiko Enchi

16: The Rest of Us Just Live Here – Patrick Ness

17: Go Ask Alice – Anonymous (Beatrice Sparks)

18: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman – Haruki Murakami

19: Paper Towns – John Green

20: The Boy in the Black Suit – Jason Reynolds

21: Everything, Everything – Nicola Yoon

22: Please Look After Mom – Kyung-Sook Shin

23: Falling into Place – Amy Zhang

24: The Library of Unrequited Love – Sophie Divry

25: The Housekeeper and the Professor – Yoko Ogawa

26: Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell 

This year’s reading was well… interesting? I read more adult contemporary and middle-grade fiction, as well as the usual helping of young adult and translated works. In terms of middle-grade fiction, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was really impressive. I really love it when children’s fiction can carry a deeper, mature element while remaining outwardly child-friendly and appealing. Alexie managed to have a humourous voice and tell a seemingly funny story, while also being straightforward with the more brutal and sobering events.

If I had to pick the most unenjoyable book of the year, it would probably be Van Draanen’s Flipped followed by Green’s Paper Towns. Flipped was just so obnoxiously juvenile while Paper Towns was irrelevant and pointless.

There were many books I read this year that were almost solid and had potential. The Rest of Us Just Live Here was fascinating in its concept and the characterization of the protagonist’s insecure personality and OCD, but failed to deliver in other areas. I really enjoyed The Boy in the Black Suit, the story and the characters, but ultimately felt like it was lacking something.

I tried reading the celebrated Yoko Ogawa this year, but I really haven’t found her work that enjoyable. While I appreciate the sentiment behind The Housekeeper and the Professor, it was painfully boring to suffer through. Hotel Iris was quite readable and intriguingly sinister though.

The Waiting Years was probably the most impressive book of the year. I can’t say it was ‘enjoyable’ because the story itself was so twisted and dark. But it was definitely a tour de force; it was so disturbing and effective that I had to read it through in one sitting. It was actually suffocating to get through, the writing really conveyed this very tight and restrictive feeling, this foreboding sense that something was going to go wrong at any time and that there’d be no happy ending. It was really an incredible read.

I also really loved Please Look After Mom. The use of the second-person narration was really different and confronting, and the changing of perspectives in each chapter was interesting. It was tragic and touching but also a little bit harsh at the same time, and I really liked it. What is most fascinating I think, is how the character of ‘Mom’ is portrayed, there was just something so poignant and real about the characteristics Shin gave her.

I feel like my biggest achievement of the year was making it through Gone with the Wind, which is a whopping 1448 pages to add to my otherwise disappointing page count. It took me about 6-7 months on and off and in that time I must’ve read like 15 other books. It was well worth it in the end and I really did enjoy it. There were some things that disappointed me though, such as how it was all forced into the mould of a romance novel in the end, when to me it was clearly the story of Scarlett O’Hara, who was such a fascinating and well-crafted character.

Anyway, maybe this year I’ll finally reach my reading goal! Hahaha… OTL

Let’s all try to read more this year! And I’ll try to blog more. But not really. 

Hope 2016 will be a good year for everyone! :)