We’re moving our weekly wrap-up of our favorite reads of 2015 up a few days, since the holidays are looming large at the end of the week.  This week’s selection comes to you from the Main Library’s Circulation Desk…or, as I like to think of it, the All You Can Read Buffet.  We hope you find some new books on here to start your new year off in literary style!

Half of a Yellow Sun: The winner of this year’s Baileys “Best of the Best” award (handed out to one of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction is also one of our staff’s favorite reads of the yet.  Set during the Biafran War, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel weaves an intricate tale of handful of lives that are shaped forever by their own decisions, and by the world events that bring them all together.  The Observer called this work “An immense achievement, Half of a Yellow Sun has a ramshackle freedom and exuberant ambition.”  Though at times tragic and difficult to read, this is a book that continues that is, at its heart, inspiring and impossible to forget.

The Bellweather Rhapsody: We’ve mentioned this book before, but it is just too unique, too quirky, and too delightful a book not to mention again.  Kate Racculia, herself a child musician, has composed a brilliantly original and enthusiastic tale about a group of young musicians trapped in the decaying grandeur of a luxury hotel during a massive blizzard…at the same time, a possible murder mystery that has overtones of a crime committed over a decade earlier adds an energy and urgency to an already chaotic scene.  I missed a bus stop because of this book–and ended up being grateful, as the return trip gave me time to finish it, and revel in the pitch-perfect, twisted ending!

Suckerpunch: *Guilty pleasure alert*…I love noir novels.  I am consistently blown away with the way that noir writers can capture a huge range of emotion in the shortest of sentences, and convey a world of meaning in a brief snippet of dialogue.  And Jeremy Brown is one talented writer.  This book, which is the opening of a trilogy, introduces Aaron “Woodshed” Wallace, a talented fighter and surprisingly good guy, who can’t seem to get out of his own way, and is still fighting in small-time bouts.  So when he’s offered the chance to fight a rising MMA superstar, he jumps at it.  But the night before the fight, he runs into an old acquaintance who gets him involved in an underground betting ring that might not just lose Wallace his fight, but the few people about whom he actually cares.  I enjoyed every moment of this outlandish, surprisingly funny, gritty, and superlatively well-written story, and was really thrilled to see Brown buck the noir convention and give us a hero who isn’t a misogynist, and a heroine who is admirably capable of taking care of herself.

14-18, Understanding the Great War: Many of you wonderful people know that your blog-writer-in-chief is in grad school, and studying the First World War, so it’s only natural that some of my school stuff appears on this list.  This book is one of the most accessible, sympathetic, and insightful book on the First World War that I’ve read in a while.  Though it mostly deals with the French history of the war, authors Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker refuse to compare the First World War to the Second, or to any other historic event.  Their emphasis is on how truly significant this war was for those who lived through it, how alien a world it was for those who had to live through it, and how the legacy of the war changed the course of world history.  It’s a beautifully written and incredibly informative book that scholars and armchair historians alike can appreciate.

The Burning of Bridget Cleary: One more non-fiction book for your delectation.  Linguistic historian Angela Bourke does a beautiful job bringing to life the story of Bridget Cleary, a fiery, defiant, and fascinating Irishwoman who was murdered by her husband in 1895.  What makes this story unique, however, was the fact that her husband, Michael, claimed that Bridget had been kidnapped by fairies, and he had actually killed the proxy that the fairies had left behind.  This case gives her the opportunity to explore the role of folklore, particularly in Irish culture, the history of the period, including British imperialism, the role of women, and the importance of historic archives.  And she does it all in an accessible, thoroughly engaging way.  I teach this book in my class, and it’s one of the few books my students actually enjoy reading, so I hope you do, too!

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell:  Arabella and Lady Pole both claim this book as their favorite read of 2015…which you may have been able to tell by our weekly proselytizing.  Set during the Napoleonic Wars, this book focuses on the two magicians who join forces to save England–but it is so much more.  It is a story about the things we do for those people, and those things, that we love, a tale about growing up, a sweet love story, and a brilliant epic full of magical action and intrigue.  It is entirely possible that this magical, imaginative, wholly delightful novel will also be among our favorite reads of 2016, because we can’t resist the need to read it again very soon.  Also, you should see the BBC adaptation, which is glorious.

It’s time again, Beloved Patrons, for another round of staff favorites for this year!  This week’s selection comes from The Man Upstairs Who Pays the Bills, who you can thank for keeping the lovely heat/air-conditioning running (and…you know…the lights, too):

One of his favorite authors is Don Brown, whose Navy Justice series, featuring Navy JAG lawyers, are quite the page turners.  You can also check out his Navy JAG series:

Detained: After a father and son, both Lebanese nationals, are imprisoned for terrorism on purely false charges,  JAG Officer Matt Davis is left to defend them against powerful federal prosecutors, one of whom is his love, Emily Gardner.  This high-stakes adventure takes Davis from the shores of the US to Lebanon and to Cuba is a race against time to save two people caught up in an international conspiracy.

The Runaway Jury: John Grisham’s thriller is a classic that still has the power to grab your attention…At the center of a multimillion-dollar legal hurricane are twelve men and women who have been investigated, watched, manipulated, and harassed by high-priced lawyers and consultants who will stop at nothing to secure a verdict.  But only a handful of people know the truth: that this jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him.  He is known only as Juror #2. But he has a name, a past, and he has planned his every move with the help of a beautiful woman on the outside.

The Firm: And fans of Grisham shouldn’t miss this other classic legal thriller: When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought that he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage, and hired the McDeeres a decorator. Mitch should have remembered what his brother Ray–doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail–already knew: You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch’s firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice–if he wants to live.

The Hunt for Red October: And you can’t miss Tom Clancy’s smash-hit Cold War thriller, and the book that introduced his beloved Jack Ryan….Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision: the Red October is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. And the most incredible chase in history is on….Word on the street is that Clancy’s novel is so accurate that he was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House….

Enjoy, Beloved Patrons, and keep your eyes out for our next round of our favorite reads of 2015!

It’s time again, Beloved Patrons, for another round of staff favorites for this year!  This week’s selection comes from one of our children’s room staff, and my favorite Saturday afternoon circulation desk friend:

Snow in August: Pete Hamill’s tale is a moving story of friendship, crossing cultures, and loving baseball, between  a Jewish rabbi and a Catholic altar boy in 1940s Brooklyn. The rabbi, a Czech who fled the Nazis on the eve of World War II, teaches the boy Judaism while the boy, who is Irish, teaches the rabbi English and baseball. When anti-Semitic hoods attack the rabbi, the boy goes to his defense.  The New York Times Book Review called this one “Magic….This page-turner of a fable has universal appeal.”

The Kite Runner: Khaled Hosseini’s modern-day masterpiece is an epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present. The story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, it is set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and it is also about the power of fathers over sons-their love, their sacrifices, their lies

A Thousand Splendid Suns: Another winner from the great Khaled Hosseini, this one about two women, Mariam and Laila, who are born a generation apart but are brought together by war and fate. They witness the destruction of their home and family in war-torn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage. Together they endure the dangers surrounding them and discover the power of both love and sacrifice, as they become allies in their marriage to the violently mysogynistic Rasheed.

The Glass Castle: Jeannette Walls book has been featured here before–and with good reason.  Her writing is wonderfully powerful, and this memoir, though heartbreaking, also the life-affirming about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric and severely misguided family. The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother, Walls described her family’s nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors and the authorities in a story that is hard to forget.

Heaven is for Real: When four year old Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren’t expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the following months, a story as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy’s trip to heaven and back. This true story, retold by his father but using Colton’s uniquely simple words, in a tale that was also made into a feature film.

We’ve had some chats here about various “Best Book” Awards for 2015, from the Baileys Prize to the Man Booker Prize to National Book Award.  And since we decided that other people’s favorite books of 2015 are so much fun, that our own list of favorite reads from 2015 would be a blast.  This series was kicked-off by our super-terrific Archivist yesterday, and now we’re off and rolling….

So, for the next few weeks, we’ll be bring you our staff’s favorite reads from this year, in the hopes that you can discover a new book to treasure…Because asking a library employee to name just one favorite book is like asking them to pick the loveliest star in the sky, or a perfect grain of sand… Some of these books have been mentioned here before.  Some books were published a while back; some are brand, spanking new.  All of them come with a gilt-edged guarantee from your favorite library staff (wink, wink) that these are some ideal books to carry with you into the New Year.

This week’s selections come from none other than Lady Pole herself, who has made our Saturdays on the blog such a joy:

The Supernatural Enhancements: This was one of the first books I read this year and still is pretty strong in my mind. The disjointed, sort-of-epistolary style, the edge-of-your seat suspense and the overall story itself easily made this one of the best books I read this year.

Bartleby the Scrivener – This is a supreme example of passive-aggression put into words and how utterly destructive and useless that tactic can be. No matter how many times I keep reminding myself how funny Melville is, he keeps surprising me in the best of ways.

Don’t Pigeonhole Me – This is an amazing example of how versatile Mo Willem’s talent truly is. The art and content is msot definitely for adults, but still has the sense of whimsy and on-point humor that makes pretty much everything he does entertaining.

Trigger Warning – I always wish I was more into short-stories than I am, but I had no trouble devouring this book. If anything the brief stories in so many different styles and formats made this book even more of a delight. Neil Gaiman is easily one of my favorite authors and this book not only shows that he is as much a master of short-form fiction as he is long-form, but it also demonstrates his masterful ability to frame a collection and discuss his thoughts on fiction in an introduction that I wanted to print out and hang up on my wall.

Furiously Happy – I really can’t say enough about Jenny Lawson’s courage, eloquence and completely side-splitting humor. She takes some truly horrible situations and retrospectively finds the fun and joy in them, allowing her to appreciate her good days more fully, know that she will come out of the other side of the bad days and, I sincerely hope, help people who are in similar situations.