Top Reads 2015

The Wet Engine, by Brian Doyle
This little book (is it essays? vignettes? prose poetry? typical Brian Doyle) makes my heart soar and break, and more than a little bit. Doyle's son Liam, twin to his other son, born with a three-chambered heart, had open-heart surgeries twice as an infant. At the time of the book, Liam is nine and ten, and Doyle ruminates on hearts and heart patients, and he gets to know Liam's wonderful doctor and his wife, and even the doctor's mother (who was, interestingly, interned in one of the camps for Japanese American citizens in the 1940's), and other heart doctors, too, and he ponders so many, many beautiful and wrenching things. Read this book.

Greenwillow, by B.J. Chute

Strange little book. The language and the setting and the descriptions of various baked goods coming out of Dorrie's oven are lovely, and the characters (almost all of them) are a little bit silly, but not so much you can't take them seriously in important ways, and the calling to wander set upon the eldest men of the Briggs clan is odd, and the contrast between the two priests is telling, and the way it slowly turns into a love story is pleasant, and the final moments in which everything comes clear are exuberantly satisfying. It is, indeed, a fable. Well worth reading to the end, even if you find yourself a little uncertain round about the middle.

Surviving the Island of Grace, by Leslie Leyland Fields

Leslie Leyland Fields lives on a small island in Alaska. She moved out there in the late Seventies when she was first married. This is her story of that time, in which she learned to fish salmon with her new husband and his family, and to live on a tinier island for summers and also for one long winter, population only that family, and also of bits and pieces of her childhood - strange, interesting, poignant. I am not much like the author, and so I admire her strength and resolve. She opens up a world unknown to me and shows its beauties and dangers and unexpected commonalities with mine. Also, she responded to me when I sent her an email saying "thank you" for writing this book, very gracious and kind, and now I know there will be another memoir of her more recent years on the Alaskan island. I can't wait for it. (Sidenote: the recommendation for Surviving came to me by way of the blog of Christie Purifoy, whose book Roots and Sky will be out soon. I can't wait for that one, either.)

The Wingfeather Saga, by Andrew Peterson
And now I know it is possible for books - fiction books! - to expand my joy and willingness in this main job of mine, mothering. To show me how beautiful a thing it is I'm privileged to be doing, nourishing and supporting and helping these two small souls. That this comes by way of middle grades fantasy? Happy surprise. Mothering is really just a side theme in this series. It's mainly about three siblings and their adventures and journeys and discoveries and encounters with dragons and evil enemies from across the sea, and the like. The first two books I could have taken or left, but by the end of the second, and steady on through the third and fourth: beautiful, beautiful, well-crafted, well-thought story. There is so much love in these books. I love them so much.

Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, by Shirley Jackson
Laughing. Hard. Also, sometimes cringing. I loaned one of these books to a friend of mine, and she returned it unable to finish it, because it was so painfully close to her own wild life raising two young children that she couldn't find the humor. Set in the 1950's. Embellished memoir. (Eventually) four young children. A series of old New England houses. Kids running around playing, hither and yon. Cigarette-smoking mom! Many, many tales. In her darker fiction-writing life, Jackson wrote the story "The Lottery," which, in part, inspired The Hunger Games trilogy. These stories are nothing like so dark. They are very well-done. I had no trouble finding the humor.

"If You Want It To Last . . . " by Elizabeth Dark Wiley
If you can, get ahold of Ruminate Magazine's Issue 35, and read it all, of course, but pay special attention to this essay. Bonus: you'll get to read an essay by D.L. Mayfield, too, who thinks and writes about similarly worthwhile things, and who cares about refugees, and so her writings have my heart.

Not-Yets
Poverty Creek Journal, by Thomas Gardner
and
The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon
I have spent the past year reading both of these books, but only slowly, very slowly, because they demand that kind of pace. So I haven't yet finished them. So I'll say more on them later. Oh, I will.

Honorable Mentions
All the Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy Sayers, start to finish
Relegated to HonMen mostly because I read them so long ago, back last spring, that I can hardly remember them, but it was a fun project, and I especially liked The Nine Tailors (for having the best language and being most novel-like) and Murder Must Advertise (partly for being set in an ad agency, and I used to work in one).
The Ashtown Burials and The 100 Cupboards series by A.N. Wilson
Middle grades, fantasy, creepy, strange, sometimes gross, sometimes lovely. Crazy imaginative. Above all, the man knows how to write an ending. Wouldn't recommend for children easily freaked out. Couldn't stop reading, and so basically ignored my own children for the month of August. What does that say about me?