The year started out with a barrage of books for the ToB over at The Morning News, and was full up with sci-fi thanks to the activity of ISBC (the impromptu sci-fi book club), but the primary jist of my reading choices from springtime on was the need to add more diverse voices into my library.

This seems to be a popular trend this year, as I noticed most bookish blogs that I read (Bookriot, the Millions, etc) began to include more of these voices as well, as did the prize committees and end of year lists.  A good thing all around and germane to my interests.

It was a good year gauging by the number of 5 star (goodreads metric) books, with only a few duds and abandonments, though perhaps a bit light on NF (only 5 total).  31 books is a touch above average, but only 11,500 pages, which is a bit low for recent years. Looking back, it seems just a combination of older, short sci-fi, and  short novels combined with only one giant NF tome.

I hereby resolve to read a bit more non-fiction in 2016, but that’s another topic for another day.  Let’s talk about the books I loved in 2015, and perhaps make some headway on my new, and hopefully useful, rating system.

It would be hard to place any book above TWBS this year for me, as it satisfied so many of my criteria for a good read.  Beatty is hilarious, poetic and a darn good storyteller, a guy I plan to read a bunch more of this year. Neither this post nor my goodreads review dwell too much on the plot itself, because it’s just a book to read and enjoy. So lets score it and see where it falls in my new system.

Quality of writing: (4)…

Ms. Cegeny ignored Aaron’s pederastic pronouncements, called two more names,and continued her lecture on the importance of living in a colorblind society. “Does anyone have an example of colorblind processes in American society?” Ed Wismer raised his hand and said, “Justice.” “Good. Anything else?”

biting.

Enjoyment of reading: (4) …

It’s just not that often that I laugh out loud at a book, and I found this book to be hilarious throughout, easy to read and left me wanting more, so (5) for emotional impact.

4×4 +5 = (21)

It would be easy for me to say that The Sympathizer was another great book from among those I read from diverse voices, but that would not be doing justice to this fantastic book.  Nguyen is an intellectual, and even though this book reads as a thriller at times, it is equal parts social commentary, historical fiction and political philosophy.  For the first two-thirds of the book it is a caustic look at the immigrant/refugee experience in the US.  The land of the free and the great american dream are totally real, just not attainable if you’re not a white american, and the irony of any American looking at the Viet Nam war for a validation of what we might have been fighting for, should try to see it through the eyes of a South Vietnamese brought here after the fall of Saigon. But as harsh as that reality is, it ultimately pales in comparison to the experience of those ‘re-educated’ under the Viet Cong regime, as the final act of the Sympathizer displays.

Q: (4)

E: (3)

I: 3

(15)

Next in Part II: Sci Fi highlights