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Best Books of 2015

The best books of 2015 lists are being published in the newspapers these days and I have collected the best of the ‘best lists’. I don’t necessarily agree with all their choices, but there are lots of interesting books here.

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Feeling academic? Here’s a list of reading about reading

A list doesn’t come more high-brow than this. If you’ve ever had the urge to get to the bottom of understanding books this offers an excellent selection of literature for you. No light beach reads here, but enough to keep you going for years and come out a scholar, and probably enjoy reading even more. Go on and tackle the literary heavyweights: Roland Barthes, Lucian Freud, Harold Bloom, James Wood, Michel Foucault etc.

So You Think You’re a Literary Critic? 19 Books for Understanding Literature by Richard Davies

 

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Better World Book – saving the world, one book at a time

We are excited to have discovered this marvellous online site. “You buy. We donate” is their catchphrase. New and old books are available for free delivery around the world and for every book you buy, they donate one onwards (while endearingly thanking you profusely), enabling and enriching libraries in poorer countries. It has become our first port of call for online books. With £14 million raised for libraries and nearly 200 million books recycled, how can you not like it?

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A brave choice! A Brief History of Seven Killings wins the Booker Prize 2015

A few years after being accused of dumbing down in its selection of books, the Booker Prize is back and kicking! Expanding the prize from British and Commonwealth writers to include all fiction written in English and published in the U.K. was a stroke of genius (courtesy of the Folio Prize, I might add), and has made the list that much more adventurous.

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Svetlana Alexievich – Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature

Haven’t heard of her either? At least this year, there might be a reason for it. Unusually, the winner is a writer of mostly non-fiction. Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich has documented the life stories of suffering in the Second World War, during and in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster and the Soviet War in Afghanistan. Her books are based on interviews with thousands of people who have lived through these events as explained by Alexievich herself:

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Reading on the hoof – our favourite audio books

While some may say it’s ‘cheating’ to have a book read to you, others would argue it needn’t be instead of reading words on a page. But whether you choose to re-read these books on paper or are content to ‘only listen’, here are some of our favourite: good books read to us with great talent.

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A Man Booker Prize Longlist with Punch

A good literary prize brings to light books that you’ve not necessarily heard of before. This year’s  Man Booker Prize longlist is an eminent example, pulling together a selection of 13 books from all corners of the world: Jamaica, New Zealand, India, the US, Ireland, Nigeria and the UK.

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Literary event of the decade?

Reviews of the most anticipated book of the decade, Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, the unpublished chronological sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, have been trickling in over the past few days in the lead up to its publication on the 14th July. There seems to be surprises in the book, which was actually written before the 1960s classic, but never published. Apparently, Atticus Finch, the defence lawyer, champion of suppressed blacks and the moral beacon of To Kill a Mockingbird, shows a darker side as a racist!

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Tips for summer reading

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the summer holidays to begin. They’re just around the corner, so perhaps it’s time to start thinking about which books to read?  We have loads of ideas on Bookstoker from light beach reads about Russian oligarchs to non-fiction books about death and poo (!). The blue links are to Bookstoker’s full reviews or snap judgements while the green links are to outside reviews.

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