2015 has been a big year for Littsburgh — we didn’t exist 6 months ago! — and a big year for books in general. Looking back on our “year in reading,” we wanted to highlight the titles that were most memorable for us as readers — the books that got us talking, the books that we loved… and we asked Pittsburgh’s indie booksellers for their picks as well!
Read Part Two: Booksellers! If you’re shopping for a book lover, we’ve been posting chapters from the books of local and touring authors over the past few months, so please check those out for some more ideas. (And if you’re really stuck, you can’t go wrong with a copy of this, by Pittsburgh’s Matthew Buchholz.)
Please join us in supporting our local booksellers this holiday season, and let us know your favorites of 2015 on Facebook and Twitter!
Rachel Ekstrom Courage, Founder
I started to feel a little dizzy about halfway through my year-in-reading calculations… that song from Rent came to mind: How do you measure a year? In manuscripts, in pre-publication galleys, in books from the library? In purchases, in downloads, in towering nightstand TBR (to-be-read) piles?
This year I was lucky to read so many exciting projects from the writers I represent as a literary agent, as well as lots of Pittsburgh-born works… many of which I learned about in some way through Littsburgh. My number one favorite book of 2015 is The Loudness by Nick Courage, where superheroes emerge from the unlikeliest people. (Sure, I’m probably a little biased.) I also read a lot of poetry this year, which is a change for me… a fave is Kristofer Collins’ “Identifying Trees” from his collection Local Conditions.
Usually I evangelize about books I love with an enthusiasm rivaling Cheri O’Teri in those old cheerleading skits on SNL. I’ll insist that my family, friends, and random people on the street read them. I’ll obsessively check an author’s website to see when their next book is coming out. (I’m desperately in need of the third book in both Sara Gran and Ronlyn Domingue’s recent series).
This year, the books that stand out for me are novels that I couldn’t put down, that I read in one or two sittings… but that I didn’t necessarily love in that unequivocal, uncomplicated way. These were books that I wanted to talk about, books that kept me awake at night, books that I argued about with friends and colleagues. Here a few of the most compelling books I read in 2015, the conversation starters:
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison. A beautifully-written exploration of some very painful subjects. I was immersed in the story, but when I finished it, I was still waiting for another shoe to drop — perhaps I just wanted another hundred pages of Morrison’s gorgeous writing.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll are two twisty psychological thrillers starring messed-up women that I found fascinating and disturbing. (I actually read The Girl on the Train on the Amtrak from New York to Pittsburgh… sadly, I did not indulge in the main character’s beverage of choice: a gin & tonic in a can).
I’m sometimes wary of very “buzzy” books — it can feel impossible for them live up to the hype. Fates and Furies was certainly a buzzed-about book… and I loved its language, which was baroque, but in a fun way, a way that made me want to read certain lines out loud to anyone within earshot. It’s definitely a big, ambitious novel, but the more I think about it, the more complicated my response. It’s the kind of book I’m dying to discuss over beers at the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern.
[bctt tweet=”Check out @Littsburgh’s Year in Reading!”]
Nick Courage, Co-founder & Developer
I started out strong in 2015 with one of my favorite novelists, Michel Faber. Actually, one of my favorite short story writers — I hadn’t read his other full-length novels… but I was excited to read The Book of Strange New Things. I really enjoyed it — it was just strange enough for me — but if you haven’t read Michel Faber, I recommend starting with The Courage Consort (no relation). I followed that up with The Whites, by Richard Price (another favorite) — then couldn’t not read Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, President Obama’s favorite book of the year! That was one of the more mercurial reading experiences I’ve had — possibly it was the Greek chorus; definitely it was the last third of the novel — and I’m still not sure where I stand, but I include it here because it was all I talked about for two weeks.
My absolute favorite book of the year, if I had to choose one, would have to be The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies, one of my favorite novels in recent memory. The tagline (“funniest novel ever written about the recent financial crisis”) might be true, but — in my opinion — undersells it for people like me who might not consider themselves to be super-interested in European banking. At its core, this is an exploration of writing and creativity against a not-so-unrecognizable backdrop of imploding capitalism.
As for non-fiction, I much preferred the older and wiser Patti Smith in M Train to the twenty-something Patti Smith in Just Kids…. I’d eat brown toast with olive oil and watch an episode of Midsomer Murders with her any day, but even if that’s not in the cards, M Train is one of my favorites of 2015. Another non-fiction favorite: The Man Who Planted Trees: A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet, which I found on a recommended shelf at Penguin Bookshop. Another, older favorite that I read this year (picked up a beautiful older hardcover at Caliban): Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat — “a fictionalized account of the author’s actual experience observing wolves in sub-Arctic Canada.”
I almost forgot… did you know there’s a community of psychics and shamans living in Victorian houses near the western end of New York state, by the Pennsylvania border? I didn’t, until my friend Abby gave me Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead. (This is a fun one.)
Standing out from the stacks of graphic novels I read this year: Swamp Thing, Volume 6 (The Sureen) — I hadn’t really been keeping up with DC’s “New 52” reboots, but noticed a return here to a more layered, Alan Moore-style mythos that literally gave me goosebumps. For a panel I moderated at the Brooklyn Book Festival, I read Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series and loved it: it starts off really sad, but it’s like Miyazaki meets Star Wars! And, on the more overtly literary end, I can’t stop thinking about Humayoun Ibrahim’s graphic novel adaptation of The Moon Moth by Jack Vance.
My favorite poem this year was Fred Shaw’s “Punk,” which I heard live at an East End Book Exchange event (where Kristofer Collins and Rege Behe also killed it):
“But, it’s only after Leo’s blond hair is lost to glue
and malt liquor in a botched attempt at dreadlocks,
after he buzzed it close to the skull and we lose touch,
that I’ll come to know so well those
Minor Threat cassettes that click
in a dusty Delco tape deck while we watch
the Iron City punks loiter about the Banana’s front door”
Next on my TBR pile: Thomas Sweterlitsch’s Tomorrow an Tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian (publishing April 26th, 2016)…
Katie Kurtzman, Publicity Director
Upon reflection, 2015 was my “Year of Women”! I began the year with the quiet yet fierce Marilynne Robinson and her novel Housekeeping, which was surprisingly, my first taste of Marilynne! Her sentences are so achingly beautiful and her characters so lovingly eerie and haunting. I felt my heart smiling a great deal as I underlined word after word. Lila is the next on my list. Then, I turned to Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) for a book club which was a gentle and refreshing break from what I typically read. Mindy made me belly laugh and snort and on more than one occasion, caused me to annoy my boyfriend with a few “let me read this out loud to you” moments. A strange thing happened after that: I dove head first into the Elena Ferrante wave, assuming I would be swept up in a whirlpool of Neapolitan ugly beautiful and love it just as much as all of my friends, but for some reason, even while truly enjoying it, I couldn’t move forward. I put it down, I didn’t pick it up, and I think/hope that I will return to it.
Over the summer, I gobbled up my brilliant friend Caroline Zancan’s debut novel Local Girls, which transported me to sticky humid Florida, where a smoky bar full of sweaty cheap beers is a comforting hell to some troubled yet memorable high school girls and their fraying friendships. Onwards to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House! I adore Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (which I’ve read 3+ times), but hadn’t yet read this other creepy masterpiece, even after loving the 1963 film version The Haunting, since I was a kid! The written word did not disappoint. With every creak and shrill scream, I feared for the characters (and my dreams!) as the house came to life.
I discovered two amazing local authors this year: Chloe T. Barlow and Janna Leyde. Barlow and her Pittsburgh set Gateway to Love series makes me blush (umm hello, steamy scenes in the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, my alma mater!) and look at the city from a different lens. Leyde’s heart-wrenching, honest, and touching memoir He Never Liked Cake opened up my eyes to how brain trauma not only affects the victim, but also their loved ones (and also why I should start practicing yoga… hey, 2016 could be the year!).
Patti Smith, my beloved musical goddess and poem whisperer, greeted me in the fall with M Train, and oh, how I didn’t want it to end. I often wish that I haven’t read her soul bomb Just Kids, just so I can have that first time experience all over again, but M Train is a one time read for me. A soft yet powerful meditation on all of the life floating around us. Come to Littsburgh, Patti. Come visit us, please?
Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies felt sterling cool and fascinating and epic (and I want to make wallpaper out of the mesmerizing jacket art). I find myself thinking about it still, forgetting that the characters aren’t real or that they’re not characters from a 90’s television series that I loved, which I mean as a compliment (I had a big thing for shows like Party of Five). But, to me, they were alive, turning the pages for me, sometimes slowly, with their salty fingers.
I’m currently reading two books to cap off my year. Emily St. John Mandel’s fascinatingly dark and clever Station Eleven and I eagerly await her upcoming Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures event in February. And Mary-Louise Parker’s Dear Mr. You which has made me smile like an idiot and cry on the 71B bus already on two occasions. I love her to death on the screen in Fried Green Tomatoes, but I’m loving her even more on the page. Mary-Louise, can we please be best friends? TOWANDA!
I have an intense desire to read Zadie Smith’s White Teeth in the early part of next year. I admire her rawness and her magic. And after that, maybe, just maybe, I’ll read more male voices in 2016?
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