2015 Reads

Blame the library's three-week lending window, but my reading pace rarely falls below frantic. I read at stoplights, in traffic jams and any breaks work offers. Here's an incomplete list of what passed my eyes this year.

Astoria, Peter Stark
Lewis and Clark were the first government-sanctioned survey of the western U.S.. John Jacob Astor’s commercial pursuit a few years later is just as fascinating . A commercial ship went around South America and stopped in Hawaii to reach the mouth of the Columbia River. An overland party went south to avoid hostile Indians only to end up nearly starving in Hells Canyon. All of it lead to the founding of Astoria, the first U.S. outpost on the West Coast (dozens of Spanish missions already dotted the California coast, of course).

The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
A quick but thorough trip through places where humans have led to the decline and potential extinction of bellwether species and look at past extinctions.

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, James Loewen
A left-leaning look at the laws passed to keep African-Americans on the outside of American towns, especially in states that remained loyal to the union. An ugly but necessary look at the South drove the narrative after Reconstruction and the rest of America bought it.

The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
Best book so far this year. Set in Arthurian Britain, an elderly couple’s trip to find their son’s village leads them into a quest to kill a dragon that has cast a fog over the country, stripping people of their memories. But what happens when the buried giant of memory is restored? The ending is a gut-punch for our central couple, one that lingers painfully long after the book wraps.

Mountain Time, Ivan Doig
Bucking the Sun, Ivan Doig
Last Bus to Wisdom, Ivan Doig
No sooner did I finish Mountain Time than Doig passed away. Bucking the Sun chronicles of farming family’s transition to building the Fort Peck Dam in the 1930s. Some characters are thinly drawn and the ending was a major stretch, but Doig thrived on reconstructing Montana history.  

Last Bus to Wisdom, Doig’s posthumously released final novel, follows a junior-high-aged Montanan travels the buses to Wisconsin to stay with a cantankerous aunt and runs back west with their German-born husband. As always, Doig brings his setting to life vividly, from small-town Wisconsin to the Greyhound bus experience to being penniless in Yellowstone National Park. The ending felt abrupt. Some complain about his borderline relentless focus on Montana, but I don’t live there, so his hard details for Montana bring it to life for the reader.

Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, Benjamin Alire Saenz
Collection of intertwined stories, intertwined like El Paso and Juarez. They hit hard and convey much in a few short pages. In a few stories, Saenz will entrance you with the twin cities, despite their obvious flaws.

Double Whammy, Carl Hiassen
In my first pass at Hiassen, I waded through rigged fishing tournaments, mega-church pastors and intrigue in the swamps of south Florida. A good potboiler like this made me want to hunt down more of the Florida columnist’s novels.

Jacksonland, Steve Inskeep
A different take on the ugly tale of Indian removal from the southeastern states, NPR Morning Edition host Inskeep focuses on Jackson's real motivation for removing the Cherokee and other Indian nations - the money he and his cohorts could make in real estate bought for a pittance from removed tribes.  Inskeep juxtaposes Jackson with John Ross, the Cherokee chief who whipped up support for the Indians' cause but ultimately was resigned to removal to Oklahoma.

The Secret of Evil, Roberto Bolano
Sketches and short stories from the late 2666 author. These feel less complete and more of a stretch than his other posthumous works, but they work as a short story collection.

Bourbon Empire, Reid Mitenbuler
An excellent take on the ebb and flow of American whiskey, how its legends are often total bunk and how perceptions drive our drinking patterns. Mitenbuler tackles the craft distillery movement, why flagship whiskeys are usually the best bet and why elusive, limited-edition whiskeys might let down the uninitiated.

Rock Springs, Richard Ford
Multitude of Sins, Richard Ford 
Picking up an old Short Fiction 101 book from college, I stumbled across the title story from Ford’s collection. The next day I tracked down the collection. He’s a master of the short form, telling tales mostly ugly but versed in basic human truths.

Bad Haircut, Tom Perrotta
Little Children, Tom Perrotta
I spent October immersed in Perrotta, tearing through Bad Haircut, his brutal short story collection about growing up in suburban New Jersey in the 1970s. Little Children tackles reams of sordid subjects, but comes back to people coming into their 30s and realizing life had not unfolded as expected – or that it unfolded exactly as expected, but he or she hated it.

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
Telling the story of a couple first through the husband’s perspective then the wife’s seems a little basic, but Groff’s riveting prose and nimble plot turns waste nothing. A horrific event early in the wife’s life comes to define her. It’s a masterpiece, looking at how we can never really know each other, looking at whether the actions of a child constitute evil, looking at how we age. I’m richer for having read it.

Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff
Chinese sex slave scandals in upstate New York, an illicit love affair during the 1918 influenza outbreaks and more – I bit off too much Groff in too little time .But these stories are entrancing.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? Andrew Lawler
This one provides a renewed appreciation for the chicken, from its wild origins to its long-running domestication, reverence and contempt of various cultures. Lawler covers a ton of ground here, every patch fertile for discussion of the amazing bird’s influence and future.