My Top Ten Reads of 2015

Whew!

Call this the blog that almost didn't happen.

 I kept track of all the books I read last year like a dutiful book blogger (I read 36 by-the-by), noting which could be candidates for my Top Ten list along the way. Then in late December I actually compiled the Top Ten list, intending to write and publish this post either just before or just after the New Year.

Heh. Heh.

Best intentions, right?

Oh well. Let's get down to it, shall we? I have the same rules as I had in previous years: all styles of books are fair game because I'm not a pretentious bitch, and only one book by any given author can make the list, because I like to make equal opportunity Top Ten lists. I already reviewed some of the books that made the cut this year, and when relevant I will link to those reviews. In years past I linked to each book's kindle page but I think I will cut that part out with this end-of-year literary list. I read both electronic and dead tree books (aka paperback) and I feel like linking to ebooks only might come across as preferential. 

I don't want to tell you how or what or why to read. That's not my business, so long as you actually fucking read. This is a literary world, after all. 

And now the Top Ten list:

(10) Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was one of the founding fathers of noir fiction. Phillip Marlowe, the fictional PI he created is the literary godfather to all who followed him. If you've never given noir a try, give THIS one a try. If you love modern hardboiled fiction but have never explored its predecessors, fucking do so now.

(Also, if you have an hour or so to kill and are possessed of a sense of humor and a love of a well-turned line, go look at @chandlerisms on twitter. The account tweets only lines from the master's books. Lots of fun.)

(9) Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

This book was so, so, so much fun. It managed to somehow be both in love with technology and Luddite-ish at the same time. I don't want to say much else, except: read this fun, fun, fun book! And check out @penumbra on twitter.

(8) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I didn't want to like this book, but I did. And I wrote about it here. 

(7) Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

My boyfriend Brandon and I both read this book early last year. It was phenomenal! Then we watched the movie. It was ok. Not phenomenal, but not horrible.

(6) The 8 by Katherine Neville

This was one of a short stack of paperbacks that Brandon pulled off one of his shelves and handed to me because he thought I might like them. And my fucking god was he right!! Holy intrigue! Reading this felt like reading one of Agatha Christie's political intrigue novels.

(5) Warning Signs by Stephen White

This was another book from Brandon's short stack. It was the last book I read in 2015 and I loved it so much that so far this year I've read three more books from the same series, and I am currently reading a fourth. Yep. Love me Stephen White.

(4) The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Please believe me when I say that I am done fangirling all over John Green. But I couldn't honestly leave this book off my list. I didn't so much READ this book as I INHALED it, in a few short hours (spread over 2 days) after which I sobbed like a little bitch. 

Reading John Green novels turns me into an emo 17-year-old. Check out an old post I wrote about how John Green writes about young girls. 

(3) The Last Call by George Wier

George Wier is an author I discovered in 2015. I started with this book, The Last Call, which is the first in a series of noir mysteries set in my town: Austin Texas! I loved it so much that I went on to read three more books in the series, and I plan to read them all!

(2) To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Okay, so maybe I'm cheating a little by bundling both of Lee's books into one slot on my Top Ten list. Maybe, but I don't think so. If you buy the argument (and I do) that Watchman was the rediscovered first draft of Mockingbird, they can really be taken as different versions of the same story. Even if you don't buy that argument, Watchman is best appreciated in connection with Mockingbird.

I blogged about the pairing last summer. Take a look here. 

(1) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Full disclosure: my reading of The Great Gatsby in 2015 was my second read-through of this novel. Like most Americans it was required reading for me in high school. But high school me HATED this book. I found it by turns boring and pretentious. I walked away from Gatsby with the impression that in it Fitzgerald celebrated the excesses of the leisured elite. That really pissed me off.

Boy was high school me thick. I completely missed the point of Gatsby. This time around, with a number of years and a TON of life experience under my belt, I found I could not merely appreciate, but actually LOVE this book. I'm so glad I gave it a second try.

BOOK REVIEW: Paper Towns by John Green

Today I review Paper Towns by John Green.

Here's what I'm not doing:

1. I'm not reviewing The Fault in Our Stars
2. I'm not commenting on John Green as an individual
3. I'm not commenting on the so-called 'John Green Effect' in YA publishing (You can read about that here, among other places.)

Why am I not doing those things? Well, I'm not reviewing The Fault in Our Stars because I haven't read it. And to be honest, I haven't read it yet simply because everyone else in the world has. I discovered John Green through Looking for Alaska, and when I did I felt like I should give his other, not-fault-in-our-stars books some attention. Because they're probably jealous of how everyone dotes on that other book.

I'm not commenting on John Green either as an individual or as a force in publishing because, frankly, I feel like enough has already been said about how awesome/dangerous/well-meaning/privileged/white/male he is. And furthermore, although I love writers (I am one!) and I understand that books come from writers, it is my fervent belief that books should be judged on the basis of their own merits. A good book should never suffer because it was written by an asshole. On the same token, a horrible book should never be lauded just because the guy who wrote it is super cool and everyone's best friend. 

So, without further ado, here is my review of Paper Towns:

(Naturally, SPOILER ALERT)

Paper Towns might be one of the best books I have ever read. (Is that a fangirlish enough start to this review?) The plot is so simple: childhood friends and longtime neighbors Quentin and Margo enjoy a night of vengeful revelry in the last month of their senior year of high school and then Margo disappears and Quentin devotes the remainder of his high school career to finding her. That's really it. But it's also so not it. Because the story is about so much more than that. It's about:

• Margo's imagined relationship to her childhood memory of Quentin
• Quentin's imagined relationship to his childhood memory of Margo
• Margo and Quentin's actual relationship
• Margo's fractured relationship to her parents
• Margo's parents' idealized relationship to the daughter they wish they had
• Margo's relationship with her hometown of Orlando
• Quentin's relationships with his friends Ben and Radar
• Quentin's relationship with his parents, who are both therapists
• The image Quentin holds in his mind of Margo
• The image Quentin holds in his mind of himself
• The idea that how people imagine one another bears little resemblance to the way people actually are
• And so much more!!

I could go on for days about the intricate and hugely meaningful ideas that form the foundation for the story behind Paper Towns. I'm convinced that it is the simplicity of the plot that allows room for the rich character development in this novel. Paper Towns is the kind of book that I believe would make a horrible movie. Because not a whole hell of a lot happens. After Margo and Quentin's all-night life-changing vandalism spree there's just not a ton of action. But please don't confuse that lack of action with tedium, because if you did you would be so wrong.

Paper Towns is witty. Early in the book I came across this line: 

Both my parents are therapists, which means that I am really goddamned well adjusted. 

And I knew I was in for a treat. 

Here's the set-up:

The protaganist, Quentin, is the only child of therapists. He's not exactly a social outcast, but he is the kind of non-band-geek who only hangs out with band geeks. He grew up next to Margo Roth Spiegelman in a sprawling Orlando suburb that was mostly indistinguishable from all the other sprawling Orlando suburbs. And, Margo, well...I should let John Green tell you about Margo. Because whatever lame summary I come up with couldn't do her justice.

...She was the only legend who lived next door to me. Margo Roth Spiegelman, whose six-syllable name was often spoken in its entirety with a kind of quiet reverence. Margo Roth Spiegelman, whose stories of epic adventures would blow through school like a summer storm: an old guy living in Hot Coffee, Mississippi, taught Margo how to play the guitar. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who spent three days traveling with the circus--they thought she had potential on the trapeze. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who drank a cup f herbal tea with The Mallionaires backstage after a concert in St. Louis while they drank whiskey. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who got into that concert by telling the bouncer that she was the bassist's girlfriend, and didn't they recognize her, and come on guys seriously, my name is Margo Roth Spiegelman and if you go back there and ask the bassist to take one look at me, he will tell you that I either am his girlfriend or he wishes I was, and then the bouncer did so, and then the bassist said "yeah that's my girlfriend let her in the show," and then later the bassist wanted to hook up with her and she rejected the bassist from The Mallionaires.

The stories, when they were shared, inevitably ended with, I mean, can you believe it? We often could not, but they always proved true. 

Quiet Quentin, practical Quentin, smart Quentin, grew up in awe of Margo Roth Spiegelman. And he loved her in a sort of hero-worshipping way. But Margo always traveled in cooler circles. That is, until the day she found out her boyfriend had been cheating on her. Then Margo Roth Spiegelman had to have revenge, and she needed Quentin to help her exact that revenge. As she told her confused friend: "I have to do eleven things tonight, and at least five of them involve a getaway man."

There I go quoting the book again. But that's the problem with books that are as amazing and quotable as Paper Towns. When you read them they fill you with such evangelical excitement that all you want to do is quote their lyrical lines to everyone you know so they, too, can be filled with the same excitement.

Margo and Quentin's epic Night of Eleven Probably-Illegal Tasks was a wild success. And of course, when Quentin went to school the next day he harbored unspoken hopes that his relationship with Margo was changed. Maybe now they'd be more than neighbors and sometime-friends. Maybe she would actually talk to him in public, maybe in front of the cool kids. Maybe she would even kiss him. But that wouldn't happen, because Margo was gone. It wasn't the first time she had disappeared. But it would be the last, because Margo Roth Spiegelman wasn't coming back, and in the space that was created by her absence, everyone and everything changed.

About halfway through their Night of Revenge, Margo Took Quentin to what she said was one of her favorite places in town: the Sun Trust bank building downtown. Quentin thought it a weird choice, but of course followed her all the way up to the conference room on the top floor, from which they had a view of all of Orlando through the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one wall. Quentin called the view beautiful, but Margo scoffed:

"Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is...It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs...all those houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail...I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."

In the days following her disappearance, Quentin thought about this and other statements Margo made that night. They suggested a level of unhappiness within her that he would once have thought impossible. But now he was confronted with the truth of it and he took it upon himself to save her.

I'd like to take a break here, to share a few words not only about Margo Roth Spiegelman, but also Alaska from Looking for Alaska, and the eponymous Katherine from An Abundance of Katherines.

I won't lie. I have a full-on awkward teenage crush on ALL of the troubled heroines I have encountered in John Green novels. My crush started with Alaska Young, continued with the final Katherine in An Abundance of Katherines, and reached a climax when I was introduced to Margo Roth Spiegelman in Paper Towns. When I read John Green's selfish, reckless, devil-may-care heroines I become a goose-pimply, heart-fluttery, stammering teenager. I wrote a love letter to them. Read it here. 

So Margo disappeared, and partly because he couldn't imagine life without her, and partly because he didn't want to, and partly because of the sad-and-enigmatic things she had said during their night together, Quentin vowed to save her. And in so doing, Quentin grew beyond himself. He grew more into the person Margo had always imagined him to be. And in the end, he did find her, but he also found that she didn't need to be saved. Moreover, Quentin discovered that Margo Roth Spiegelman was both MORE and LESS than the image of her he had carried in his heart. 

At the end of Paper Towns, Quentin and Margo Roth Spiegelman say goodbye to each other and also to the paper images they had created of one another. And they prepared to go out into the Great Beyond that awaits after childhood's end.

I truly cherished this book, and I highly recommend it. Have you read it? Share your thoughts with me in the comments!