A Few short lists of excellent books

Best Books of 2015

For me, 2015 proved to be a record year for reading. In 2015 I managed to break the 100-book mark. Of those, forty four books made it to my 'excellent' list. I will endeavour to review them all for you but for starters, here's the list. I hope you enjoy going through them.

Off the Map by Fergus Fleming
Waiting for Doggo by Mark B Mills
Little Princes by Conor Gennan
Into the Dark Corner by Elizabeth Haynes
The Spark: a mother's story of nurturing a genius by Kristine Barnett
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart
Oyster by Jane Turner Hospital
Goat Mountain by David Vann
A Mile Down by David Vann
A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell
The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone by Charity Norman
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
House of Stone by Christina Lamb
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Madness in Civilization by Andrew Scull
Traitor by Stephen Daisley
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Chappy by Patricia Grace
Stalin's Daughter by Rosemary Sullivan
The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger
That Old Ace in the Hole by Anne Proulx
The Rocks by Peter Nichols
After Such Kindness by Gaynor Arnold
The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
Mountain Rescue by Phillip Merchior
The Invisible Mountain by Carolina de Roberti
Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss
Euphoria by Lily King
Sweet Caress by William Boyd
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
This is Where I Am by Karen Campbell
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies by Fredrik Backman
Headstrong:52 Women who changed Science by Rachel Swaby

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield OF 2014

• Can it, bottle it, smoke it by Karen Solomon
• Wake by Elizabeth Knox
• Lost , Stolen or Shredded by Rick Gerkosky
• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
• The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna
•  A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar
• The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum
• Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
• The Son by Philipp Meyer
• The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
• Old Filth by Jane Gardam
• Perfect by Rachel Joyce
• The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
• Traces of Red by Paddy Richardson
• Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty
• The Town that Drowned by Riel Nason
• The Boy who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
• The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson
• Ariel's Crossing by Bradford Morrow
• The Most Beautiful Walk in the world:Paris by John Baxter
• You're still Hot to Me by Jean Kittson
• Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates
• The Claimant by Janette Turner Hospital
• The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman
• We are completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
• Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
• Taking Pictures by Ransom Riggs
• Orpheus Lost by  Janette Turner Hospital
• All Saints' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell
• The Narrow Road to the Deeper North by Richard Flanagan
• Due Preparation for the Plague by  Janette Turner Hospital
• The strange & beautiful sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
• Off the Map by Fergus Fleming

BEST OF 2013

• The Roundhouse by Louise Erdrich
• Paint your Wife by Lloyd Jones
• Mr Rosenblum's List by Natasha Solomons
• The Sense of an ending by Julian Barnes
• Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
• The cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
• Serena by Ron Rash
• The Cove by Ron Rash
• How to stop a heart from beating by Jackie Ballantyne
• One foot in Eden by Ron Rash
• My Own country by Abraham Verghese
• The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese
• Infidel by Aayan Ali
• On The Map by Simon Garfield
• Blow on a Dead man's embers by Mari Strachan
• Olivier and Parrot in America by Peter Carey
• A History of food in 100 recipes by William Sitwell
• Mortal Fire by Elizabeth Knox
• The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
• Skylark by Jenny Patrick
• The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel
• Lottery by Patricia Woods
• Navigation by Joy Cowley
• The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman
• The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Love Wins by Rob Bell
• The Other side of the bridge by Mary Lawson
• Divergent by Veronica Roth
• The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
• And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
• Cutting for stone by Abraham Verghese
• Can it, bottle it, smoke it by Karen Solomon
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

OTHER EXCELLENT BOOKS

• A lucky child by Thomas Buergenthal
• Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
• Amagansett by Mark Mills
• As the Earth turns Silver by Alison Wong
• Boy and Man by Niall Williams
• Buried Treasure by Victoria Findlay
• Ellie and the shadow man by Maurice Gee
• Let me sing you gentle songs by Linda Olsson
• Notes from an exhibition by Patrick Gale
• Small wars by Sadie Jones
• Someone knows my name by Lawrence Hill
• Sumner to Ferrymead: a Christchurch History by Walter de Thier
• The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
• The book thief by Markus Zusak
• The furious longing for God by Brennan Manning
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society By Mary Anne ShafferPeel
• The hour I first believed by Wally Lamb
• The house at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper
• The Savage Garden by Mark Mills
• The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
• The selected works of T.S.Spivet by Reif Larsen
• The Shack by Wm. Paul Young
• The winter vault by Anne Michaels
• There, where the peppers grow by Bem Le Hunte
• Under this unbroken sky by Shandi Mitchell