Top Books of 2015

Happy New Year, readers!

I’m a bit late to the party in sharing my favorite books from 2016, but it’s been a big year for us!  Web and I both continued working for software startups, his (Clari) providing a SaaS solution for sales analytics, and mine (Infinio) improving storage performance in virtualized datacenters. If our kids don’t turn out to be venture capitalists, we’ll be very surprised.

That’s right – “kids” – on May 28^th, we added Micah Julien to our family.  He’s a healthy, happy little guy who is working on sitting up by himself, and eating an unending supply of cereal.  Sasha turned 3 this month and is thriving in preschool. She is a loving and attentive big sister, eager to include Micah in all our family activities.  Cockapoo Lucy also loves our new addition, and does a great job cleaning under his high chair.

I read 31 books this year – fewer than in past years, but still not bad. J  I also read a disproportionate number of “beach reads” during maternity leave and after.  

Here are my favorites, in the order I read them.  Click on each link to read my full review:

Fiction

Pigs in Heaven – when a white woman’s adopted Native American daughter becomes famous, questions about her adoption arise.

Gold – two best friends who are Olympic ice skaters compete with each other and try to balance family and friendship over their careers.

We are all Completely beside Ourselves – if you don’t know the plot of this book, I’m not going to spoil it.  Just read it – without reading any more reviews.

The Last Good Paradise – when a group of tourists, each unhappy in their own way, vacation on a remote Polynesian island, unlikely relationships and alliances form.

The Pearl that Broke its Shell – parallel stories of women living in Afghanistan in different generations, each trying to survive, by living disguised as a man.

Station Eleven – in this character-driven novel, a traveling group of performers try to survive amidst the chaos and danger of a post-apocalyptic world.

Non-fiction

The Filter Bubble – commentary on how monetizing the Internet is leading to individual access to information becoming an increasingly narrow view.

How to Get Your Kid to Eat – a practical guide to cultivating healthy eating habits for kids, from newborns to adolescents.

Seabiscuit – the saga of the most unlikely horse to become a champion racehorse, 1920’s the people who surrounded him, and the nation’s shared excitement of his rise.

Brain on Fire – a memoir of a young woman’s family’s quest to get an accurate diagnosis for an unusual brain disease, after being mis-diagnosed repeatedly.

Tender Points – my cousin’s book on women, trauma, and chronic pain, in short vignettes and poems, part memoir, part commentary.

“I have little kids” Fiction

Little Big Lies – the lies that several women tell each other, and themselves, begin to catch up to them in a small town, but in the end, women’s friendship wins.

Written in my Own Heart’s Blood – the next of the Outlander books, a familiar romp through history with beloved characters, and the most puzzling ending of all the novels thus far

The Husband’s Secret – a seemingly happy marriage is threatened when a woman finds some information about her husband he has been hiding

Girl on a Train –a mystery about a woman whose fantasies about a couple whose house she could see from the train each day began to intersect her real life.

What Alice Forgot – after an accident at the gym, a woman wakes up in the hospital to find that her happy marriage has dissolved and she has more children than she remembered.

Dark Places – decades after it happens, a woman helps to investigate the murder of her family in her childhood home