It's a Hardback Life

I’ve gotten my dates mixed up, and posted today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic back in June. So I’ve swapped the dates, and have decided to do the one that would have fallen on June 30^th today. Top Ten Books I’ve Read So Far in 2015:

 My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead. A meditation on the power a single book can have throughout our lives, and how it changes with each new encounter.

Doctor Who: A History by Alan Kistler. The title pretty much says it all, but it is important to note that this isn’t fan history with commentary, but an objective one that tries to cover just the facts and chronology of the show/phenomenon.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik. One of the best fantasy stories I’ve read in a long time, focusing on Eastern European mythology and the power of friendship over romance or heroism.

Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery. by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch. As someone who used to play a lot of D&D, this comic couldn’t be more perfect. I love the female cast at its heart, and the very adult humor.

Lumberjanes Volume 1 by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, and Brooke A. Allen. Like Rat Queens, Lumberjanes is a comic about female friendship. Unlike Rat Queens, it is appropriate for pretty much all ages. It centers around a group of friends at a very unusual summer camp and their adventures as they get caught up in a plot straight out of Greek mythology.

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik. Fantasy alternate history, set in the Napoleonic wars, only with dragons.

Searching for Jane Austen by Emily Aurbach. This is an extremely well-researched and structured analysis of why we need to take Jane Austen back from the biographers and bowlderizers that have made her “safe,” and recognize her as the biting satirist and social commentator she was.

Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar. A fictionalized account of the (possibly) fraught relationship between painter Vanessa Bell and her more famous sister, Virginia Woolf. This book broke my heart a little.

Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh. One of the most beautiful love stories I have read in a very, very long time. I know the movie is most famous for the long sex scene, but this story is not some voyeuristic soft-core lesbian story.

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. I want Cheryl Strayed to be my best friend. Her “advice” is more meditations on life than Dear Abby-style responses.

(Original Top Ten Tuesday concept from The Broke and the Bookish)