The Sunday Salon and Best of the Year Books...

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! Yes, it's that day of the week we talk books! And it's a special week because we are going to take a peek at some of the "Best Books of 2015 lists" and see what keeps popping up. What are your choices as the best book of 2015?! After looking at a zillion "Best of" lists, there are some books that keep popping up over and over…


The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins… Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

                         ***                                                  

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff… Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.

        ***

Between The World and Me by Ta Neis Coates… In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder.

Here are some books that I missed that were on some of those lists and are now on my "Would like to read"list…
                           
                           

Want to check out some of those Best of Lists? Here are some great links...

Goodreads Readers Choice Awards can be found HERE.

Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2015.

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2015

So now that we know what the "experts" say, what do YOU say?! What were your favorite reads in 2015?! Next week I'll give you my top reads for 2015 (and one of these on this page is included!) 

PLUS, coming up are the 2016 Reading Challenges! Do you ever participate in a reading challenge? I usually do, and will this year too, but Chick with Books is going to post a reading challenge that you might just want to say yes to! Stay tuned for that next week!

Happy Reading… Suzanne