The New York Times and The Globe and Mail and many other press
outlets use panels of judges help assemble their 100 “best of the year,” book
lists. The lists are comprised only of books that were published this past
year. They are designed to have something for everyone in them. They tend to highbrow,
reflecting the literate interests of a highly educated minority of people.
My
list, on the other hand, is very personal, reflecting my interests alone. Far
from being a hundred-book list, mine must be much shorter, since I only managed
to read forty books this year. My list spans books written over the past
two-centuries too, mostly because I’ll often read everything I can find in
subject areas that interest me. This year that was the Boer War, in preparation
for doing research on a distant relative—Pieter Schuil—who died in that
conflict. I also read many books that touched on the meaning of life because I
am thinking of writing a book in that vein myself.
And
of course, I read a lot of science fiction, mostly because this has been my
genre of choice for escape since I was a tween. And this is my nod in the
direction of “definitely not highbrow,” although the two sci-fi books I chose
for this list are not the typical “read and toss” books I usually end up with
from this genre. They were very good.
So,
without further ado, here is my list of “Best Books I Read in 2015: Mildly
Annotated.”
Best Science Fiction
Station
Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This book fits into the very hot post-apocalyptic
meme, though not very predictably. It is less about the end of the world as it
is a book about the importance of art and beauty, and the hope that drives us
to survive. Unlike much sci-fi, this one is beautifully written, too. It is the
perfect antidote to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, by the way.
My
runner up in the scif-fi category would be David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks.
Also well written. Strange. Had to work hard on the willing suspension of
disbelief at a certain point. But engrossing, imaginative, layered, and in the
end fun.
Best Books on the Meaning of Life
I read
a dozen or more books on this broad theme. They ranged from popular self-help
books like The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom,
by Jonathan Haidt to philosophical primers like The Meaning of Life: A
Reader, by E. D. Klemke. Only one of these books blew me away: I and
Thou by Martin Buber. I was assigned this book for a college philosophy
course forty years ago, and I merely skimmed through it then, to get by. Too
bad—I really missed something. I loved everything about this book, from its
obscurantist argumentation (like that of my hero, Kenneth Burke) to its
overwhelming humaneness and insight. The introduction by Walter Kaufmann was
worth the price of the book all by itself. Just wonderful.
The
worst book? The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards
Mankind by Simone Weil, closely followed by her Waiting for God. The
former was written for the Free French, during WWII, to help guide
reconstruction. Just weird. And while Waiting for God had some fine
moments, they were all spoiled by Weil’s directionless meandering punctuated by
her senseless starving of herself to death. Reading these two books made me very
suspicious of literary elite that wants to suggest she is some sort of literary
saint. No.
Best Theology
Well,
in truth, this might be philosophy pretending to be theology, or philosophical
theology, but the best—and most challenging—book I read this year was John
Caputo’s The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps.
Love the way it
got under my skin. He argues that we should pay attention more to how God
insists (perhaps) than we do to God’s existence. Having said so, there is no
way that I can sum up the many layers of this work without writing a Master’s thesis,
at a minimum. It is rich. It is surprisingly poetic and humorous. It also made
me wish that I had a better understanding of Hegel and Kant than my
secondary-literature-only background. I also read Caputo’s What Would Jesus
Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church. It is more
accessible, written for the Evangelicals who he wants to haunt (his term) with
his ideas. Caputo, incidentally, is a major inspiration for
Emergent/Post-evangelical/Post-Church Christian Peter Rollins. Rollins books
are more accessible but less interesting than Caputo’s. I’d suggest starting
with his Insurrection: To Believe Is Human, To Doubt, Divine.
Best Non-fiction
One of
my hobbies is paleoanthropology. I’ve read most of the popular literature from
the past twenty years or so, and some more professional books too. The
highlight of my summer was a visit to the Cradle of Humanity, the Sterkfontein
caves in South Africa—as well as the museum there. This is also the location of
the Rising Star cave site where Homo Naledi was recently found—the most
exciting thing going right now in paleoanthropology. The most dynamic work
being done in this field involves unraveling the human genome, often from
ancient bones. The best book I read about this topic, this past year, is
Christine Kenneally’s, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and
History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures. Besides serving as a great
introduction to genetic science, it also discusses cultural and familial
transmission of values.
The
reason I was in South Africa this year was to research the life of a distant
relative who was executed by an English firing squad during the Boer War—the
Pieter Schuil I mentioned above, a first cousin three generations removed. I
have Pieter’s diary and a letter that an English chaplain wrote to his parents
after the war, describing his last night alive. I’ve written about this story
here: Pieter Schuil and Pieter Schuil Two. While doing my research I came across Ingvar
Schoder-Nielson’s, Among the Boers in Peace and War. I sought the book
out because I knew that one chapter contained an account of Pieter’s arrest and
execution. I was blown away to find another chapter about a meandering
late-Boer War intelligence-gathering trip that Pieter took with the author. It
felt like an unexpected “second visit,” with Pieter. On the whole, the book is
a very interesting glimpse at an experience that few of us could imagine—living
on the South African veld, fighting the English, losing, and (in Ingvar’s case,
at least) surviving.
Best Novel
I
rarely read novels that don’t come highly recommended, so few of them are bad. (One favorite site for recommendations is Joanne’s Reading Blog). This year,
however, decided to walk into the best bookstore in Toronto, Ben McNally Books,
when I had a few hours to kill, and pick out the thinnest novel I could find. I
bought Jeremias Gotthelf’s The Black Spider. This is a dark allegory written
from within the European Evangelical tradition of another time. It was first
published in 1842. But what a lovely romp. Half horror, half Jeremiad, and half
morality tale. Beautifully written, translated, and fun all the way through.
Get it!
Just
before going to press, I thought my runner up would be J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.
A book about “modern” South Africa that is deeply disturbing and impossible
to put down.
But
last night I finished what might have been the best reading experience I had
all year, a book by Lawrence Hill, The Illegal. Coming after the
incredible success of his Book of Negroes, I was prepared for a let
down. Not at all. I loved the main character, a marathoner. His struggles were
believable, and I admired Hill’s social commentary throughout. This book is an
absolutely necessary antidote to all the race-baiting, anti-immigrant talk in
the USA right now, but also a reminder that we in Canada have only made a
beginning at being the welcoming, multiethnic country we’d really like to be.
And what a great, compelling, well-written story! A page-turner from beginning
to end.
