All the books we liked in 2015

Let’s face it: there’s no way this is going to be a definitive list of the best books of 2015. There were too many books that came out this year and too few reviewers to read them all. Plus, there are some books you’re just more interested in reviewing than others, either because you have definite preferences in authors or genres or because you’re more willing to accept certain recommendations than others.

Here at the Reader, we’re also limited by our mission to be a Chicago newspaper. Most of the books we write about in these pages are about our city or were written by people who live here or are passing through for a reading or a talk.

We also seem to write a lot about books we like—the vast majority of our reviews this year have been positive. I’m not sure why that is. Do we subconsciously preselect books for review that we’re already pretty sure we’ll like? Time is short, after all, and there’s so much good TV to watch! Seriously, it would probably take longer to slog through the new Jonathan Franzen than to binge watch the entire final season of Mad Men, and, based on our reviewer’s verdict, Mad Men—or any modern classic TV series of your choice—would be a far better time investment.

Or have we somehow fallen prey to the epidemic of niceness that has swept through the literary community—and the accompanying hope that the authors of the books we review will someday be in the position to give us jobs or at the very least retweet our best and wittiest 140-character thoughts and let us think they are our friends?

Was 2015 an unusually good year for books? Or is our reluctance to trash too many books a sign of the ongoing decline of literary culture, a sad reversal of the days when writers and critics would get into fistfights at cocktail parties? Or so I’ve been told. I cannot imagine people who sit behind desks all day are very adept at fisticuffs, especially if there’s alcohol involved.

I do not feel equipped to answer any of these questions on behalf of the other book reviewers. I do know that I, personally, would love if Judy Blume or Sarah Hepola wrote to me offering their undying friendship just because I declared in a public forum that I thought their books were great. Sadly, this hasn’t happened yet. Still, it did not mean my admiration for In the Unlikely Event and Blackout was any less sincere. Conversely, fistfighting at cocktail parties is not really my style. I’d be more likely to hide behind a bookcase and read all the titles very, very slowly (which is actually what I did do the one time I found myself at an event with someone whose book I disliked).

As for 2015 being an unusually good year for books—I don’t know, maybe we were just lucky in the books we chose to review? Maybe next year we’ll get some real stinkers. And then we can justly eviscerate them for your entertainment. But for now, here’s a list of all the books, arranged by category, that, in the past 12 months, earned our reviewers’ stamp of approval.