nomadreader

Welcome to Day Five of My Best of 2015 Reading Round up!  As always, my Best of the Year lists cover what I read in 2015, which includes books published in any year. Today, I'm sharing my favorite nonfiction. Yesterday, I shared my favorite nonfiction . Wednesday I shared  my favorite mysteries . Tuesday I shared  my favorite comics . Monday I shared  Hawthorne's favorite board books . (Want to look at past year's lists. They're all linked  here .) 13. Outline  by Rachel Cusk ( my review ) Outline  is billed as a novel of ten conversations. It begins with Faye, a recently divorced writer with two sons, on a flight from London to Athens, Greece, where she will teach writing.  Outline  is a beautiful, thoughtful, engaging novel. I love the idea of it, and I loved the time I spent with it.  12. Hausfrau  by Jill Alexander Essbaum ( my review ) Anna Benz is a bored American housewife who has been living in the suburbs o...

The backstory: The Offering  is longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Prize . The basics: Madeline is 34. She has been in an insane asylum for twenty years and cannot recall the events that put her there, but a new psychiatrist thinks he can help her recover the traumatic memories. The story unfolds both in the present: Madeline's life in the asylum and her therapy sessions, and in the years and months before she was committed. My thoughts: Madeline has lived her entire life in two very different, but very sheltered environments. Her father was deeply religious and believed and moved them to an island where believed God wanted him to spread the word. Since the age of 14, she's been locked in an insane asylum and hasn't had a visitor in years. To her mind, which in many ways, is stuck at the age of fourteen, she observes parallels between these two disparate parts of her life: Interestingly, over the years that I have been here it has not escaped my notice that despite t...