What did I read in 2015?

A lot.

Basically, I read where my interest led me. Some I got from trips to the bookstore just because they looked neat. Some I enjoyed, some sucked. That’s the fun of a bookstore trip. I got The Creation of Anne Boleyn, Princesses Behaving Badly, The Empathy Exams, Maplecroft, and Uprooted like this.

Some books I read because everyone on Twitter was talking about them – such as The Martian, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, or The Grace of Kings. Some books I read because people I knew had written them – like Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, The Lives of Tao, Last First Snow, and Against A Brightening Sky. I read a few books because I’d been waiting impatiently for them to come out and devoured them as soon as they hit print, like Visions of Silver. A few others were recommended by people whose taste I trusted, like when Max Gladstone announced to the world at large that everyone needed to read Seraphina.

There were also some books that I saw on a library shelf, and read because, hell, why the fuck not? A library is free and wonderful and we all need to support our libraries. That’s how I read Village of Secrets and Elizabeth Warren’s A Fighting Chance. I also read a few books because I hadn’t read them in school, and I like to try to keep pushing my reading on the classics – that’s why I read The Awakening, A Passage To India, The Age of Innocence, and White Fang.

I read some books because I bought them at cons or at airports. Never underestimate these as sources of reading material. That’s how I got Karen Memory, Concussion, The Tropic of Serpents, and The Art of Asking. I also read a few books because I met their authors at cons – that was Owl and the Japanese Circus and Half-Resurrection Blues.

I read other books because I’d gotten them and they’d sat on my To-Read shelf (yes, it’s no longer a pile – it’s a small bookshelf in my dining room – YES I FEEL SHAME) for upwards of several years. Some of them were worth the wait – some weren’t. This included Tyrannosaurus Sue, The Lucifer Effect, Salvation City, and Blood Matters.

I read a big pile of books because I was doing research for a book that I’m currently writing. I’m not going to divulge the super-secret details of my current book project, but these books included Snow Country, Women of the Pleasure Quarters, Geisha: A Life, Hiroshima Nagasaki, Black Rain, Autobiography of a Geisha, Samurai!, Grass For My Pillow, and Geisha. Fear not, gentle readers – someday this mysterious and seemingly unconnected list of books will make sense.

I read some other books that had been out for a while, and which I really thought that I should read. Just like reading classics of literary fiction to keep expanding my comfort with that field, I read some fantasy and sci-fi simply because they were generally acknowledged to be important books in the genre. Again, some were awesome. Some left me scratching my head a little. Just like the classic books. Some of these were The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Mirror Empire, The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Magicians, The Curse of Chalion, The Broken Crown, Daughter of the Empire, and Daggerspell.

And then there were the books that I heard about somehow (on NPR, on someone’s blog, in conversation, seeing in passing, and so on) and immediately felt that I had to read IMMEDIATELY. These included The Birth of The Pill, All Joy and No Fun, Digging For Richard III, As You Wish, Mating In Captivity, and Voices In The Ocean.

Plus, the books I read because I saw something based on it or related to it on TV or at the movies. This includes The Forsyte Saga, The Buccaneers, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

And then there was everything else.

Here’s the full list.

1. Masks by E. C. Blake
2. The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo
3. The Best American Short Stories 2014 edited by Jennifer Egan
4. Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History Without The Fairy-Tale Endings by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie
5. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
6. The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller
7. Control Point by Myke Cole
8. The Fashion File: Advice, Tips, and Inspiration from the Costume Designer of Mad Men by Janie Bryant
9. The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
10. The Birth of The Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig
11. The Martian by Andy Weir
12. Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
13. Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride
14. Blood Red by Mercedes Lackey
15. White Fang by Jack London
16. Call of the Wild by Jack London
17. Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop
18. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
19. Beggars Ride by Nancy Kress
20. The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan
21. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
22. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
23. The Binding Chair by Kathryn Harrison
24. It Started With A Scandal by Julie Anne Long
25. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
26. Undercity by Catherine Asaro
27. The Broken Crown by Michelle West
28. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
29. Up In The Air by Walter Kirn
30. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
31. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip G. Zimbardo
32. The Shattered Court by M. J. Scott
33. Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel Jose Older
34. The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
35. All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior
36. The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes
37. The Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan
38. Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki
39. Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha by Lesley Downer
40. The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
41. Samurai! by Saburo Sakai & Martin Caidin & Fred Saito
42. Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath by Paul Ham
43. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
44. Nightless City: Geisha and Courtesan Life in Old Tokyo by J. E. de Becker
45. The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama
46. Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner
47. Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse
48. Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
49. Autobiography of a Geisha by Sayo Masuda
50. The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
51. Steel’s Edge by Ilona Andrews
52. Uprooted by Naomi Novik
53. Grass for My Pillow by Saiichi Maruya
54. A Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab
55. Geisha: A Unique World of Tradition, Elegance, and Art by John Gallagher
56. The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery
57. Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
58. The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold
59. Empress by Shan Sa
60. Last First Snow by Max Gladstone
61. The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
62. Shards of Hope by Nalini Singh
63. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
64. A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren
65. Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
66. Village of Secrets: Defying The Nazis In Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead
67. Daughter of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts
68. Mating In Captivity: Reconciling The Erotic & the Domestic by Esther Perel
69. Blood Matters: A Journey Along the Genetic Frontier by Masha Gessen
70. Probability Moon by Nancy Kress
71. Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez
72. The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
73. Against A Brightening Sky by Jaime Lee Moyer
74. The Anglo Files by Sarah Lyall
75. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes
76. His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
77. Dearest Rogue by Elizabeth Hoyt
78. Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta
79. The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton
80. Archangel’s Legion by Nalini Singh
81. The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank by David Plotz
82. The Magician King by Lev Grossman
83. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
84. The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley
85. Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids edited by Meghan Daum
86. The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
87. Voices In The Ocean by Susan Casey
88. Owl and the Japanese Circus by Kristi Charish
89. Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik
90. A Passage To India by E. M. Forster
91. Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr
92. Empire of Dust by Jacey Bedford
93. Maplecroft by Cherie Priest
94. Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T-Rex Ever Found by Steve Fiffer
95. Concussion by Jeanne Marie Laskas
96. The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer
97. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach
98. Digging For Richard III by Mike Pitts
99. War and XPs by Rich Burlew