I was dissatisfied with my 2015 reading. A number of projects and situations contrived to cut down my reading time drastically, and so this list feels even more provisional than most years, a grab-bag of things that stood out for me stood out for me personally rather than a considered ranking. I think in a better world we would all do books of a given year 5 to 10 years down the line, and the resulting lists would be far more well-considered. Maybe 25 or 50 years would be even better.

I was pulled into a number of projects and situations that obliterated both my concentration and reading time, the biggest being my Facilitated Communication investigation, which consumed an entire quarter of the year. That would not have been so bad by itself but a handful of other similar matters made it difficult to do as much comprehensive reading as I would have liked. I’ve resolved to change that this year.

So, wish a bit of disappointment and shame, I am attaching a “Promising Nonfiction” section of books I haven’t yet assessed. These are books that due to their subject matter, pedigree, author, or some other factor struck me as being worth investigating, but which I didn’t have time to do so. Note that it is entirely possible that some of these books are terrible–they just merit a look in my mind. (Example: Cesar Hidalgo’s Why Information Grows would have been on the promising list, but I did get time to take a look at it and it did not fulfill its promise. On the other hand, I am near-certain Noel Malcolm’s latest tome of scholarship is brilliant, but simply didn’t have time to get to a work so far outside outside my current area of focus.) If any readers have opinions on them, please chime in.

Book of the Year

Fiction

Thought Flights

Price: $20.00

24 used & new available from $14.22

The Blizzard: A Novel

Price: $11.99

1 used & new available from $11.99

The Complete Works of Primo Levi

Price: $49.88

51 used & new available from $35.00

Horse of a Different Color: Stories

Price: $15.99

19 used & new available from $3.47

The Librarian

Price: $3.98

14 used & new available from

A School for Fools (New York Review Books Classics)

Price: $14.95

15 used & new available from $3.84

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

Price: $15.63

28 used & new available from $1.90

Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories (NYRB Classics)

Price: $16.99

38 used & new available from $7.50

A General Theory of Oblivion

Price: $17.10

19 used & new available from $2.78

The Wake: A Novel

Price: $17.00

72 used & new available from $1.80

Kvachi (Georgian Literature)

Price: $15.39

30 used & new available from $9.15

Eyes: Novellas and Stories

Price: $12.19

67 used & new available from $4.00

Book of Numbers: A Novel

Price: $29.43

59 used & new available from $2.25

The Door (NYRB Classics)

Price: $17.49

94 used & new available from $4.69

Callimachus: The Hymns

Price: $37.95

20 used & new available from $29.97

Silvina Ocampo (NYRB Poets)

Price: $14.00

9 used & new available from $7.00

Eileen: A Novel

Price: $8.99

1 used & new available from $8.99

A Brief History of Seven Killings (Booker Prize Winner): A Novel

Price: $7.99

1 used & new available from $7.99

The Tale of Genji

Price: $14.72

1 used & new available from $14.72

Macbeth: Third Series (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series)

Price: $12.95

59 used & new available from $2.06

Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult

Price: $12.43

42 used & new available from $5.39

Incidents in the Night Book 2

Price: $15.60

19 used & new available from $4.12

Dungeon: Monstres – Vol. 5: My Son the Killer (5)

Price: $14.99

16 used & new available from $7.99

Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer

Price: $14.30

27 used & new available from $4.38

The Eternaut

Price: ---

1 used & new available from

Fatherland: A Family History

Price: $15.81

72 used & new available from $5.16

Nonfiction

World Philology

Price: $48.73

22 used & new available from $48.73

Chaos Imagined: Literature, Art, Science

Price: $50.00

18 used & new available from $9.95

The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz

Price: $11.99

35 used & new available from $1.50

The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter

Price: $64.80

12 used & new available from $39.95

The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution

Price: $58.00

10 used & new available from $25.50

Physics: A Short History from Quintessence to Quarks

Price: $12.28

19 used & new available from $1.97

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology

Price: $25.00

69 used & new available from $1.18

Forgetting: Myths, Perils and Compensations

Price: $19.00

1 used & new available from $19.00

Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune

Price: $25.05

27 used & new available from $4.99

The World the Game Theorists Made

Price: $113.00

7 used & new available from $103.36

Persius: A Study in Food, Philosophy, and the Figural

Price: $54.00

10 used & new available from $41.01

European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche

Price: $36.80

13 used & new available from $3.21

Orientation and Judgment in Hermeneutics

Price: $42.99

1 used & new available from $42.99

The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement

Price: $14.25

42 used & new available from $2.50

Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History

Price: $9.99

1 used & new available from $9.99

Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's "Aeneid"

Price: $26.00

14 used & new available from $26.00

The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution

Price: $38.31

26 used & new available from $2.96

Greek Models of Mind and Self (Revealing antiquity ; Book 22)

Price: $26.99

1 used & new available from $26.99

Track-Two Diplomacy Toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978-2014

Price: $47.00

27 used & new available from $6.84

Promising Nonfiction

The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology

Price: $26.80

26 used & new available from $11.88

Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity

Price: $19.83

1 used & new available from $19.83

A Sense of Power: The Roots of America's Global Role

Price: $19.03

50 used & new available from $12.95

Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance

Price: $11.75

78 used & new available from $3.19

Realpolitik: A History

Price: $17.54

21 used & new available from $9.32

Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew: Entangled Lives in Morocco

Price: $82.50

5 used & new available from $74.39

Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception

Price: $9.99

1 used & new available from $9.99

Shadows of Revolution: Reflections on France, Past and Present

Price: $21.52

28 used & new available from $3.99

Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World

Price: $17.04

71 used & new available from $4.24

The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945

Price: $16.99

1 used & new available from $16.99

The Black Mirror: Looking at Life through Death

Price: $18.75

56 used & new available from $2.16

Violence All Around

Price: $38.00

1 used & new available from $38.00

Barbarism and Religion: Volume 6, Barbarism: Triumph in the West

Price: $117.00

18 used & new available from $95.00

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

Price: $14.99

1 used & new available from $14.99

Pagans: The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity

Price: $10.99

1 used & new available from $10.99

China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed

Price: $16.74

1 used & new available from $16.74

Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947

Price: $41.99

48 used & new available from $2.10

The Third Reich in History and Memory

Price: $22.65

41 used & new available from $4.08

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

Price: $37.50

64 used & new available from $2.31

State Power in Ancient China and Rome (Oxford Studies in Early Empires)

Price: $112.28

10 used & new available from $23.20

The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism

Price: $23.75

1 used & new available from $23.75

The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

Price: $43.89

25 used & new available from $5.47

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Price: $39.99

72 used & new available from $2.99

Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes

Price: $17.64

76 used & new available from $1.95

The Country of First Boys And Other Essays

Price: $17.59

27 used & new available from $13.58

The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore

Price: $19.89

1 used & new available from $19.89