I read a lot of great books this year, but during the summer I seemed to strike gold with a whole bunch of 5-star books. I thought they deserved a shoutout, as I look to the year to come!
Note: they are listed in reverse chronological order; nothing preferential about their sorting here.
Often uncomfortably relatable and brutally honest, this book was an eerie but profound reading experience.
I've read a lot of books about Scientology, but this one has a fresh angle that reads kind of like a biography and kind of like a thriller. A thoroughly unique story about a group that's been hashed over many times.
This book was insanely fun and I can't wait to reread it. It has so many elements in it that it plain shouldn't work, but Millet pulls it off, with aplomb.
I went into this book skeptical and found myself a convert at the end. Never judge a book by how often you've seen it in a used bookstore - this is another one I can't wait to reread in a few years, and spot details I missed the first time around.
I blow hot and cold on books of essays, and I don't know anything about theater, but the bravery and honesty this book has in asking questions about both her career and her life without trying to answer them, all in sharp and quick essays, was both fun and thought-provoking.
Al-Shaykh successfully reinvents an old story, with an inventive and surreal structure that immersed me so deeply that I had book coma for days. Plus, the cover is amazing.
On Goodreads, I see that this book has the fewest reviews of any book I read this year. I wish that wasn't true - this was a touching portrayal of a very thinly veiled New York that finally acknowledged some aspects of its usually glossed-over uniqueness.