Two books of note that I read last month. Both I loved, but only one that I would recommend.
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimar McBride - (goodreads link)
The story of this book is a good one, McBride searched for a publisher for 7 years without success, before a tiny Irish press published it and saw it take off and eventually win a whole bunch of awards. I had heard a bunch about it due to all of this and it was always listed as very experimental, so I finally got around to it this December. I loved it, but I'm not sure there's any way I would recommend it to someone.
The style is very fragmented in a stream-of-consciousness way. I got swept up in the broken consciousness of the narrator. The first chapters were beautiful, and things get brutal from there. The narrator and her brother (continually fighting the effects of a brain tumor) are the only bright spot, and the final scenes between the two of them are remarkable and powerful.
Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel - (goodreads link)
A collection of short stories that are all just a little bit weird and alienated. So, basically catnip for me. Here's the first story (Our Education) and you should read it. I read the whole collection in one day, and it was and enjoyable quick read.
Final Stats from 2015:
112 books read (34,096 pages)
90 fiction (74 novels - 8 story collections - 8 graphic novels)
62 published in 2014 or 2015
38 by women
33 by independent publishers (loosely defined and probably inaccurate)
(Header image is Reading Two Books by William Wegman)
