2015 has been an utterly rewarding Year of the Book. In all, I read 104
novels, works of non-fiction, short stories and one collection of poetry Waiting for the Past by Australia’s brilliant Les Murray, surely one of the most down-to-earth yet potent poets anywhere. January got off to a great start with books like Patrick Modiano’s Suspended Sentences and The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber. February had The Girl on the 
Train, Paula Hawkins’ international sensation as well as Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Thread and Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X. March brought Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, April had Atticus Lish’s superb Preparation for the Next Life as well as Laline Paull’s original and quirky The Bees. In May there were treasures like Asne Seierstad’s penetrating One of Us and Amitav Ghosh’s ravishing Flood of Fire.
June I raced through books like The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, 
My Brilliant Friend the first of Elena Ferrante’s quartet, One Life by the extraordinarily talented Kate Grenville and Falling in Love by a favourite, Donna Leon. Highlight of July was Ta-Nehisi Coates’ challenging Between the World and Me. In August it was the publishing double-whammy of Haruki Murakami’s Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973 
released together. September saw the beautiful The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop and both US President Barak Obama and I went for Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies. November brought Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking and Adam Johnstone’s Fortune Smiles, two of my 2015 favourites. My reading year has concluded on a huge high with Michel Houellebecq’s typically clever Submission, Tony Birch’s evocative Ghost River and Charlotte Wood’s daring The Natural Way of Things.
I’d set myself the task of trying to broaden my literary geographic horizons and by year’s end had read books by authors from 23 different countries. Although my final list was still heavily skewed to authors from America, Britain (22 each) and Australia (21) I also enjoyed books by authors from Japan (6), Italy (4), Finland, France, Germany, India and Israel (2) and one each by authors from Colombia, the Congo, Denmark, Holland, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Zimbabwe.
One unexpected joy was the number of wonderful collections of short 
stories that were published. I was not a fan of the genre feeling but the quality of this year’s collections resulted in a complete convertion. In particular I have found myself going back again and again to Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann and Adam Johnston’s brilliantly inventive collection Fortune Smiles. Read on for the full list of books. Tomorrow I’ll post my Top 10.