I have run out of books to read! I need a winter reading list.
Every single night of my reading life (beginning at age 3) I have read a book in bed before going to sleep. And when the winter comes there may even be time to read a book in front of the fire in the afternoons and I will be travelling to Australia and New Zealand this winter so I read in the airports and the airplanes and taxis and buses and trains and in the backyards of my children. So I need heaps of books. I know you read. What book did you read this year that you loved enough to recommend.
If you are new to the Fellowship here are the previous lists.
2012 books
2013 books
2014 (what happened to 2014?) I cannot find it. 
Anyway – it is that time again – though there is no actual time for this list except that I am out of a book and need some guidance. And you are all readers! Will you share?
To start the ball rolling I have two recommendations from The Fellowship. Books that have come out this year and I was lucky enough to read.
The first is a recipe book written by John Amici : Recipes from The Bartolini Kitchens. This is not only an extraordinary collection of one families recipes cooked by the Bartolini sisters and their families and recorded by their son and nephew but also a collection of stories about an Italian family settling and cooking and flourishing in America. This is the story of the American Dream with food.
The second book I would like to recommend is by Melissa DeCarlo. The Art of Crash Landing. It is a novel of a young woman named Mattie who finds herself pregnant and lost and launches herself out into the world with much gusto and determination and not a little trepidation. This book charges along at breakneck speed, a wonderful read. And what I liked the most about Mattie and the collection of characters that we meet as we read this book ,is how REAL they are. How easy it was for me to empathise with the people that people these pages. Loved it.
Both of these are available on Amazon. 
I have a few more that I will tell you about when I write up the list.
Now: How about you?
Do you have any books you have read lately that we might want to read? I love a good book.
From your recommendations I shall create the 2015 list of books recommended by The Fellowship of the Farmy – for us all to print and share. In the past I have given away our lists as Christmas presents to my friends and family all of whom love to read. And if you are a reader of this blog you are one of The Fellowship so everyone can join in.
What are you reading? What have you written? What should I be reading?
Love celi
PS. I will not answer the comments today so you do not have to scroll down too far to add your own. But I will be reading and compiling all day! Thank you!
The Kitchen's Garden 
113 responses to “The Winter Book List 2015”
I, too, loved All the Light We Cannot See and all of Mary Wesley’s novels. The best book I have read this year though is The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks.
The Master Butcher’s Singing Club
Orphan Train
The Glassblower Trilogy
Anybook by Ursula Hegi
Book Thief
The Hurricane Sisters by Dorthea Benton Frank and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins were two good ones I have read this year. Can’t wait to see the complete Fellowship list!
Oh, dear Celi, that is me a challenge. I’m so sad to have to say that I do not read much anymore. I mean books. I read a lot in the internet, but seldom books. Cannot concentrate long on them anymore. Nevertheless my house is full of books, lots of bookshelfs with no more space on them at all. Even in the basement I’ve stored my books. Maybe that’s why I don’t read – it’s too much. And I cannot even let go one of these books, collected in a lifetime. Difficult matter. – Well, I read a book this year – maybe it’s out of challenge for you and the Fellowship, it’s: King Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. I’m sure you all know these knight’s stories, that I read for the first time and enjoyed very much. I even fell in love with that extraordinary lovely knight Sir Tristan. – Well and I’ve read another nice book (last year?) – and that’s for you Celi: One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern, a young Irish novelist. It’s told in such a lovely way, I enjoyed it very much. It’s about a young journalist who has got a very special and sensible project ot solve. Heart wrenching and heart warming. It’s a thick book for the plane. Not the newest on the book market and maybe you know already… I checked: It appeared in 2012.
Hope that helps….
Love the shot with the cat. – Have a nice day, Celi.
Oh, I indeed read another one this year :-), a very old one, but lovely: Charles Terrot, The Angel, Who Pawned Her Harp. Must have been written in the Fifties. Came to me by accident. Maybe someone has seen the film (comedy)?
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
The Feast Nearby: How I Lost My Job, Buried a Marriage, and Found My Way by Keeping Chickens, Foraging, Preserving, Bartering, and Eating Locally (All on $40 a Week)
by Robin Mather
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
The Rosie Project by Graeame Simsion
Oh I agrees with so many of the previous recommendations. Looking back at what I have read recently, Circling the Sun by Paula McClain about Beryl Markham; Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery about an octogenerian hiking the Appalachian Trail; and Orphan Train by Christine Baker Kline. Paula McClain also wrote a novel about Ernest Hemingway’s first? (maybe second wife) and their time in Spain and France. I can’t wait to see the list!
I recently discovered the books of Fiona MacIntosh: The Lavender Keeper and The French Promise are absorbing reading. Convincing characters cover the troubled times before, during and after the second world war mainly set in rural France and eventually progressing to Tasmania. Adventure, suspense, history, and romance all figure in these beautifully written books.
E njoy the feast of reading that will emerge from your survey.
love,
ViV sitting beside a roaring fire while the storm rages outside.
xox
I love the Outlander series of books by Diana Gabaldin. They’re not new, but I am on my second round of reading them.
Mommy often reads my piglove blog and then me and Houdini have started a journal about our life here at the Hotel Thompson. Mom also loves to read anything by Heather Graham – spooky but very interesting! XOXO – Bacon
Firefly Lane is by the same author as The Nightingale. They are very different types of work, but both are excellent.
The Space Trilogy by CS Lewis is fun to read.
and pardon the business name… too lazy this morning to log out and log back in to my personal acct.
The God of Small Things by Roi, A Fine Balance by Mistry, The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver, Animals’ People by Sinha, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Barbery, A Little Life by Yanagihara—-Let us never “evolve” beyond holding books in our hands.
I just finished Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal, a native Minnesotan. This is a novel, with a few recipes tossed in, that is rooted in Minnesota. This book is unlike any I’ve ever read. It’s about family and food and life journeys and relationships. A great read, which I devoured in less than a week. When the book ended, I wished that it hadn’t. That’s the best endorsement I can give a book of fiction.
I second this! I read Kitchens of the Great Midwest recently too — an excellent book.
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
The War That Saved My Life by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley
Serena by Ron Rash
The Martian by Andy Weir
🙂
I do not comment often, but read the posts faithfully. Most of my list are older selections, and, with a couple of exceptions, are worth reading multiple times (at least, they are well-worn, old friends on my book shelf): The Far Pavilions (MM Kaye), Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series (books 1-3, later books not so much), The Crimson Petal and the White (M. Faber), The English Patient (Ondaatje), and Cold Mountain (C. Frazer).
A couple of newer (well, newer to me) selections for mystery lovers are Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Clare Ferguson mystery series (set in New England, with a deliciously irreverant female pastor as the MC), and for Jane Austen fans, Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen mystery series (Barron captures the voice of Austen perfectly, so I have to remind myself often that Austen did not actually write them).
Thanks for compiling this list. I read back over 2012 and 2013 and now have quite a growing TBR list which I look forward to expanding even further with the 2015 list.
I love Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen mysteries as well.