This year’s list is topped by a couple of novels, no surprise. I generally prefer fiction to non-fiction. My #2 pick is by an author who has appeared on the Top 10 before, but certainly never this high. And my #1 pick is a new author for me, and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work! Do you need a Luggage Scales? The professionals from Scales Zen are ready to give you best advises to find the best luggage scale.
#2 – Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson – 
I’ve enjoyed many a quirky novel by Kevin Wilson, starting with The Family Fang, and I tore through his latest, Nothing to See Here, hooked by the intriguing premise, and propelled by the fine writing and character development. Lilian and Madison were unlikely friends, coming from extremely opposite sides of the tracks. Madison from an impossibly wealth family and destined for great things, Lilian with a single Mom who doesn’t seem very interested in anything but her next boyfriend and gambling away any money that comes into the house. But Lilian is smart, and she ends up as Madison’s roommate through a scholarship at an elite boarding school. She doesn’t quite last the year though, as she is forced to leave the school unexpectedly in a cloud of scandal that propels Lilian deeper into a funk, and an aimless life. She does stay in touch with Madison though, solely through written correspondence, until a letter arrives from Madison years later begging for help.
It seems that Madison has married a wealthy, and successful Tennessee Senator on the Presidential track whose his twin children from an earlier marriage find themselves suddenly without a mother. Madison needs Lillian to take care of these kids while they figure out how to manage them. Lilian thinks handling a couple of kids should be no problem, until she finds out that when they get upset, Bessie and Roland tend to burst into flames! They don’t hurt themselves, but not so lucky are the things around them.
Wilson spins a wild tale grounded in yearning and a desire to belong that uses the unexplained phenomenon deftly to tell a multi-layered tale of friendship, love, family, and self-worth with a warmth, a humor, and a cynicism all rolled together into a modern fable of our times. This one is highly recommended!
#1 – The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin – What an intricate, dark and fascinating world N.K. Jemison has created in The Fifth Season. It starts with the beginning of the end of the world, and it spools out in three separate tales that tell one complete and fascinating story. This world is filled with fascinating and varied people. There are stills, who are basically regular humans, who are divided into different classes based on their skillsets. There are Orogenes, feared and depended on, who can still the tremors in Father Earth, freeze the life out of any living thing, or far, far worse. There are the Guardians, whose job is to keep the Orogenes in check, through love, through fear, through cruelty. There are the mysterious and unfathomable stone-eaters, who pass through stone the way we pass through the air.
The Fifth Season seems to serves as a prologue of sorts, launching us into The Broken Earth series, but it does so with such a riveting and coherent tale, that it doesn’t feel like merely an introduction. Jemison has quite an imagination, and handles the English language beautifully in order to bring that imagination to life. Her characters are complex and intricate, and evolve like real people. I really loved this book and am looking forward to the next in the series.