Films:
Fiction:- Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
- Marilynne Robinson, Home
- Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (see my review here)
- Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
- Andy Weir, The Martian
Non-fiction:Here I was reading from all over the centuries so it would be even more of a stretch to venture a top five for 2015. However, the best recent-vintage books I read were Scott Prather's Christ, Power and Mammon, Robert Song's Covenant and Calling, and Amos Yong's The Bible, Disability and the Church. The best old books I read were Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics. And the most disappointing books I read this year were Scot McKnight's Fellowship of Differents and Tim Suttle's Shrink. The worst book was Heaven is for Real but it was actually better than I expected.
3 comments:
what did you think of Freedom? I really liked Franzen's The Corrections, which is the only other work I've read by him. I didn't find the characters in Freedom as compelling, I didn't care what happened to them.
I saw 'Two Days, One Night' on Netflix and loved it. Marion Cotillard did a remarkable job anchoring the film with her performance, but the script was particularly exceptional. It was a perfect and heartbreaking microcosm on everyday life.
J - I haven't read The Corrections but I plan to soon. It wasn't the characters themselves who I found compelling, but the way Franzen got into their heads (and mine) and explored this notion of 'Freedom'--showing it to be a kind of disappointing mirage. I'm happy to hear The Corrections is better. I felt like I'd have liked Freedom more if I liked any of the characters.
K - I thought so too. Not only great writing but---since the dialogue is often sparse and economical--great directing and editing too. A perfect modern parable. I watched it with my ethics class.
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