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The New York Public Library (NYPL) has unveiled its list of “Top Book Check Outs of 2015.” Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult has claimed the top spot.

Some of the titles include The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The organization has also revealed six additional lists such as “Top 10 Books in Manhattan,” “Top 10 Books in Staten Island,” and “Top Books by Branch in the Bronx.”

Here’s more from the press release: “Individual branches saw a wide variety of books checked out the most, from Henry A. Clumpton’s The Art of Intelligence Lessons from a Life in the CIA’s Clandestine Service at City Island Library in the Bronx, to Prodigal Son by Danielle Steel at South Beach Library in Staten Island…Over 20 million items, including books, are circulated throughout the NYPL system each year. Opportunities to check out items will be even greater in 2016, when hours expand at branches across the system thanks to a $43 million city funding increase for New York’s three public library systems: NYPL, Brooklyn Public Library, and Queens Library.”

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Barnes & Noble has unveiled its “Best Books of 2015″ picks.

Some of the titles include The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Last Ever After by Soman Chainani, and Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. The bookseller’s list features several different categories such as “Bestselling Books with Staying Power,” “Books That Will Make You Laugh,” and “Hoping for a Movie.”

Here’s more from the press release: “Spanning serious literature to pop culture sensations, the nation’s largest retail bookseller and a leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products has identified the books that got people talking, debating, laughing, imagining and reading through the night…Barnes & Noble has compiled this year’s lists based on proprietary criteria, most notably the trendspotting expertise of its booksellers in nearly 650 stores nationwide who converse daily with customers.”

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The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins has been named the bestselling book of 2015 on Amazon.

In addition to its bestselling books of the year list, the e-commerce company has revealed the titles that made it onto the bestselling kids & teens book of the year, and the most gifted books of the year. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School by Jeff Kinney claimed the number one spot on the kids & teens book list. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee nabbed the top spot on the most gifted book list.

Sara Nelson, the editorial director of Books and Kindle at Amazon.com, gave this statement in the press release: “What this list suggests is that Amazon customers like to be entertained—and scared! The creepy thriller The Girl on the Train is our best-selling book of the year, hands down, but Silent Scream, 14th Deadly Sin and Luckiest Girl Alive are no slouches in the category, either. It’s great to see The Nightingale perform so well; it suggests that readers continue to come back to novels about WWII, as long as they deliver stories of people and the difficult decisions that war makes them make.”

Amazon’s Top 20 Bestsellers in 2015

01. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins						11. 14th Deadly Sin (Women’s Murder Club) by James Patterson with Maxine Paetro
02. Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James						12. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School by Jeff Kinney
03. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee						13. Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest and Coloring Book by Johanna Basford
04. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah						14. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
05. Memory Man by David Baldacci						15. Adult Coloring Book: Stress Relieving Patterns by Blue Star Coloring
06. Make Me: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child						16. The Liar by Nora Roberts
07. Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham						17. Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
08. The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz						18. The Crossing by Michael Connelly
09. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson						19. The Stranger by Harlan Coben
10. Silent Scream by Angela Marsons						20. A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

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What were the most popular books at the Google Play store this year? The data team crunched the numbers and announced that E.L. James claimed the number one spot.

In total, James captured five slots on this year’s list. Some of the other titles on the list include Paper Towns by John Green, Allegiant by Veronica Roth, and The Giver by Lois Lowry.

James, Green, and Roth were all featured on the 2014 list. Below, we’ve collected free samples of all the books from the 2015 top ten for your reading pleasure.

1. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

2. Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James

3. Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

4. Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

5. American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen, and Jim DeFelice

6. The Girl on the Train: A Novel by by Paula Hawkins

7. Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn

8. The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir

9. Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle by E.L. James

10. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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The Amazon editors have revealed their picks for Best Books of 2015. According to the press release, 22 debut authors were selected for the Top 100 Books of the Year list.  Follow this link to see the full list of 100 titles.

We’ve listed the top 10 books below. In addition to a general list, the Amazon team has also put together “top 20 lists in over two-dozen categories.” Did any of your favorites make the cut?

Amazon Editors’ Top 10 Books of 2015

1. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

2. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

3. Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt

4. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

5. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

6. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

7. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

8. Purity by Jonathan Franzen

9. Hold Still by Sally Mann

10. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

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The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin RandomHouse. 2015. Library copy.

The Plot: Rachel takes the same commuter train to work and home, day in, day out. She watches outside her window, watches the buildings and houses. There is one couple in particular she watches, who she names Jess and Jason. Wondering about them and their lives, making up a story about who and what they are.

Until one day, something happens. Something that forces her from observer to participant, off the train and into the lives of those she watches.

The Good: I confess, that I'm not sure what put The Girl on the Train on my must-read list. Once it went there (and it was a long hold list from the library!) I avoided any reviews or mentions of the book, because I didn't want spoilers. Since it was being talked about in the same breadth as Gone Girl (my review here), I knew that I didn't want spoilers. I wanted to discover the book, and any twists and turns, on my own. (For another day is my perhaps contradictory stance on both not minding spoilers and also getting really annoyed when something I don't want spoiled is spoiled.)

To begin with, The Girl on the Train is nothing like Gone Girl: well, both have "girl" in the title. Are both are best-sellers with twists best discovered on one's own. But the unreliable narrator is different: Amy of Gone Girl is a deliberate manipulator of her own story, depending on her audience, and always believes she is the smartest person in the room. Rachel, the primary narrator of The Girl on the Train, is unreliable for different reasons. She doesn't know herself well enough to lie or manipulate the reader, even if at times she tells the story in a way to make herself look better. She also has problems with memory, and so she's unreliable because at times she just doesn't know.

There are three narrators, and I'll leave it to book clubs and others to discuss why these are "girls" and not women. There is Rachel, in her mid-thirties, the girl on the train looking out at life. There is Anna, a young mother, blissfully happy with her husband, her baby, her life. There is Megan, a wife and the crossroads, unsure of whether to pursue a new career or motherhood.

I picture you as a reader like myself; so here's the deal. I'll do nothing spoilery in this post, but if you want to talk spoilers, or things beyond what I do in this review, we'll do that in the comments. So reader, it's your choice, much like it was my choice to avoid reviews and news articles about the book.

The Girl on a Train is a mystery: a woman is missing. What happened to her? And why? It is also a a character study in Rachel, a woman whose life has come undone. She's of an age when she should be in a house, with a family, perhaps a career. She wants these things; she doesn't have these things; she's having more than a tough time reconciling herself to her life now. One of her few distractions, beyond drinking and wallowing in memories, is watching life outside the train window.

Anna's life of happiness is built on someone's else unhappiness, and you know what? Honestly? She doesn't care. That's right. Judge her as you want, the how of her romance and happiness started. Her daughter, her husband, isn't it what anyone wants? And she'll do what she can to keep anything from creeping into that unhappiness.

Megan doesn't quite know what she wants: she's drifting, anchored by a husband and a home but not much else. Motherhood, the next logical step for a wife in her twenties, isn't for her. She keeps her secrets and her past close and unshared with anyone, not even her husband.

These are the three who tell the story: and because it's just these three, with both limited perspectives and particular ways in which they see things, and because they are telling their stories at different times, it's a bit hard to figure things out. But the dots do connect, eventually, between the women and what they know and what they don't.

In some ways, I found this more satisfying than Gone Girl; I liked it more. At it's heart, The Girl on a Train is a mystery and I love a good mystery. It also has one of the more interesting, unapologetic alcoholics in literature; in some ways, I was reminded of Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor. And, because of their complexities and their integrity (each is true to themselves), I liked spending time with Rachel, Anna, and Megan. And while Amy amused me and kept me on her toes, I wouldn't say spending time with her was something I liked.

And yes...A Favorite Book Read in 2015. Because Rachel.

Links: NPR review; publishers' Reader's Guide; New York Time review.




Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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Paula Hawkins‘ thriller The Girl on the Train has broken Dan Brown‘s sales record for The Lost Symbol.

The novel about a commuter who gets entrenched into the lives of people she spies on from a train has been the No. 1 bestseller on Nielsen BookScan’s hardback fiction charts for the 20th week in a row, the longest stretch since the book sales monitor’s records began.

The Guardian has more:

Hawkins’ novel sold 7,280 copies last week, to keep its top position in original fiction, almost double the second-placed Pretty Girls, by Karin Slaughter. Publisher Transworld said that it has sold more than 800,000 copies since The Girl on the Train was published in January.

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The Martian by Andy Weir has debuted on the iBooks bestsellers list this week at No. 3.

Apple has released its top selling books list for paid books from iBooks in the U.S. for the week ending on June 15, 2015. Grey by E. L. James is No. 1 on the list and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is No. 2.

We’ve included Apple’s entire list after the jump.

iBooks U.S. Bestseller List – Paid Books 6/15/15

1. Grey by E L James – 9781101946350 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins – 9780698185395 – (Penguin Publishing Group) 3. The Martian by Andy Weir – 9780804139038 – (Crown/Archetype) 4. Paper Towns by John Green – 9781101010938 – (Penguin Young Readers Group) 5. Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll – 9781476789651 – (Simon & Schuster) 6. Just Say When by Kaylee Ryan – 9780986180026 – (Kaylee Ryan) 7. The Substitute by Denise Grover Swank – 9781939996237 – (DGS) 8. The Fixer by Joseph Finder – 9780698190849 – (Penguin Publishing Group) 9. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille – 9781455582310 – (Grand Central Publishing) 10. Finders Keepers by Stephen King – 9781501100130 – (Scribner) 11. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr – 9781476746609 – (Scribner) 12. Memory Man by David Baldacci – 9781455586387 – (Grand Central Publishing) 13. Fifty Shades Darker by E L James – 9781612130590 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 14. In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume – 9781101875056 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 15. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – 9781466850606 – (St. Martin’s Press) 16. Fifty Shades Freed by E L James – 9781612130613 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 17. 14th Deadly Sin by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro – 9780316408769 – (Little, Brown and Company) 18. Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James – 9781612130293 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 19. Forever by Chanda Hahn – 9780996104821 – (Chanda Hahn) 20. Alpha by Jasinda Wilder – 9781941098110 – (Seth Clarke)

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In the last two months, I’ve read three books with the word girl in the title. In December I read Gone Girl, in January I read The Girl on the Train and I just finished reading The Girl in the Photograph by Kate Riordan. I started to wonder if this was a recent trend in book titles, but […]

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Some train journeys I don't remember. Thankfully not for the same reasons as the protagonist of The Girl on the Train — in my case, I was simply too young to recall the first time I ever got onto a train (a trip from Durban to Umhlali in South Africa, I'm told). I don't remember [...]

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Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl On The Train Tell us about your latest creation: The Girl on the Train is psychological thriller which examines the fine line between normality and the loss of control wrought by addiction. It’s all about how when you peel back the veneer of everyday life, you can find something really quite disturbing just underneath… […]

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