Spend your vacation days reading the best books that came out in 2015

As part of our massive Year in Review issue, we published a ranked list of the top 10 books published in 2015 … but that's just one man's opinion. (Burrow Press publisher Ryan Rivas, in fact.) Here A+C editor Jessica Bryce Young adds her own list of 11 don't-miss-'em books (not ranked, because what kind of monster can actually rank books?? Oh, sorry, Ryan) and we jumble them up into alphabetical order.

Happy reading, happy shopping, happy holidays; please buy local.

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After the Tall Timber, collected nonfiction by Renata Adler (New York Review Books, 528 pages)

Fans of Joan Didion who've worn out their copies of The White Album should prick up their ears. Like Didion's, Adler's work ranges from reportage to essays to fiction (her short novel Speedboat, recently re-released, is a gas); like Didion, Adler possesses cool It-Girl swag; unlike Didion, she's somehow been forgotten by history. Don't sleep on this gateway drug of a book – genius is not too strong a word. —JBY

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, memoir by William Finnegan (Penguin Press, 464 pages)

The veteran war reporter's surfing memoir is a dreamy evocation of life on the beach and in the waves, but by "dreamy," I don't mean "hazy"; I mean that preternaturally clear-eyed total recall of physical detail that seems only to exist in dreams. That Finnegan managed to remember so much about the coasts and tides and coral and salt of his childhood is remarkable, and perhaps that fierce attention is what kept him alive through assignments in Bosnia, Nicaragua and the Sudan. —JBY

Between the World and Me, memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 163 pages)

From growing up in Baltimore, where religion and school offered no more solace than the streets, to finding his intellectual footing at Howard University, Coates weaves an unflinching examination of our country’s racist tradition with the story of his coming-of-age and lifelong intellectual journey. —RR

Chelsea Girls, a novel by Eileen Myles (Ecco, 288 pages)

The re-release of Myles' seminal novel is a momentous event. In Chelsea Girls, the woman who became a leading light of the 1970s downtown lesbian poetry scene "novelizes" her coming of age. But its appeal isn't limited to those who identify as lesbians, poets or old enough to have been alive in the '60s; it's a fresh, funny, picaresque tale of scrappy survival. —JBY

City on Fire, a novel by Garth Risk Hallberg (Knopf, 944 pages)

An extravagant doorstop of a novel limning the 1977 New York City blackout, perhaps its reach exceeds its grasp. But Hallberg's vision – and it is a feat of vision; he wasn't born yet when the events he relates took place – carries the reader along on a wave of word-drunkenness that's difficult to resist. —JBY

The Country of Ice Cream Star, a novel by Sandra Newman (Ecco, 592 pages)

Not since first reading my cherished Riddley Walker have I enjoyed genre fiction so much. Newman spins a story from the dystopian future (who didn't, this year?) told in an invented language (hey now) that takes time to grasp, but is worth the early slow going. Ice Cream is one of my favorite characters of the past decade; she still lives in my head. —JBY

Delicious Foods, a novel by James Hannaham (Little, Brown & Co., 384 pages)

The devastating story of a woman who loses her husband to racist violence, and of her son, who loses his mother to crack addiction. Each chapter shifts perspective – following its players’ inner thoughts and motivations in rich and sympathetic details – between the mother, the son and crack cocaine. That’s right: One of the narrators of the book is crack. —RR

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion: The Poetry of Sportstalk, edited by Jeff Parker and Pasha Malla (Featherproof Books, 120 pages)

The perfect book for that sliver on the Venn diagram where poetry lovers and sports fans overlap, this anthology spins the post-game interviews of countless athletes into striking works of “found poetry.” Re-examine Zinedine Zidane’s World-Cup headbutt, or – my personal favorite – an account of the Malice at the Palace and the player formerly known as Ron Artest. —RR

Fates and Furies, a novel by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books, 391 pages)

Groff’s prose is so incredibly lush that it almost doesn’t matter what she writes about. This particular beauty follows the marriage of Lotto, a golden boy from Florida water-bottling wealth, and his muse Mathilde, whose mysterious past is not revealed until the second half of the book, when everything we thought we knew about the last 200 pages changes. —RR

Get in Trouble, stories by Kelly Link (Random House, 353 pages)

From the slow and moody “I Can See Right Through You” (a ghost story set in Apopka) to the breakneck formal experimentation of “Valley of the Girls” (which feels like riding a roller coaster) reading this collection is an exhilarating experience. —RR