It’s that time again - the annual Best of the Year Lists. 2015 was the first year I’ve used Goodreads to catalog, rate, and track my reading, which makes compiling my Best Books list a little more interesting than in past years, when I’ve simply perused the pages of my reading journal for those entries I’ve starred as favorites.

My personal criteria for a Best Book classification? One that captures my emotional interest; one that has appealing, believable, fully developed characters; one with an interesting plot or story line; one that makes me feel “writerly” (to quote my friend Melissa- in other words, a book that makes me itch to get to my own pen and paper and start writing myself). The final requirement, and probably the most important one, is that it must be a book I can imagine myself re-reading, either in a year, five years, or even 10. Even as was writing this list, I felt the urge to go downstairs to my shelves and grab each one of these to re-read.