Books and Movies - Best of 2015

So the insanity of last year (finishing out pregnancy and work, parenthood, and moving back to California) didn't leave me much time to read or watch as much as I have in years past. However, I still wanted to share my list of favorite escapes in 2015.

Books
Alas, I only read four books and a play in 2015 (other than the Bible and parts of a breastfeeding book and sleep book which have been my newborn survival bibles) so I'll just give you my take on each.

• Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee - I did not hate it as much as many people did. In fact, I didn't hate it at all. Taking into account all the circumstances surrounding the work, I thought it was a good companion piece to Mockingbird, and I kind of liked that Atticus was made more human and didn't remain the bastion of virtue that he has been venerated as.
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr - Loved it! The storyline was not crazy interesting but it was absolutely beautifully written and I really enjoyed it.
• Macbeth - I read this since I never really read it in high school. It was good but I'm really, really bad at understanding Shakespeare.
• Lila by Marilynne Robinson - I loved this one too. I read Gilead a few years back and really enjoyed it, although I didn't remember much of it. (I blame N. The sleep deprivation has killed brain cells and memory!) Very well-written and the title character was perfectly realized.
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - So I "liked" this book in that it sucked me in and I read through the whole thing in one evening, but I mostly didn't like it because it was crazy depressing and the characters were very flat and one-dimensional.

Movies

Again, there are so so so many movies I missed last year but here's the best of what I saw.

• The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden - Really interesting and crazy story, especially after having visited the Galapagos last year.
• Snowpiercer - I could write a whole blog post on this one because I actually found the story to be a great analogy of a person's journey to faith. Even though the super violent story of a death train traveling the world in the end of days doesn't seem to scream Gospel truth, the more I thought about it the stronger the analogy became. It wasn't an original thought, I got the initial seed of the connection through a Gospel Coalition blog post, but anyway, I enjoyed the movie and the thought exercise that went with it. 
• The Hundred-Foot Journey
• Virunga
• The Machinist - We'd never seen it and finally did. It was dark and creepy and sad but a great movie nonetheless.
• Parallels - I feel like this story would have been better served as a tv series than a film, and you could definitely see its low-budgetness coming through in a lot of places, but this sci-fi story made for a fun movie.
• Selma
• Interstellar - I wish I had seen this in the theater.
• Tai-Chi Master - Super fun and accessible kung fu movie with Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh.
• What We Do in the Shadows - Quirky and even a little lame, but still fun.
• Sarah's Key - This movie was so much more traumatic to watch now that I'm a parent. It was kind of a run-of-the-mill World War II film but it was good and it was the first time I saw a movie in a completely different way just because I have a kid now.
• Pump - Lots and lots of spin but some very thought-provoking concepts too.
• Shaun the Sheep Movie - We love the Shaun the Sheep episodes and the movie did not disappoint. There is no spoken dialogue (other than unintelligible animal and human noises) and yet the story and how it was told was better than most movies out there!
• Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Even though we might be reaching a saturation point with the MI movies, I really enjoyed this one. It kinda kept me guessing as to where it would go and it was just a fun movie with a decently intelligent storyline.

Here's to hoping I can play a little catch-up in 2016!

(N edit: "Good luck with that, Mom!")