All About Books discussion

Around this time of year I like to look back and reflect on my reading. In spite of difficult personal circumstances, this was a good year of reading for me. I read some unusual and wonderful books because of the community of AAB readers. Post your best reads of 2014 here.

Here are my picks, in no particular order, for the best of 2014:


Fiction
1. The Blazing World
2. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
3. A Prayer for Owen Meany
4. Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
5. The Blind Man's Garden
6. Thirty Girls
7. Middlemarch
8. S.
9. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
10. The Towers of Trebizond

Short Stories
1. Bark: Stories
2. Cheating at Canasta
3. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
4. Music Through the Floor
5. Vanishing and Other Stories
6. The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq
7. Death Is Not an Option: Stories
8. Revenge
9. One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
10. Other People We Married


Nonfiction
1. Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks
2. The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It
3. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War
4. The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World
5. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
6. The Shadow of the Sun
7. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
8. The Wives of Henry VIII
9. A Room of One's Own
10. A Grief Observed

In another group I belong to, we add our favorite each month. Here is what I listed there through November:

January -My Mother's Secret: A Novel Based on a True Holocaust Story and A Town Like Alice

February - No real favorite so I listed two for January
March -The Street Sweeper
April -My Notorious Life
May -All the Light We Cannot See
June -Neverhome: A Novel
July - Code Name Verity
August -We Are Called to Rise
andThe Hand That First Held Mine
September -Evergreen
October -Rose Under Fire
November -Lila


To this list I would also add:

Time and Again
The Invention of Wings

Comparatively difficult to choose this year compared to last; last year I was rather ambivalent about the books I read (I read a lot but couldn't quite connect with many of the books) but this year I've read quite a lot of books that really gripped me.

Of those, Neil MacGregor's Germany: Memories of a Nation would definitely be right up at the top, it was a tremendous read and absolutely fascinating, but close behind would be The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Oh, and The Herring Gull's World by Nikolaas Tinbergen because it gave me a deeper appreciation for observing wildlife behaviour, and Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey; I've come rather late to this book (and have never seen the film), but I was amazed but also appalled by it. Having read that I want to read Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe by Jane Goodall and a while back I found a secondhand copy that Jane had inscribed for a student.

Paul, when I was in high school, Jane Goodall was my idol. I took an anthropology class, and ever since then I've been interested in primate research. Steven Colbert recently did a great interview with Goodall. Here's the link:

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos...

I hope it makes you smile, and I hope you're finally feeling better!

Angela wrote: "In another group I belong to, we add our favorite each month. Here is what I listed there through November:

January -My Mother's Secret: A Novel Based on a True Holocaust Story and..."

Angela, I really like this idea of choosing a favorite each month. I may start that myself for 2015. Thanks for the idea!

My best reads are Ready Player One, The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza, David Baldacci's the Finisher was a good one and many more.

Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Hard Blue Sky
The Condor Passes
The Member of the Wedding
Pereira Maintains
Bel-Ami
An Officer and a Spy
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Just finished Euphoria and gave that five stars too.

were in my opinion totally amazing, so five star books. Keep in mind that these 1l are of 142 books read this year. I have read quite a few very, very good book, that is four star books, but they are not listed here.

If you are curious to see those just go to this link of my books read this year: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

My 5 star reads this year:

Bel Canto
The Night Circus
Code Name Verity
Burial Rites
Great Expectations
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Great Gatsby

Evelyn, I agree about Bel Canto and Burial Rites!

Ready Player One
The Light Between Oceans
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sweetland
Some Luck
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
Wayfaring Stranger
Time of the Locust

I will add my favorite books at the end of December or in January. Perhaps I will read something good till the end of the year.

Tough one, I will definitely come back to this one towards the end of the month like dely. I always love looking back at my favourite books at the end of the year.

Me too Alannah, I have to vonsider more carefully

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
The Speckled Monster
Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy
A Fatal Grace
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924
Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

I have a handful of books left to read this year, but from the 123 that I've already read, I've only rated 3 of them 5 stars -
Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford
Middlemarch
All Quiet on the Western Front
I have another 30 books that were 4 star reads, which for me means I really liked them, but didn't find them amazing for one reason or another. Too many to list but I've read some great memoirs, non-fiction and discovered that I love Hemingway, who knew!

My stats show a surprising number of 5 star books for me this year -- until I looked more closely and discovered that more than half of them were rereads! If I exclude rereads and concentrate on novels (no poetry, plays, etc.) then my 5 star novels this year are (in reverse chronology):

All Quiet on the Western Front
Porterhouse Blue
My Cousin Rachel
The Day of the Triffids
Little Dorrit

Here are the others:
Poetry:
White Egrets by Derek Walcott
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot

Plays:
Travesties by Tom Stoppard
Loot by Joe Orton
The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert

Nonfiction:
Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.

reread novels
Oliver Twist
The Disorderly Knights, The Ringed Castle, and Checkmate from Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series
The Phantom Tollbooth
Murder at the Vicarage
The Maltese Falcon
Something Fresh

Terri wrote: "Paul, when I was in high school, Jane Goodall was my idol. I took an anthropology class, and ever since then I've been interested in primate research. Steven Colbert recently did a great interview ..."

I'm looking forward to reading her book Terri. Unfortunately I can't watch that video, doesn't seem to allow it for people in the UK.

Paul, I have a question about chimpanzees and Goodall. Who and when was it discovered that chimpanzees do in fact behave aggressively? I just could not find an answer to this. My question arose when I read the book Brazzaville Beach. Thank you for your help.

Sorry Chrissie, I really don't know - I don't know much about chimps.

OK.

http://www.history.com/speeches/jane-...

Perhaps that link might help?

Here there are my pick:
- The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- Silk
- Suite francese
- Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
- Daughter of Fortune
- Demian
- Vi racconto l'astronomia
- Sweet Dreams: A Novel
- I Am Legend

Chinook wrote: "http://www.history.com/speeches/jane-...

Perhaps that link might help?"

Chinook, thank you for the link, but it only points out that it is important to study chimpanzee aggression so that perhaps we an understand our own. There is no date and no information referring to which studies have shown such aggression. I appreciate your help though.

Leslie wrote: "My stats show a surprising number of 5 star books for me this year -- until I looked more closely and discovered that more than half of them were rereads! If I exclude rereads and concentrate on n..."

@Leslie, I love Derek Walcott - he's amazing!

@Paola, I very much enjoyed Silk as well. I don't think I Am Legend was five stars for me, but what an awesome ending! None of the movie adaptions has done the least bit of justice to it.

@Evelyn, I loved The Night Circus; I would have even if it wasn't a gift from my partner's best friend. Beautiful, magical language, and it left me with such a wonderful feeling of happiness. So much good literature is beautiful but depressing - nice to have some counterbalances!

My 5-star reads for 2014 are:-

Pereira Declares: A Testimony
An Officer and a Spy
The Painted Veil
Anna Karenina
Homage to Catalonia
The Metamorphosis
Stone in a Landslide

Favorites this year
The Goldfinch
An Officer and a Spy
The Martian (I'm giving this to 4 people for Xmas)
The Round House
Driftless

Robin, yay for An Officer and a Spy. I read that this year and gave it five too.

I thought about it and there are only 3 books I want to mention but they are really worth.

1) The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels by Ágota Kristóf
2) The Life Before Us: "Madame Rosa" by Romain Gary
3) Il sangue di san Gennaro by Sándor Márai and it's a pity there isn't an English translation. I loved also his Embers but Il sangue di San Gennaro has more things inside to think about.

Once Upon a Christmas Miracle is by far the best book I have read this year. It kept me wanting to know more, and I couldn't put it down until I was done!

It has great reviews on Amazon and it lives up to those reviews. It was pretty inexpensive of a book!

http://www.amazon.com/Once-Christmas-...

Dely, I can get Casanova in Bolzanoby Sándor Márai, so I will try that. Have you perhaps read it?

Chrissie wrote: "Dely, I can get Casanova in Bolzanoby Sándor Márai, so I will try that. Have you perhaps read it?"

No, by Marai I've read only Embers and Il sangue di San Gennaro. I hope that also this one about Casanova will have his wonderful prose and deep insight of the topic he wants to discuss in the book. Embers was about friendship and love and Il sangue... was about life, redemption, emigration and a lot of thought provoking and important topics.

@Greg Up to me I Am Legend is 5 stars only because of the end, which gives to the book a deep meaning.

Dely, I think I will at least give it a try since I have wanted to read Sándor Márai a long time. I have been in Bolzano so that could be an added plus.

Chrissie wrote: "Dely, I think I will at least give it a try since I have wanted to read Sándor Márai a long time. I have been in Bolzano so that could be an added plus."

I hope it's as good as his others and that you'll like it. Will wait for your review.

My top books so far this year (the only ones I gave 5* to) were:

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - so funny!
Eleanor & Park - so lovely.
My Name Was Judas - made you think. I always wonder about the other side of the story :)
Looking for Alaska - so sad.

Paola wrote: "@Greg Up to me I Am Legend is 5 stars only because of the end, which gives to the book a deep meaning."

It is a fantastic ending Paola!

dely wrote: "Chrissie wrote: "Dely, I think I will at least give it a try since I have wanted to read Sándor Márai a long time. I have been in Bolzano so that could be an added plus."

I hope it's as good as hi..."

OK, but first I have to read what I have already purchased.

I am a person that loves to read YA ficti i n books, and my favorites this year were:
1.The Divergent Series
2.Vampire academy series
3.Shatter me series
4.The fault in our stars
5.The selection series
Those are sone really good books that I gotto read this year.

Nonfiction: Tom's River by Dan Fagin, The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku


Fiction: Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, Sins of Our Fathers by Shawn Lawrence Otto


Short Stories: Stealing the Fire by Jane Ciabattari

Here is another book that I still think about a lot:Lindbergh. Very, very good. I gave it four stars but maybe I should have given it more!

Here are the books that received Five Stars from me:

1. Death Comes for the Archbishop
2. To the Lighthouse
3. The Rings of Saturn
4. The Emigrants
5. Gunnar's Daughter
6. Heidi
7. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
8. Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays
9. God's Silence

Harry Bernstein, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers
Albert Camus, The Plague
Stephen King,  11/22/63
Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Israel Joshua Singer, La famiglia Karnowski
Ernest Cline,  Ready Player One
Halldor Laxness, Independent People
Lisa Lee, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Catherine Dunne, La metà di niente
Francesco Piccolo,  Il desiderio di essere come tutti
George Gissing, New Grub Street

Best Fresh Reads of 2014:

(fiction)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

(non-fiction)
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

(poetry)
My Alexandria by Mark Doty
The Speed Of Darkness by Muriel Rukeyser

There are just too many 5 star re-reads to list them all - the reason I re-read many of them is because I knew I loved them. But a few re-reads that really stood out as exceptional:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

Oh my, I was forgetting other 5 stars book of this year:

Job by Joseph Roth
Walden by Henry David Thoreau

There are a lot more I've liked but rated only 4 stars and I won't add them.

Greg wrote: "Best Fresh Reads of 2014:

(fiction)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber..."

Oh, both the Ishiguro and the Orson Scott Card are on my TBR -- I will move them higher now!

Leslie :)

LauraT wrote: "Harry Bernstein, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers
Albert Camus, The Plague
Stephen King,  11/22/63
Alan Bradley, [book:The Sweetnes..."


Laura, I too love "The Plague"!