I read 103 books in 2014, and here are my 15 favorites (plus
a few runner ups that nearly made the list). They’re posted here in no
particular order. It’s a mixture of fiction, nonfiction, YA, and graphic
novels. I’d love to hear some of your favorite reads from this year!
BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott
Lamott’s poignant and practical book mixes memoir with
advice for writers. The title comes from an anecdote about her brother who was
assigned a school project about birds and waited until the night before it was
due to start work. Her father’s advice to the panicked boy was to take it “bird
by bird.” And that’s exactly how writers get things done. Rarely do you have a
Jack Kerouac stream-of-consciousness days-long marathon with the end result
being a complete book. It’s usually a long, daunting process to take the idea
in your head and bring it into the world. Taking it step by step, word by word,
bird by bird – that’s how you get there.
CALLING ME HOME by Julie Kibler
I was drawn to this book because of the tantalizing quote on
its cover: “If Calling Me Home were a young woman, her grandmother would be To
Kill A Mockingbird, her sister would be The Help, and her cousin would be The
Notebook.” This is an assessment I found to be totally accurate. The story
skips back and forth between present-day Texas, where an old woman asks her
hair dresser to drive her to a funeral in Cincinnati, and 1930s Kentucky where
a young white woman falls in love with the black son of her family’s housekeeper.
Slowly as the book unfolds you see how the two stories intertwine, and it’s not
necessarily in the way you’d suspect.
THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater
Every November all the islanders of Thisby gather for the
Scorpio Races – as men mount the powerful and deadly water horses for a contest
that offers as its prize wealth and prestige… if you can survive to the finish
line. Stiefvater’s spellbinding novel follows the perspectives of Sean
Kendrick, returning champion from past races, and young Puck Connolly, the first
girl ever to enter the race. Each is driven by compelling desperation – Puck’s
parents are dead and she and her siblings need money to keep their house and
put food on the table; Sean’s powerful and influential employer owns the one thing
Sean cares about most in this world, the water horse Corr, and the money from
this race combined with past years’ winnings would be enough to buy Corr and
start a new life elsewhere. This is a beautiful mishmash of action, mythology,
and romance. Unlike anything else I’ve read.
THE GOOD LUCK OF RIGHT NOW by Matthew Quick
Written as a series of letters to the actor Richard Gere,
this novel from the author of Silver Linings Playbook tells the story of
38-year-old Bartholomew Neil in the wake of his mother’s death. After finding a
“Free Tibet” letter from Gere hidden in his mother’s underwear drawer,
Bartholomew thinks this must be a sign. In her final days his mom often called
him “Richard”—there must be some cosmic connection. Maybe the spirit of Richard
Gere is meant to help him find his biological father? Over the course of these
letters, we see Bartholomew’s attempts to find a new life and family. “Jung and
the Dalai Lama, philosophy and faith, alien abduction and cat telepathy, the
Catholic Church and the mystery of women are all explored in his soul-baring
epistles.” (Thanks Amazon!) Joining him on this quest are a struggling priest,
a “Girlbrarian,” and her feline-loving, foul-mouthed brother. Together they
drive a rented Ford Focus to Canada to see the cat Parliament and find
Bartholomew’s father… but along the way they discover so much more.
THE GOOGLIZATION OF EVERYTHING (AND WHY WE SHOULD WORRY) by
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Vaidhyanathan, a professor of Media Studies at the
University of Virginia, writes a thought-provoking book about one of the most
powerful and influential companies of the internet age, its impact on society,
and its attempts at global expansion. Despite the dire wording of the title,
this isn’t a book about how “evil” Google is. (After all, Google’s
self-proclaimed motto is “Don’t be evil.”) But it does ask important questions
and raise some red flags, while encouraging readers to take responsibility for
what we know and how we know it. Insightful, provocative, and important. I highly
recommend it.
THROUGH THE WOODS by Emily Carroll
Nope, this has nothing to do with Sondheim’s musical Into
the Woods or its film adaptation. Instead, this graphic novel tells five
chilling tales of what happens to those who brave the path that leads…you
guessed it… through the woods. Carroll’s stunning visuals perfectly merge with
her spare, sinister prose to create stories that will swallow you whole, like a
wolf’s sharp maw, like the twisted branches of some dark fairy-tale forest…
I’ve always loved Gilgamesh, the world’s first superhero,
and Mitchell renders his story in the type of potent, poetic words that roll
over your tongue like jewels.
THE ART OF ASKING by Amanda Palmer
Amanda Palmer is a polarizing figure. You either hate her,
love her, or don’t know who she is. I fall in the middle category. But even if
you’re one of the first or last, this book is worth a read. It raises questions
about art and commerce that are extremely timely given the nature of the
digital age and the rise of crowdfunding. But her central premise, the idea of
asking (as opposed to begging or demanding), is not just about art but about
people: relationships with friends, family, lovers, and even strangers. Palmer
bares her soul and asks big questions, and I enjoyed the intimate look into her
life and thought process. Whatever you feel about her, I think this book is
important and I’m glad it exists.
LAST STORIES AND OTHER STORIES by William T Vollmann
This was one of the densest and most challenging books I
read this year, but also probably the best. Dozens of short stories—some of
them not very short, but all of them truly astounding. From the book’s
description on Amazon: “A Bohemian farmer’s dead wife returns to him, and their love endures,
but at a gruesome price. A geisha prolongs her life by turning into a cherry
tree. A journalist, haunted by the half-forgotten killing of a Bosnian couple,
watches their story, and his own wartime tragedy, slip away from him. A dying
American romances the ghost of his high school sweetheart while a homeless
salaryman in Tokyo animates paper cutouts of ancient heroes… Are ghosts
memories, fantasies, or monsters? Is there life in death? Vollmann has always
operated in the shadowy borderland between categories, and these eerie tales,
however far-flung their settings, all focus on the attempts of the living to
avoid, control, or even seduce death. Vollmann’s stories will transport readers
to a fantastical world where love and lust make anything possible.”
Newman is a screenwriter for many television shows (“That
70’s Show,” “How I Met Your Mother,” and “Chuck” are among her credits), and
she brings her trademark comedic tone to this account that’s part memoir, part
travelogue. Over the course of her twenties, thirties, and forties, friends
kept getting married and having children. Instead of joining their ranks,
Newman bought plane tickets, engaged in numerous international escapades, made
friends, and fell in and out of love with men all around the globe. “I say that
plane tickets replacing cats might be the best evidence of women’s progress as
a gender,” she writes, in reference to the cat-lady stereotype. I thoroughly
enjoyed hearing of her adventures, and felt inspired to have some of my own.
I struggled to come up with a
summary that fully encapsulates this strange and haunting book, but Amazon
managed just fine. So here’s their take on it: “Seven stories of
passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined—this
is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice. An archaeologist
who unearths a mysterious artifact, an airman who finds himself far from home,
a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a Viking: the seven stories in this
compelling novel all take place on the remote Scandinavian island of
Blessed where a curiously powerful plant that resembles a dragon grows. What
binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this
idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle of
midwinterblood?” I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
.
HYPERBOLE AND A HALF by Allie Brosh
Internet phenomenon Allie Brosh translates her blog posts
and accompanying illustrations from the screen to the page. It’s cliché to say,
“I laughed! I cried!” but the truth is, I did both. Brosh’s silly visual style
goes well with hilarious stories about dogs and weird revelations about her
childhood, but it also works to startling effect when illustrating the everyday
realities of her struggle with depression (“Adventures in Depression” and
“Depression Part Two”) and helping us understand in one fell swoop both the
heights of glory and the depths of shame (“The God of Cake”). Definitely worth
a read, whether in book form or online.
Oyeyemi is a modern mythmaker. In this form-bending novel,
Mr. Fox is a celebrated writer with a tendency to kill off all his heroines –
that is, until Mary, his fictional muse, comes to life and transforms him from
author to subject. Suddenly it is a battle of tale-tellers, with the two narrators
alternating stories and using each other as characters with a vast array of
interesting settings and literary tricks and twists. Meanwhile, Daphne, Mr.
Fox’s wife, becomes convinced he is having an affair and finds her way into
their little game. You’ll have to read to figure out who you think loses, but
it’s the reader who comes away the winner—with Oyeyemi’s delightful prose and
unforgettable stories as the prize.
This international best-seller is often described as a
European “Forrest-Gump”-style tale, and I understand that label. We do indeed
get to experience major moments in history (and meet highly regarded figures
from the last century) through the life of the titular hundred-year-old man,
and it has a similar heartfelt, whimsical tone. Not content to stay and
celebrate his hundredth year in the quiet of his nursing home, our hero takes
off on an adventure that involves inadvertently stealing a suitcase full of
cash from a mobster, enlisting the aid of a friendly though lackadaisical
lumberjack, and taking shelter with a woman and her pet elephant. Sprinkled
throughout these present-day happenings are stories of the man’s past, in which
he crosses paths with Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, and Albert Einstein’s
brother, among others. An irreverent, funny, pleasant read.
ONE PLUS ONE by Jojo Moyes
The person who recommended this to me said, “It’s kind of
like the film Little Miss Sunshine, but kind of not.” And I totally get what
they mean. It’s the story of a financially-struggling mother Jess desperate to
get her bullied teen stepson and math whiz daughter across the country for a
competition that could be her daughter’s ticket to a scholarship and a better
life. When their car breaks down, it is Ed who steps in as unexpected
savior—geeky Ed, a tech millionaire whose house Jess happens to clean. Ed is
plagued with the worries of an about-to-break scandal, and driving this
dysfunctional family to a Math Olympiad seems like the first decent thing he’s
done in ages… maybe ever. But things don’t turn out as expected for anyone
involved. Sometimes one plus one doesn’t end up as two, but something
altogether bigger.
Runner Ups:
ONE MORE THING: STORIES AND OTHER STORIES by B.J. Novak
B.J. Novak, actor and writer probably best known for his
work on the American version of The Office, has written a wonderful, witty, and
wise collection of stories that manages to be moving, surprising, and
laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes all at once. (I also highly recommend his
children’s book, The Book With No Pictures.) I listened to the audiobook
version of this and really enjoyed it, as Novak and a talented cast of his
friends made for excellent narrators.
A STORM OF SWORDS by George R.R. Martin
I keep shunting Martin’s books to the runner up spots on my
lists, but I really do love them. Arya is my favorite character, though her arc
is this book was not as strong as the last installment. Still, I loved so many
things Martin did with characters this time around. Jon Snow and the war on the
wall, Jaime’s reluctant friendship with Brienne, and much more. Note to self:
if weddings are anything like this in real life, I’m never getting married!
Two reasons this is a runner-up: (1) I already had a
Stiefvater title on the list, and (2) this is a second installment in a series.
So really you should probably read The Raven Boys, the first book in the
series, to understand the context and get to know the characters. But this is
one of the best YA books I have read. Period. It’s not just the plot – which
mixes mythology with present-day high school drama, plus the tantalizing idea
of being able to bring items physically out of your dreams! –but the
characters. Ronan Lynch is one of my favorite YA leading men (technically he’s
not the main character of the series – I would argue that’s Blue or Gansey – but
as the titular “dream thief” he really steals the show) and Stiefvater gives us
not one but TWO brilliant antagonists in this book. Is it bad that I often find
a story only as interesting as its villains? But “villain” is the wrong word
for The Gray Man and Kavinsky. Both go through transformations over the course
of the story that are unpredictable and yet undeniably authentic. This book has
me itching to read the third installment!
THE TRAP by John Smelcer
A short, powerful story about a teenage boy and his
grandfather in the Alaskan wilderness. Albert Least-Weasel has been checking
his traplines alone for the past sixty years without anything going amiss. But
one day when Albert doesn’t come back, and with the temperatures steadily
plummeting, his grandson Johnny sets out on the snowmobile to see what may have
happened. In alternating chapters we learn the parallel stories of Johnny and
Albert, and see a glimpse of the hardships of life in the north.
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