Favorites Books Read in 2014
I normally don’t post a Best Books of the Year list because
I so rarely read books that come out during a particular year. I’m not much on reading whatever the
big hyped book of the moment is (in fact, all the hype usually turns me against
a book). This year I read dozens
of books and out of them only a handful were released this year. But despite all of that I wanted to
talk briefly about the books I loved reading this year…three of which were
actually published in 2014…and also about the books that weren’t published this
year but that I really loved reading.
Favorite reads of the year that were published in 2014:
All the Light We Cannot See-Anthony Doerr. So many trusted friends of mine loved
this book so much that I caved in and picked it up, too. I was quickly swallowed up by the world
of WWII era occupied France and came to care deeply for all of the characters,
but especially the main two:
Werner, a young German boy who gets swept up in the tide of Nazism and
loses all of his dreams while sacrificing everything for a leader he doesn’t
understand, and the lovely, strong, and defiant Marie-Laure, a young blind
French girl who has to flee Paris with her beloved father to go a doomed walled
city on the Brittany coast of France.
I don’t want to say too much for fear of giving away the intricate and
masterful plot but I will say that this is one of the best books I’ve ever
read. I could not put it
down. Nor could I find one false
note in the entire epic.
Long Man. Amy Greene’s debut, Bloodroot, in 2011, ushered in a stark
new talent in Southern literature, and her second novel is even better. This is a novel with prose so lovely it
threatens to rise up and take flight from the page. Add to that a suspense-fueled plot people by characters you
come to love and a vivid sense of place that allows you to luxuriate in the
hills of East Tennessee. This is
the best Appalachian and Southern book of the year, to my mind, and definitely
one of the best American novels of the year, too.
Lila. Marilynne Robinson
is one of my five favorite writers (along with Hardy, Lawrence, Cather, and
Hurston) and I love each of her books (Housekeeping,
Gilead, Home) in a deep way but I think that Lila may have touched me deeper—and more unexpectedly—than any of
the others. I found this novel
very hard to get into. It was
slow-going for the first 75 pages or so, but then suddenly it bloomed in my
hands and I began to see what Robinson was doing. Told from the point of view of a young woman who has been
through incredibly hard times, this novel is about the beauty found in not
judging others, in the way our country thinks it understands poverty but does
not at all. Lila is about many,
many things but most of all it is about a way of life that is gone forever and
about maintaining dignity no matter what.
I thought it might never start but then I realized that I was in the
middle of a meditative prayer. I’m
also adding this to my Favorites of All Time list.
Favorite reads of books that weren’t published this year but
were read by me this year (parentheses denote when books were first published):
Ron Hansen is my new favorite writer. He's probably best known for his novel The Assassination of Jessee James, which became a Brad Pitt film. I read his books Exiles (2008) and Marietta in Ecstasy (1991) this year, although I have been hearing about them for ages. Exiles is a novel about one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and centers on when he wrote one of his most famous poems, about a shipwreck that killed several nuns. The novel also gives us insight into the nuns' lives. Phenomenal. Mariette in Ecstasy is about an American nun who starts to experience stigmata in the early 1900s. It is like a long poem. Some of the most beautiful language I've ever read, and a plot that will keep you up into the wee hours, turning the pages.
Ron Hansen is my new favorite writer. He's probably best known for his novel The Assassination of Jessee James, which became a Brad Pitt film. I read his books Exiles (2008) and Marietta in Ecstasy (1991) this year, although I have been hearing about them for ages. Exiles is a novel about one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and centers on when he wrote one of his most famous poems, about a shipwreck that killed several nuns. The novel also gives us insight into the nuns' lives. Phenomenal. Mariette in Ecstasy is about an American nun who starts to experience stigmata in the early 1900s. It is like a long poem. Some of the most beautiful language I've ever read, and a plot that will keep you up into the wee hours, turning the pages.
The Daylight Gate (2013).
Jeanette Winterson is one of
the most inventive and wonderful writers I know of. Her book Why Be Happy
When You Can Be Normal? is my all-time favorite memoir and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a
modern classic. Only Winterson
could take the story of a witchhunt in the 1600s and make it so original, sensual,
and completely readable. This novel was a big hit in England but never gained
traction here, probably because its historical basis is so widely known there,
but not here. At any rate, a very
fine and short read.
I devoured Kate
Atkinson’s Life After Life (2013),
one of the most readable and beautiful novels I’ve ever read. Completely original and inventive and
moving and powerful. READ IT. I was so taken by that novel that I
read two more of hers: Case
Histories (2004) and One
Good Turn (2006). Both of
those are mysteries and thus very different from the more literary bent of Life After Life. They didn’t touch me the way Life After Life did but they were hugely
entertaining and very well-written page-turners. I’m an Atkinson fan for life and can’t wait until the 2015
release of the companion novel to Life
After Life, which is called A God in
Ruin.
I am a slow reader and sometimes avoid long novels because
of that. I had toyed with the idea
of reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna (2009) ever since I got it when
it was first published but something finally came over me to start it earlier
this year. From the first page on
I never looked back and now would list it as my favorite book of hers. She manages to seamlessly take us to
Washington DC, the mountains of western North Carolina, and Mexico and making
all of those locales vivid and knowable.
She also has created a completely memorable lead character and uses language
more beautifully than she ever has before. I think it’s a modern masterpiece.
I had read, and loved, many of William Trevor’s short stories before but had not read any of his novels until this year, when I read Love and Summer. I’ve continued to think about it ever since. He is a master at creating a mood so that each time I opened the novel I fell under the spell of him, his characters, and the complete world of the small Irish village he created in the book. I loved every word.
Honorable Mention: The Good Lord Bird (2013) by James McBride was compulsively readable. I structured my day around when I was going to be able to spend time with it. The story of a young slave—disguised as a little girl—who is taken under the wing of the abolitionist John Brown is storytelling along the lines of Mark Twain, mixed with real historical events that keep you guessing even though you know the real outcomes. The problem is that I think it fails in the third act where it becomes too tied to the historical details of the raid on Harper’s Ferry. And I didn’t think it rang true that none of the ruffians encountered along the way tried to mess with the boy-disguised-as-a-girl except for a very handsy Frederick Douglass. Despite those problems I still think it’s a real feat of storytelling.
There are many others I read this year (including the very
enjoyable and light mysteries of Ann
Cleeves, most of which are not published in America yet, but are the basis
for the great British TV show “Vera,” which you can watch on Netflix; the mysteries of Agatha Christie are never a disappointment; and I read every
biography of Willa Cather I could
get my hands on this year, as well as re-reading My Antonia, O Pioneers!, and many others of Cather’s) but these are
the ones that stuck with me the most, in one way or another. There’s so much great literature out
there, just waiting for us.
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Mary
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