Thursday, January 1, 2015

A Year of Reading: 2014

1. The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell
2. Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
3. Home is a Roof Over a Pig by Aminta Arrington
4. Affinity by Sarah Waters
5. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
6. Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
7. The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord
8. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
9. Persuasion by Jane Austen
10. The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
11. Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
12. Pearl by Tabitha King
13. Reality Boy by A.S. King
14. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
15. Tampa by Alissa Nutting
16. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
17. The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr
18. Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
19. The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
20. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
21. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kristin Cronn-Mills
22. Pain, Parties, Work by Elizabeth Winder
23. Nine Inches by Tom Perrotta
24. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
25. Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith
26. A Night Like This by Julia Quinn
27. City of Thieves by David Benioff
28. The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein
29. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
30. My Notorious Life by Kate Manning
31. Perv by Jesse Bering
32. Keeping the Castle by Patricia Kindl
33. Go by Chip Kidd
34. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
35. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen
36. Thunderstruck and Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken
37. A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner
38. Winger by Andrew Smith
39. When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
40. Panic by Lauren Oliver
41. Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen
42. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
43. The Notorious Benedict Arnold by Steve Sheinkin
44. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
45. The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Ann Long
46. The Panopticon by Jenny Fagan
47. Wool by Hugh Howey
48. Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin
49. Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin
50. Wildthorn by Jane Eagland
51. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
52. Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
53. The Farm by Tom Rob Smith
54. Girls Standing on Lawns by Maira Kalman and Daniel Handler
55. Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang
56. Ten Thousand Joys and Ten Thousand Sorrows by Olivia Hoblitzelle
57. The List by Siobhan Vivian
58. The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan
59. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
60. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
61. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
62. Landline by Rainbow Rowell
63. The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon
64. No Choirboy by Susan Kuklin
65. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
66. Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian
67. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
68. The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
69. The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
70. How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
71. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
72. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
73. Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern
74. The Clockwork Scarab by Colleen Gleason
75. Sister's Fate by Jessica Spotswood
76. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
77. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
78. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
79. Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff
80. Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman
81. Stay Awake by Dan Chaon
82. Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers
83. Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot
84. In Darkness by Nick Lake
85. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
86. Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey
87. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
88. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
89. 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith
90. Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit
91. Revival by Stephen King
92. Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A.S. King
93. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
94. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
95. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
96. I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
97. The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield
98. Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell
99. Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover by Sarah MacLean
100. The Storied Life by A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
101. The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming
102. The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

I'm down a bit from last year, but that's not surprising. I actually didn't expect to hit 100. As you may remember, I spent two months reading War and Peace. I also read the lengthy David Copperfield early in the year. And this one wasn't especially long, but it took me two weeks to read The Boys in the Boat. All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised with how many books I managed to read. I also completed the 2014 TBR Pile Challenge, which means that I finally read a bunch of books that had been languishing on my To Read list for quite a while. I'm so pleased about that, I'll be doing the challenge again in 2015. I'll be posting my list soon!

As for favorites, it's such a funny thing. Here are the books I gave 5 stars on Goodreads:
Reality Boy
The Handmaid's Tale
Thunderstruck and Other Stories
Wool
Sister's Fate
In Darkness
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
War and Peace
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
I'll Give You the Sun
The Family Romanov

I stand by my 5-star ratings, but when I look at what I read this year, there are many other books that really jump out at me, that when I see them on the list I think "That one was really good."

For instance:
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Grasshopper Jungle
The Panopticon
My Notorious Life
The Woman Upstairs
We Were Liars
The Tragedy Paper
The Burn Journals
The Miniaturist
Sharp Objects

I think it was just an especially good year for books, maybe.

Here's hoping that 2015 is a great reading year too!

2 comments:

Kylie said...

That's cool! We read the exact same number of books this year. Although one of mine was not War and Peace and some were children's books. I'm down from last year because I was learning Mandarin. It was a good year for books, though. And we only have a few overlapping books! It is funny, isn't it, how the ones that stick in your memory are not necessarily the ones you rate highly after reading. For example, I didn't care for the ending of Goldfinch, so I didn't rate it a 5, but I'll certainly never forget it. This year Tana French and Charles Stross stick out as my favorites.

3goodrats said...

Sometimes I'll rate a book as soon as I finish, but then change the rating later. I've read books that I thought were ok, but then kept thinking about for months, and other books that I thought were amazingly wonderful, but forgot almost instantly.