Constant Reader discussion

This list is sort of a tradition at Constant Reader. I was surprised to see that no one posted theirs before me. It is a list of the best books that I read in 2014. They are not necessarily published in 2014. I am also going to list the best audiobooks though I am listening to fewer of them lately. Please list yours too. I love reading them.

Best Books:
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
The Turks Today by Andrew Mango (for a trip to Istanbul)
Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk
Mighty Alice Goes Round and Round: A Cul de Sac Book by Richard Thompson (This is my favorite cartoon character ever. I suppose it would be called a graphic novel now. Thompson has Parkinsons and is no longer publishing but I plan to read his books repeatedly.)
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Best Audiobooks:
Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín (I rarely can pick the very best one, but this is it for 2014, the best audiobook. The other two are tied for 2nd place.)
Still Life with Bread Crumbs: A Novel by Anna Quindlen
One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

Here is my list.

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Things They Carried by Tim O Brien
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
The Luminaries by Elizabeth Catton
A Place of Greater Safety by Hillary Mantel
The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
The Master by Colm Toibin
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umigar
The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Barbara wrote: "This list is sort of a tradition at Constant Reader. I was surprised to see that no one posted theirs before me. It is a list of the best books that I read in 2014. They are not necessarily publ..."

Barb, I'll put these audiobooks on my wishlist.


Here is the top of my "read" list:

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Jim the Boy by Tony Early
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Gift Of Stones by Jim Crace
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
Stoner by John Williams
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Chemistry and Other Stories by Ron Rash
A Place of Greater Safety by Hillary Mantel

My top "listens":

The Martian by Andy Weir
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye

The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Braided Lives

The World Before Her

Citadel

Happenstance: Two Novels in One About a Marriage in Transition

Mr. Bedford and the Muses

The Signature of All Things

The Goldfinch

Cold Comfort

My 5 stars:

TransAtlantic

By a Slow River

Moon Tiger

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Mãn

The Summer Book

On Audio

History of the Rain

The Moonstone

Here's mine:

The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Professor's House by Willa Cather
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
The Great Night by Chris Adrian
Half the Kingdom: A Novel by Lore Segal
Carry the One by Carol Anshaw
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink

I don't know how it happened but Sherry's list made me realize that I missed 3 books that should have been on my list:

Americanah
Stoner
Lowland

2014 Best/Most Interesting Reads
I read a lot of non-fiction this year, so I decided to divide my list. For me, it was not a particularly good year for fiction. I included a couple of books at the end which struck me as very original and which made me laugh. I could have added even more to the non-fiction part of the list.

FICTION

The Crimson Petal and the White by Faber, Michel
The Bone Clocks by Mitchell, David
The Interestings by Wolitzer, Meg
One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by Novak, B.J.
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Shoneyin, Lola

BEST NON-FICTION
Little Failure: A Memoir by Shteyngart, Gary
Life Itself by Ebert, Roger
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Solomon, Andrew
Young Stalin by Montefiore, Simon Sebag
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Menocal, María Rosa

Here's my list of my favorite books of 2014. Many others that I loved but these, three of which were second or in the case of Middlemarch seventh readings, were books to which I gave five stars.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
Lights Years by James Salter
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
Stoner by John Williams
Archangel: Fiction by Andrea Barrett
Living to Tell by Antonia Nelson
Incarnadine: Poems by Mary Szybist
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo
Middlemarch by George Eliot
They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
History of the Rain by Niall Williams

Love these lists. They are adding to my already towering TBR pile but there is nothing more lovely than knowledge of more and more good books in the world.

Ann, I still think about the Andrew Solomon book. And, have you seen the documentary made about Ebert? Tom doesn't think he could take it but when I get in a really resilient mood, I am going to watch it by myself.

Barb,
Tom recorded the documentary when it was on CNN last weekend and I plan on watching it. His book did not depress me at all. I was just in awe of the man's resilience and intelligence.

I love these lists. I've heard many good things about "Life Itself" and so it's going on my tbr list. My reading slowed a bit this year, but here are my favorites.

Fiction
Arundel, K. Roberts
A Place of Greater Safety, H. Mantel
The Jewel in the Crown, P. Scott
All Quiet on the Western Front,E. Remarque
Stoner,J. Williams

Nonfiction
The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era, C. Nelson
Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, E. Pryor

Ha, good timing. I just made my own list in my reading journal a few days ago, so here are my winners:

Novel: City of Bohane, Kevin Barry

Short Story: "The Storyteller," Frank O'Connor; "Forain," Mavis Gallant; "Rothschild's Fiddle," Anton Chekhov

Nonfiction:
The Star Factory, Ciaran Carson

The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession, Dana Goldstein

Essay: "That Mighty Sculptor, Time," Marguerite Yourcenar; "The Two Protesters," Maeve Brennan; "The Doomed in Their Sinking," William Gass; "The Superannuated Man," Charles Lamb

I had an amazing fiction year, and ended up with tons of five stars. Perhaps I am just an easy grader....

Anyway, some of the best of the five stars:

The Go-Between, like Stoner, I felt the the strength was less in the story itself, and more in the beautiful way it was written.

Miss Lonelyhearts, this was tied with Truismes for weirdest thing I read, and yet something about it was strangely compelling.

Middle C, best sentences I've ever seen

Rue des Boutiques Obscures, this started slow, and then slowly developed into something quite serious and deep. It snuck up on me.

The Pumpkin Eater, somehow Penelope Mortimer gets left off the list of innovative writers with unattributed dialogue, but she's better than her more famous male counterparts (like Gaddis, whom I also read this year and liked less). Also she's shorter.

New Year's Day, a perfect little Edith Wharton novella gem.

Giovanni's Room, I cannot believe I had never read James Baldwin before. He can really write.

Infinite Jest, totally worth it. :)

The Instructions, ditto.

Truismes, another weird little book that I read on a whim which turned out to be fantastic. The title is translated as Pig Tales, but you lose the pun (a truie is a sow).

Nicole..."best sentences I've ever seen"? Oh, my. I am putting this book on my to-be-read list. I love beautiful sentences. In fact, I'm creating a display that will be called "A Sentence Museum" for Middle School kids to share amazing sentences they find in the books they read.

I can't find this book on Goodreads. Who is the author of Middle C, Nicole?

This is what I found.


http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Vintage-...

Carol, thanks, I will definitely look for it.

Instructions for a Heatwave - O'Farrell
Neverwhere - Gaiman
The Good Lord Bird - McBride
Americanah - Adichie
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Fowler
Tell the Wolves I'm Home - Brunt
Washington Square - James

Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits
Juan Gabriel Vasquez's The Sound of Things Falling

David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
finished Edmund Morris's trilogy bio of Theodore Roosevelt

And a short story: The Red Dress by Alice Munro

Oh, you make me want to go back and read that story by Munro, Mary!

Jane wrote: "Nicole..."best sentences I've ever seen"? Oh, my. I am putting this book on my to-be-read list. I love beautiful sentences. In fact, I'm creating a display that will be called "A Sentence Museum"..."

The author is William H. Gass. Actually, his main character spends about half of the book obsessively rewriting a single sentence in various ways, some of which come to take up an entire page. It's kind of like his own little sentence museum. Or sentence workshop?

My favorite books of 2014 are:
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman*
Stoner by John Williams
Dracula By Bram Stoker
San Miguel by T.C. Boyle
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Cry, The Beloved Country By Alan Patton

Nicole wrote: "Jane wrote: "Nicole..."best sentences I've ever seen"? Oh, my. I am putting this book on my to-be-read list. I love beautiful sentences. In fact, I'm creating a display that will be called "A Sen..."

Gass is so obsessed with sentences that he recently published essay collection, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts

Jane wrote: "Nicole..."best sentences I've ever seen"? Oh, my. I am putting this book on my to-be-read list. I love beautiful sentences. In fact, I'm creating a display that will be called "A Sentence Museum"..."

What a brilliant idea! May I suggest a favorite exhibit: "No iron spike can pierce a human heart like a period in the right place." Isaac Babel, frm short story "Guy de Maupassant," about an impoverished translator.

My favorite books read in 2014:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Carrying the Fire by Mike Collins
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Time to pick up where I left off on The Night Circus. I got distracted but, thanks to your comment, Scott, I'm going to take it up again.

My favorite books read in 2014:
The Girl You Left Behind
The Leisure Seeker
Come, Thou Tortoise
Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems

Audiobooks:
The Book Thief
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
The Children of Henry VIII

I read fewer books this past year than I usually do. Here are the seven titles I most enjoyed:

Elizabeth Gilbert - The Signature of all Things
Mohammed Hanif - A Case of Exploding Mangos
Graham Greene - The Quiet American
John Williams - Stoner
Ann Patchett - This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
Susan Cain - Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a
World that Can't Stop Talking
Goldstein, Rebecca - Plato at the Googleplex: Why
Philosophy Won't go Away

Books already listed here that I really loved:
"Yellow Birds," "Giovanni's room" and "Killer Angels."

It was a mediocre year for me. It seemed as if my high hopes for books ended too often in disappointment. But these five (all oldies) stood out:

The Paperboy-- Pete Dexter
True Confessions-- John Gregory Dunne
My Antonia-- Willa Cather
The Alienist--Caleb Carr
The Friends of Eddie Coyle--George V. Higgins

I became immerses in The Alienist until Caleb Carr released me.

Kenneth P. wrote: "Books already listed here that I really loved:
"Yellow Birds," "Giovanni's room" and "Killer Angels."

It was a mediocre year for me. It seemed as if my high hopes for books ended too often in dis..."

Yellow Birds was wonderful.

Not an easy list to compile, but here goes. :)

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Stoner by John Williams
The Martian by Andy Weir
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Naoko by Keigo Higashino
Drive and Driven by James Sallis
The Son by Jo Nesbo
The Unquiet Grave by Steven Dunne This is really and truly one of the very best police procedural I've ever read. The term "police procedural" doesn't even begin to describe this intricate novel.
I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves (a happy reread)
missing person by Patrick Modiano


Most fun though were:

My rereading (40 years later) of Octopussy, Property of a Lady, The Living Daylights & 007 in New York by Ian Fleming
and
Dropped Names by Frank Langella - yes, the actor. :) Funny and insightful, not a mean comment in the book. He also didn't drop any names that are still living. In other words, he was a gentleman about the whole thing. And, if he was hard on anyone, he was hardest on himself.

Thanks everyone for posting your best reads. I like to save these to refer to later.

Me too, Ann.

Cateline, Crossing to Safety is one of my all-time favorite books. I discovered it in the early days of Constant Reader, thanks to Dale Short. And, I loved Langella's memoir too. He is a very literate man. I saw him in an interview with Charlie Rose and my impression was confirmed.

Yes, I saw Langella 's interview with Rose. Good stuff. Loved the comment he made about the er...Freudian slip regarding his daughter in one performance of his production of Lear.

The only annoyance for me was that I wanted Rose to just be quiet! He has a habit, sometimes, of jumping in with his views.......I wanted Langella's!

Cateline wrote: "Yes, I saw Langella 's interview with Rose. Good stuff. Loved the comment he made about the er...Freudian slip regarding his daughter in one performance of his production of Lear.

The only ann..."

I agree, Cateline. I think, in this case, Rose liked Langella so much that he fell into a conversation rather than an interview. I often want Terry Gross to stop talking on her Fresh Air program as well.

I have always thought Charlie Rose was the most interesting and best informed interviewer on television, but like Cateline, I too am becoming increasingly impatient with his interruptions which prevent his guests tfrom finishing their thoughts.

I had a very blah year in reading with few 5 star books and many, many 2 star reads. Here are the ones that lingered on in my mind:

Novels
Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding
Natural Elements by Richard Mason

Short Stories
The Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood
The Sadness of Sex by Barry Yourgrau

Non-Fiction
The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live by Roman Krznaric

I only 5* a handful of books in 2014 which unusally for me contained a non fiction read and 2 children's books

An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan
Private Peacefulby Michael Morpurgo
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
The Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings by Elizabeth Laird
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

and for me the 6* stand out read was by far Keenan's An Evil Cradling

You read interesting books, Sheila. I'll have to check and see if my library has any of these. The only one I have read is The Book of Strange New Things, which I liked very much. The others are new to me.

Ann wrote: "You read interesting books, Sheila. I'll have to check and see if my library has any of these. The only one I have read is The Book of Strange New Things, which I liked very much. T..."

Tx Ann. The Murpurgo was recommended by a member of my in person book club who is a librarian and student of children's literature; the Otsuka recommendation came from someone here on CR I think, and the Laird by seeing a review in a newspaper (I can't recall which one now)

Sherry wrote: Here is the top of my "read" list:

...
The Gift Of Stones by Jim Crace
....
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
...
A Place of Greater Safety by Hillary Mantel..."

Glad to see Jim Crace on your list. I loved Gift of Stones which was the first of his I read. I have Harvest on my to be read shelf.
Waiting on The Lowland from the Library - a long waiting list, and have promised myself to read some Mantel this year

Barbara wrote: "I don't know how it happened but Sherry's list made me realize that I missed 3 books that should have been on my list:

Americanah
Stoner
Lowland"

ditto for me

Mary wrote: "Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits
Juan Gabriel Vasquez's The Sound of Things Falling

David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
finished Edmund Morris's trilogy bio of Theodore..."

I've put Juan Gabriel Vasquez's The Sound of Things Falling on my library list. Tx, new author for me and I usually like Latin writers.

Cateline wrote: "Not an easy list to compile, but here goes. :)

Naoko by Keigo Higashino
..."

Continuing my love hate relationship with these lists, I have added that one to my Library List

Sheila wrote: "Cateline wrote: "Not an easy list to compile, but here goes. :)

Naoko by Keigo Higashino
..."

Continuing my love hate relationship with these lists, I have added that one to my Library List"

Higashino has a rather twisty sort of mind. The other of his books I've read are detective/mysteries. But more, and different. Naoko isn't a mystery, although it is mysterious. :). I hope you enjoy it.

Sheila, hope you enjoy the Vasquez. Here's what I wrote at the time I read it.

"What a beautiful, sad, well-written story. The author includes all the details I needed to feel, smell, hear, taste, and see the setting for this story without compromising plot strength or character development. In these days of books that are too long because they've not been well-edited either by the author or the publisher, this book stands out as a beautifully faceted and brilliant gem. The ending is ambiguous, but I did not mind that at all. In my experience, foreign authors - or maybe their readers - have a greater tolerance for ambiguity so the plot line does not end all neatly tied up, just like life."

Barbara, You were right about All The Light We Cannot See. I'm at that point where there's only 100 and some odd pages left and I don't want it to finish at the same time that I don't want to put the book down. Frank

Frank, I'm always hesitant to join the crowds. But, this time, they are right. Doerr produced a literary fiction bestseller, not an easy thing.