It’s become a tradition that half-dozens of people look forward to–my end-of-year book list! These were my personal favorites I read in 2014, regardless of publication date. Here they are, in alphabetical order by author:
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Middlemarch by George Eliot
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour
10:04 by Ben Lerner
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Florence Gordon by Brian Morton
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
Tenth of December by George Saunders
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman
The Noble Hustle* by Colson Whitehead
* – OK, so that’s the 15th book, and it would probably show too much bias to include it, but I loved it so I’m placing it in its own category: Best Book That I’m In
And for completists, here are the other books I read in 2014 (35 more, for a total of 50! A personal best! And a lot of these were very good too…):
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Speedboat, Renata Adler
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
Lexicon, Max Barry
Lucky Us, Amy Bloom
Follow Her Home, Steph Cha
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories, Kate Chopin
Invisible City, Julia Dahl
Duplex, Kathryn Davis
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, Ian Doescher
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Silas Marner, George Eliot
The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris
Cutting Teeth, Julia Fierro
Ride Around Shining, Chris Leslie-Hynan
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
Is Just a Movie, Earl Lovelace
The Assistant, Bernard Malamud
The Lola Quartet, Emily St. John Mandel
My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead
The Dog, Joseph O’Neill
The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett
The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta
Yes Please, Amy Poehler
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Zero Fade, Chris L. Terry
Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy, #1), Jeff VanderMeer
This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff