Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Ten on Tuesday - 10 Favorite Books of 2014


This week Carole asks about a topic near and dear to my heart - Your 10 Favorite Books from 2014. I'll spare you my sometimes rambling reviews here, but have linked the books to goodreads so you can better decide if any of these might be enjoyable reads for you. In my humble opinion, there are some definite must-reads in this list! My 10 11 favorites in 2014, in no specific order, are as follows:

1.  This Is How by Augusten Burroughs

2.  The Snow Queen by Hands Christian Andersen

3.  The Children Act by Ian McEwan

4.  Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

5. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

6.  Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

7.  How Not to be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

8.  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

9.  The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman

10. Wild Ones by Jon Mooallem

11. This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett - I couldn't leave this one out, so here's a bonus #11.

I'm very surprised that half of my favorites are non-fiction or memoirs; I think of myself as mainly a fiction reader. Goodreads also provides some other interesting statistics; I read 71 books in 2014, 18,459 pages, and my book star ratings approximate a bell-shaped curve, which is about what I would expect. I've never thought of reading as competitive, but it looks like I'm gradually reading fewer books and pages each year, so I'd like to make a conscious and concerted effort to read more in 2015. I hope to start by adding some books from all the other ToT lists today!




6 comments:

  1. That's a lot of books that you read! Thanks for picking out your favorites!

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  2. I'm always grateful for your thorough reviews on Goodreads! We share "All the Light We Cannot See" and "The Children Act" on our lists today (both such excellent reads!) -- and "The Secret History" is one that would have appeared on my list a few years ago. (That one still haunts me, actually.) Happy reading in 2015!

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  3. I am glad you included your bonus book...It intrigues me.

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  4. I read 55 and considered that a LOT :-) I've got All the Light We Cannot See and Everything I Never Told You on my list for 2015. One of my bookclubs is reading mostly non-fiction/memoirs next year... I hope I enjoy it as much as you have!

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  5. I haven't read any on your list. But I am off to check them out and see what will make it to my TBR list

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  6. The Children Act and Wave were on my list, too. Wave was such a powerful book. I just requested All the Light We Cannot See because it is on so many people's best-of lists. Earlier this year I imported my year-to-date books read from LibraryThing to Goodreads because the latter seems to be the platform most folks use; I just spent a few minutes customizing my shelves to conform to how I like to organize my lists. Looking forward to lots of reading in 2015! I used to read nearly 100 books a year, but having an iPad cut into that the past few years -- 75 books read or listened to in 2014. It's just so easy to pick up the tablet and browse Twitter or do a crossword...

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