Books I've Read This Year -- 2014

[nightdog_barks]

Books read in 2012
Books read in 2013

2014

Sycamore Row, John Grisham
The Lord of the Rings, Part One: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Angels in America, Tony Kushner
Year Zero: A History of 1945, Ian Buruma
The Lord of the Rings, Part Two: The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
Orfeo, Richard Powers
The Lord of the Rings, Part Three: The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, David Quammen
Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart
Frances and Bernard, Carlene Bauer
Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard
All Gone: A Memoir of My Mother's Dementia. With Refreshments, Alex Witchel
Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen
Johnny Cash: The Life, by Robert Hilburn
Prayers for the Stolen, Jennifer Clement
Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks, Keith Houston
Hild, Nicola Griffith
Cheever: A Life, Blake Bailey
Ranchero, Rick Gavin
The Sound of Things Falling, Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Hell House, Richard Matheson
Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, Allen C. Guelzo
Mr. Mercedes, Stephen King
John Wayne: The Life and Legend, Scott Eyman
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
Perdido Street Station, China Miéville
Fourth of July Creek, Smith Henderson
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David Grann
The Daughters of Mars, Thomas Keneally
Railsea, China Miéville
Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker, Doug J. Swanson
The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell
The Year She Left Us, Kathryn Ma
Things the Grandchildren Should Know, Mark Oliver Everett
TransAtlantic, Colum McCann
A Replacement Life, Boris Fishman
One Summer: America 1927, by Bill Bryson
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
J, Howard Jacobson
The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes
Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival, Peter Stark
We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas
Revival, Stephen King
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories, Hilary Mantel
Northwest Passage, Kenneth Roberts
Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill

Comments

[taiga13]

http://i.imgur.com/pOuUPES.jpg

[nightdog_barks]

http://tiptop-dog.tumblr.com/post/72108646066/theparisreview-as-the-northeast-is-battered-by

:D

[taiga13]

Pwned plus hey, you're on Tumblr!
http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2013-10/enhanced/webdr01/29/8/enhanced-buzz-27731-1383049713-14.jpg

[nightdog_barks]

:D

Yep, I saw that sometime this afternoon on Tumblr (from The Paris Review) and reblogged it. *g* Are you on Tumblr?

ALSO THAT "NOW FICTION" BOOKS IS AWESOME. lol

[pwcorgigirl]

Did you enjoy Little Failure? It's on sale in one of the book catalogs I get and looks tempting.

I keep meaning to keep a record of books read, but I'm lazy about it and also alternate between high-minded and low-brow, and the low-brow would be pretty embarrassing to admit to in public sometimes. :D

[nightdog_barks]

Heh. I LOVED Little Failure ... right up until the end. See, there's this Childhood Secret he keeps talking about and trying to remember, and it colors the whole book and adds depth and shadows and the reader is borne along and you want to find out WHAT this Childhood Secret is.

And then at the very end he tells the secret, and it's like WAIT THAT'S IT? I am not kidding. It is such a huge letdown, and Mister Nightdog felt the EXACT SAME WAY.

It's in my donate-to-charity box, but I can send it off to you if you'd like! I'm serious that it is the greatest book up until the end -- Shteyngart is self-deprecating and funny and engaging and just the perfect storyteller. It's only at the end that the book goes over a cliff. I don't know why an editor didn't tell him to change the ending -- all he had to do was say that he'd never remembered what the Childhood Secret was, and I could've lived with that. Or maybe an editor did tell him and he ignored the advice because Truthiness. IDK. :D