Top 10 Books First Read in 2014

[Benny Profane]

1. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
2. Looking for Alaska - John Green

[megladon8]

Need to get back into reading soon. I ended up dropping off at the end of last year and not hitting my goal of 30 books for the year.

I am about 1/2 way through "The Shining", then would like to follow it up right away with "Doctor Sleep".

I also have an interesting looking/sounded memoir of a porn star, called "Girlvert".

[ThePlashyBubbler]

1. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
2. The Wes Anderson Collection, Matt Zoller Seitz
3. Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football, John U. Bacon

[Mara]

Eh I might actually do this for once. Can't hurt, right?

1. The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
2. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
3. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
4. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
5. The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
6. Vicious by V. E. Schwab
7. Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol (graphic novel)
8. Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
9. Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
10. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

The Rest:
[

Show Spoiler

Too boring to renumber, but they are in order.
Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood
Leviathan by Scott Westfeld (also read the two sequels; would rank same)
Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund
I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
Escape from Eden by Elisa Nader
My Sergei by Ekaterina Gordeeva
All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry
Three Shadows by Cyril Pendrosa (graphic novel)
Plain Kate by Erin Bow
Cherry Money Baby by John M. Cusick
Shadows by Robin McKinley
***This is the line between good and bad
The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
Allegiant by Veronica Roth
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

]


DNF list:
[

Show Spoiler

Icons by Margaret Stohl: derivative; boring

]

[D_Davis]

Jesus christ you guys read fast. 4 books in a week?

At my fastest, I can sometimes read 2 books a week.

[Mara]

1. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
2. The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
3. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
4. The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
6. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
7. The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
8. Vicious by V. E. Schwab
9. Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol (graphic novel)
10. Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick


The Rest:
[

Show Spoiler

Too boring to renumber, but they are in order.
Cress by Marissa Meyer
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher
***This is the line between very good and good
Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Half Bad by Sally Green
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Remarkable by Lizzie K. Foley
The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood
The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Leviathan by Scott Westfeld (also read the two sequels; would rank same)
Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
***This is the line between good and mediocre
I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
Escape from Eden by Elisa Nader
My Sergei by Ekaterina Gordeeva
All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry
Three Shadows by Cyril Pendrosa (graphic novel)
Plain Kate by Erin Bow
Cherry Money Baby by John M. Cusick
Shadows by Robin McKinley
***This is the line between mediocre and bad
The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
Allegiant by Veronica Roth
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

]

[dreamdead]

Mara, have you read Marie Lu's Legend, or, for that matter, any teen fiction by Asian American writers that you found especially good? I'm not the biggest fan of the more pedestrian and derivative works of teen dystopia, but I'd be interested in learning about fiction that approaches concepts of race and ethnicity within the wide umbrella if interesting things are being done with it.

Also, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars was lovely. I think I liked Rowell's Eleanor and Park more, but lovely all the same.

[Mara]

1. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
2. The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
3. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
4. Landline by Rainbow Rowell
5. The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
7. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
8. The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater & Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater
9. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
10. Vicious by V. E. Schwab

The Rest:
[

Show Spoiler

Too boring to renumber, but they are in order.
Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol (graphic novel)
Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
Cress by Marissa Meyer
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher
***This is the line between very good and good
Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst
Small Damages by Beth Kephart
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Quick by Lauren Owen
Half Bad by Sally Green
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
The Unbound by Victoria Schwab
Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios
War of the Seasons: The Human by Janine K. Spendlove
Remarkable by Lizzie K. Foley
The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood
Perfect Ruin by Lauren Destefano
The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Leviathan by Scott Westfeld (also read the two sequels; would rank same)
Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreud
Siege and Storm & Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo
The Falconer by Elizabeth May
The Ruining by Anna Collomore
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
***This is the line between good and mediocre
White Cat by Holly Black
I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
Star Cursed by Jessica Spotswood
Escape from Eden by Elisa Nader
My Sergei by Ekaterina Gordeeva
All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry
Three Shadows by Cyril Pendrosa (graphic novel)
Plain Kate by Erin Bow
Cherry Money Baby by John M. Cusick
Shadows by Robin McKinley
***This is the line between mediocre and bad
A Wounded Name by Dot Hutchinson
The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
Allegiant by Veronica Roth
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

]

[Mara]

I think at least one of those I started before the new year. But I'm zipping through another book while trying to defrost my pipes, so...

[D_Davis]

I've discovered that my optimum enjoyment in reading comes from reading one book a week. Any quicker, and I don't feel like I'm properly digesting and thinking about what I'm reading, and any longer it becomes a slog. There are, of course, exceptions to this.

[kuehnepips]

1. Magical Mystery - Sven Regener
2. Doctor Sleep - Stephen King

[Mara]

Do you guys still include books you don't finish? I usually have a handful of those, and it gives an accurate feel for which books were really bad.

[kuehnepips]

Do you guys still include books you don't finish?

I don't,

[dreamdead]

So far:

1. Alice Munro’s Friend of my Youth: Stories
2. Alice Munro's Open Secrets: Stories
3. Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness: Stories
4. Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge
5. Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette
6. Flannery O'Connor's Everything that Rises Must Converge
7. Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man

[Our Aurora]

1. Nobody Move - Denis Johnson
2. Native Speaker - Chang-Rae Lee

[Benny Profane]

1. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
2. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
3. Looking for Alaska - John Green


Powerful, concise (even at almost 600 pages), fair biography about an eccentric person full of contrasts. So much to admire and dislike about Jobs. His obsessive perfectionism, his cruelty, his spiritual enlightenment, his single-mindedness, his ability to bend reality to suit his needs. Just an incredible portrait and told in an elegant, simplistic style that Jobs would truly appreciate. Highly recommend.

[baby doll]

Novels:

• Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605/15)
• Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, 1818)
• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, 1859)
• Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)
• Howards End (E.M. Forster, 1910)
• Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964/74)
• American Pastoral (Philip Roth, 1997)

Story story collections:

• Seven Gothic Tales (Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen], 1934)
• Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges, 1962)*
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour—An Introduction (J.D. Salinger, 1963)
• The Complete Cosmicomics (Italo Calvino, 1965-84)
• The Love of a Good Woman (Alice Munro, 1998)

Non-fiction:

• Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (Roland Barthes, 1980)
• Narration in the Fiction Film (David Bordwell, 1985)
• Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (Robert McKee, 1998)

[baby doll]

• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)
• Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov, 1957)
• Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964/74)
• Narration in the Fiction Film (David Bordwell, 1985)
• The Love of a Good Woman (Alice Munro, 1998)

Here's where it stands at the beginning of April.

I enjoyed Arrow of God more than Things Fall Apart I think in part because I didn't know anything about the culture he's writing about so it took me a while to find my bearings. If the Munro stories are representative of her talent she's clearly a minor master, but there's something vaguely provincial about how all these stories are about white chicks living in British Colombia or Ontario, usually during the years immediately after World War II (that is, before the country started getting browner). I mean, come on girl, there's a whole world out there! Pnin is pretty minor alongside Laughter in the Dark, Despair, Invitation to a Beheading, and of course Lolita, but it's still amusing.

[baby doll]

• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)
• Strait Is the Gate (André Gide, 1909)
• Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov, 1957)
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour—An Introduction (J.D. Salinger, 1963)
• Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964/74)
• Camera Lucida (Roland Barthes, 1980)
• Narration in the Fiction Film (David Bordwell, 1985)
• The Love of a Good Woman (Alice Munro, 1998)

Updated for the end of April.

[Mysterious Dude]

I've read ten books!

1. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, John Kennedy Toole)
2. The Tin Drum (1959, Günter Grass)
3. Room (2010, Emma Donoghue)
4. Ironweed (1983, William Kennedy)
5. Madame Bovary (1856, Gustave Flaubert)
6. The Big Sleep (1939, Raymond Chandler)
7. The Elementary Particles (1998, Michel Houellebecq)
8. Ferdydurke (1937, Witold Gombrowicz)
9. Out Stealing Horses (2003, Per Petterson)
10. The Dead Father (1975, Donald Barthelme)

I'm keeping a pretty good pace for the year, despite some longer books. I'm starting Catch-22 now.

[Benny Profane]

1. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, John Kennedy Toole)

Damn right.

[baby doll]

• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, 1859)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)
• Strait Is the Gate (André Gide, 1909)
• Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler, 1940)
• Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov, 1957)
• Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964/74)
• Narration in the Fiction Film (David Bordwell, 1985)
• The Love of a Good Woman (Alice Munro, 1998)

Updated for the end of May. Total number of books read: Twelve.

[baby doll]

• Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605/15)
• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, 1859)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)
• Strait Is the Gate (André Gide, 1909)
• Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler, 1940)
• Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov, 1957)
• Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964/74)
• Narration in the Fiction Film (David Bordwell, 1985)

At the half-way point, Jane Eyre is the book to beat. Total number of books read: Fourteen and a half counting Don Quixote as two books written ten years apart and Borges' Labyrinths as one half since some of the stories were already familiar to me.

[baby doll]

Novels:

• Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605/15)
• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, 1859)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)
• Strait Is the Gate (André Gide, 1909)
• The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, 1929)
• Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler, 1940)
• Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov, 1957)
• Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964/74)

Story story collections:

• Seven Gothic Tales (Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen], 1934)
• Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges, 1962)*
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour—An Introduction (J.D. Salinger, 1963)
• The Love of a Good Woman (Alice Munro, 1998)

Non-fiction:

• Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (Roland Barthes, 1980)
• Narration in the Fiction Film (David Bordwell, 1985)

Updated for the end of July-beginning of August. Total number of books read: seventeen and a half.

[baby doll]

Novels:

• Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605/15)
• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, 1859)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)
• Strait Is the Gate (André Gide, 1909)
• Howards End (E.M. Forster, 1910)
• The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, 1929)
• Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler, 1940)
• Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964/74)

Story story collections:

• The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Stories (Leo Tolstoy, 1859-95)
• Seven Gothic Tales (Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen], 1934)
• Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges, 1962)*
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour—An Introduction (J.D. Salinger, 1963)
• The Love of a Good Woman (Alice Munro, 1998)

Non-fiction:

• Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (Roland Barthes, 1980)
• Narration in the Fiction Film (David Bordwell, 1985)

Updated for the end of August. Total number of books read: twenty and a half.