21st Century Literature discussion

What were your favorite books that you read this year? Why?

(Moved over from a discussion started by Violet on the February open pick thread.)

My favourite books I've read this year.
Motherless Brooklyn – Jonathan Letham - More laugh out loud moments than any novel I've read for years. And the prose is dazzling.
HHhH – Laurent Binet - Really clever construction, almost like a journal of his progress in writing a fictional account of the assassination of Heindrich.
Great House – Nicole Krauss - The quality of the writing and insights into the human condition.
The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt - Probably a bit too long but often dazzling.
2666 – Roberto Bolano - The best bits are brilliant; the worst bits a bit of a chore but ultimately worth it.
NW – Zadie Smith - the vitality and observational brilliance of it.
In Love and War – Alex Preston - It's set in Florence!
The Great Fire – Shirley Hazzard - Beautifully written again.
A Girl is a Half Formed Thing – Eimear McBride - the bravest novel I've read this year, a unique style that isn't always successful but it's a powerful novel and fabulously insightful.
A Change of Climate – Hilary Mantel - At times it reads like a thriller, at others it's brilliant social comedy and at others it's heartbreaking: a poignant exposition of the divisions at the heart of families.

The book I read that touched me the most in 2014 was Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. It is not great literature but it was impossible to put down. It was about the courage and friendship of two young woman during WWII. And it was heartbreaking. The only book (of the 169 I read in 2014) that made me cry.

Other 2014 favorites are --

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel -- This is a post-apocalyptic novel that follows a group of actors and musicians as they travel around an area in middle-America after a pandemic killed most of the world's population. This is not your typical pos-apocalyptic story. It is quite literary. Perhaps the key character dies of a heart attack as the book opens. It is his connections to the primary characters that tie the book together. We learn about many of the ties as the characters remember their pre-apocalyptic lives.

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine - This is a book I would not have read but for the fact that it was on the longlist for the 2014 National Book Award for fiction. The main character is an elderaly, divorced, childless woman who lives by herself in an apartment in Beruit, Lebanon. We learn about her life as she remembers her best friend and wonders about whether she has done anything of value in her life.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson -- This is the third book set in Gilead, as small town in middle America. This one tells the story of how Lila, the wife of the minister John Amos who was the main character inGilead, came to Gilead and married John Amos. No one writes prose better than Robinson.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert -- This quote from the Goodreads descripion of the book is a decent summary of the book: "[This is] the story of Alma Whittaker, who — born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution — bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas."

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut -- I'm not much a fan of satire, but the moral ambiguity that Vonnegut saterizes in this book is one that I get and Vonnegut does an amazing job with it.

Thanks Linda. I really want to read Station Eleven. Heard so many good things about it. Your other choices sound intriguing too.

Think I got lucky and read quite a lot of good books in 2014! Hopefully I'll read even more in 2015. In no particular order, here were some of my favorites:

1. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

2. Capital by John Lanchester

3. An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris. Loved loved loved this one. I'd say this was probably in my top 2 or 3 for 2014.

4. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

5. Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani - phenomenal read

6. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

7. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert- probably also in my top 2 or 3 of 2014

8. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

9. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell -sad but incredibly beautiful

10. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan- really loved it

Caroline wrote: "Think I got lucky and read quite a lot of good books in 2014! Hopefully I'll read even more in 2015. In no particular order, here were some of my favorites:

1. [book:Going Clear: Scientology, Holl..."

Caroline, I read The Poisonwood Bible many years ago and absolutely loved what Kingsolver was doing with language in this novel.

Thanks to you and others for the lists!

Maureen, I liked the writing too and was surprised by how much I liked the book. I read the Bean Trees, also by Kingsolver, a long time ago in high school and didn't like it all that much. I thought she was a good writer but there was something about the story I just couldn't get in to (maybe it was my age when reading it). Poisonwood resonated with me much more, though perhaps it's because I'm older now.

Caroline wrote: "Maureen, I liked the writing too and was surprised by how much I liked the book. I read the Bean Trees, also by Kingsolver, a long time ago in high school and didn't like it all that much. I though..."

I also read Bean Trees many years ago, but I think Poisonwood is a better written novel.

My favorite book of the year, I think, because I almost didn't read it, was

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

The title put me off. I read a nonspoiler review from someone I trusted on GR and ended up loving it. Had I known the twist or had higher expectations, I might not have had such a strong positive reaction.

On an unrelated note, but in response to the Poisonwood Bible, I read it a long time ago and loved it, loved the language, the conflicts, although I felt it faltered toward the end. I never read another Kingsolver that I liked as much, especially not her nonfiction, which I found imperious and condescending.

Picking out a mere ten books was hard, because I read so many good ones last year. I'm listing my favorites here (i.e., books I enjoyed most). This is distinct from the "best" books I read. That list would probably have to include Orphan Master's Son,which was extremely well-written but not a favorite because the subject was so unpleasant. So here is my favorites list, in no particular order:

1. Euphoria
2. Beautiful Ruins
3. Provinces of Night
4. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
5. The Luminaries
6. The Goldfinch
7. Fingersmith
8. Kafka on the Shore
9. Out Stealing Horses
10. The Golem and the Jinni

Honorable mentions: Mrs. Dalloway and My Cousin Rachel

Casceil wrote: "Picking out a mere ten books was hard, because I read so many good ones last year. I'm listing my favorites here (i.e., books I enjoyed most). This is distinct from the "best" books I read. That..."

Yes, Casceil, my favorite books do not overlap completely with the "best" books. I also did not include the sci fi books that were favorites, given the literature theme of this group! I also did not include the books we had discussed, which is why I did not list Provinces of the Night and Acadia. I finished Goldfinch at the end of 2013, and still think about how much I enjoyed it. I did read Fingersmith in 2014 (in audio) and while not in my top 10, I like it quite a bit and purchased the audio of The Paying Guests to enjoy on long walks.

Maureen wrote: "Caroline wrote: "Maureen, I liked the writing too and was surprised by how much I liked the book. I read the Bean Trees, also by Kingsolver, a long time ago in high school and didn't like it all th..."

I've read all of Kingsolver's novels and the Poisonwood Bible remains my favorite. It is one of the books on my alltime favorites list.

When I first read a synopsis of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, I took it off my list. By the time the nominations for the Mann Booker Prize were announced, I had forgotten and, waving my little American flag, read it along with To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. I liked the book so much that I am leading a discussion of it in May in another group. For once, my slipping memory has served me well.

Casceil, I completely agree that best and favorite are different categories, but with some overlap. I loved the The Goldfinch, too, but at the beginning of the year, so it wasn't as fresh in my memory as We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

I read and loved the first three volumes of Karl Ove Knausgaard's's my struggle.

I could fill up the entire year of reading with selections from above--I really like the brief descriptions of why readers liked certain books (A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, A Partial History of Lost Causes, and Station Eleven look particularly interesting--thanks Violet, Michelle, and Linda).

I adore everything Marilynne Robinson has written, so I'm very much looking forward to Lila and I ditto the comments about The Poisonwood Bible!

My favorite reads from 2014:

Tenth of December by George Saunders: Darkly comic short stories that capture the contradictions of 21st century life under capitalism and what might come to be.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott: This book was delightful to read. It just flowed with such wonderful anecdotes and could easily have been just an advice book about living life in general.

Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap: A graphic novel about a high school girl coming of age. I picked this up at the library on a whim and found the main character utterly funny and endearing. Based around growing up Indian-American in a new-agey high school on the West Coast.

Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel: I think I might have found an author to add to the list of favorites. I got sucked into both of these books immediately and found myself wondering whether I should hang an Thomas Cromwell poster in my bedroom. Apparently, I do like historical fiction even if I don't actually care about the time period/setting.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: I'm not sure I would have loved this book the same had I not grown up in America during the '80s and shared so much in common with the geeky narrator, but I ended adoring this book against my own wishes.

Exit Ghost by Philip Roth: Roth's well-known Nathan Zuckerman character returns to New York (and society after a decade of self-isolation) to deal with aging, a post-9/11 world, and a reluctant passing of the literary torch.

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson: Picked this book up simply because it was a group read here and was blown away by its epic combination of humor, compassion, absurdity, hope, depravity, and persistence as Johnson immerses you within his version of North Korea. My favorite read of the year and added to my all-time favorites list.

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe: Based upon his humorous XKCD web-comic, this book tackles some of the most ridiculous questions with honest, scientific answers (or as close as one can get).

A good thing that came from having some serious medical problems in 2014 was I did much more reading than usual. Usually the reading I have been doing the past few years has been non-fiction, in 2014 that changed to mostly fiction. That said, here is my top 10 ranking for novels I read in 2014.

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot: Middlemarch has been on my bucket list a long time, but I never got around to reading it until the past year. I am surprised myself that Eliot's novel tops my list above the next two novels on my list. The novel is like the best I have read of Dickens, but without the melodrama.

2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: I have read War And Peace twice in my lifetime. Anna Karenina is another story. I have tried to read Anna Karenina several times, but always slogged down after about 100 pages. Now that I have finally read it to the end. I hope to reread it again in my lifetime, but there are so many classic books out there I still want to read.

3. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust: I think if I were not in a physical therapy center when I read this novel I would have made it through this amazing book. It's one of those books you have to read in at least 100 pages chunks in a sitting.

4. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: This is the first novel I read when I ended up in the hospital at the end of last May. I have read a few of Dicken's novels before this one. Bleak House is still my favorite, but Oliver Twist was pretty good.

5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: I wish I had read this novel back to back with Joseph Conrad's The Heart Of Darkness. I still think Conrad was a great writer but Achebe's novel has knocked down Conrad a peg in my opinion.

6. Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami: Of the contemporary novels I read this year this was my favorite.

7. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: This was a great dystopian read.

8. Slow Man by J. M. Coetzee: I am not a big fan of meta-fiction because one I think it is overused and it is usually not done well. I really liked this novel but I am still debating with myself whether or not it would have been better without the meta-fiction.

9. The Quiet American by Graham Greene. This was the first Graham Greene novel I have ever read; I need to read more by him.

10. Drop City by T. C. Boyle: I enjoyed this book. It reads like a popular novel, but it only beats out Arcadia by Lauren Groff by a nose for my 10th place slot. If the first half of Ms Groff's would have been as good as the second half I would have rated it higher. I thought the prose was a bit overcooked in the first half. Both books are about hippy communes.

The worst book I read in 2014 by a long shot is Saturday by Ian McEwen

With you on Saturday. Preposterous novel! I think though he redeemed himself with Chesil beach, Atonement and even Solar which shared some of the plot absurdities of Saturday but was a better read.
Wolf hall & Bring up the Bodies were both awesome. You should read a Change of Climate by her, Marc. Was in my top ten for the year.

Violet wrote: "With you on Saturday. Preposterous novel! I think though he redeemed himself with Chesil beach, Atonement and even Solar which shared some of the plot absurdities of Saturday but was a better read...."
Then it looks like I am not the only not to hold Saturday in high regard. I agree Atonement was better. At least I was entertained by that novel.

Okay, let's see how close I can come to doing this. I am enjoying all the comments posted so far and you all have given me ideas for the future.

Favorite books in 2014 –

Well, there are three that definitely top my list, in this order:

1) Wave, by Sonali Deraniyagala. This one blew me away. To find the will to live with vigor and discipline and achievement after losing one’s children (two sons) and spouse within the early moments of the devastation of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia was such a strong statement of what it can mean to be human in the face of a story the like of that of Biblical Job himself (one of the stories I have always turned to in times of despair). Yes, Sonali was fortunate enough to have a strong family, to have the resources for professional help, to be young and strong. But her story of the journey to accept memories again with joy and hope is applicable to all of us who have faced losses, no matter how far less traumatic on the scales by which we consider these things. Her bravery, even as she tottered with self-destruction in those first months, belongs to each who reads her story. Not to be confused with the movie The Impossible. A NYT top five non-fiction selection in 2013. Despite its subject matter, it is a very uplifting story.

2) All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This National Book Award finalist, but not winner, is just a fascinating piece of writing that required Doerr a decade to bring to print. A story of what happens to ordinary people when drawn into war, whether invaded or the invaders. Set largely on Saint Malo, an island in Brittany in northwestern France on the English Channel, the story features the museum caretaker father who must attempt to protect both his blind teenage daughter and a priceless gem; an agoraphobic survivor of WWI who must make choices about whether to dangerously support the Resistance as he shelters his niece; two German orphans, one called to elite Nazi service for his expertise in radio transmission, his sister remaining behind in the orphanage in the coal district of the Ruhr Valley Region where a Protestant nun cared for them; a cruel warrant officer; a defiant cadet; comrade-in-arms Volkheimer, a Sergeant Major charged with confiscating the invaluable “Sea of Flames,” “hidden” by being replicated in triplicate and dispersed to four “carriers.”

3) Open City by Teju Cole. Just fun for this suburbanite who has worked in NYC. Generated pages and pages of Web links and learned much delightful trivia from the peripatetic wanderings of the narrator, a medical resident in psychiatry at Columbia Presbyterian, originally from Nigeria, like the author. Especially enjoyed learning about the artist Hammershoi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhQmS...). The main protagonist and narrator comes across as a bit of an esoteric prick (well, maybe more than a bit), but, as fiction, it was a fulsome excursion.

For length: (view spoiler)[

I was fortunate this year. When I look at the fifty plus books on my “Challenge” for 2014, probably thirty could be eligible for this list, including several named by others, like Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things; Adichie’s Americanah; Tartt’s The Goldfinch; Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings. On the other hand, I had concerns about the fingers pointed by Fowler at educational institutions in her fascinating We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I finally re-read Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, last read at twenty-one, and marveled a bit at the journey then and since. Linda introduced me to the writings of Colum McCann, which I thoroughly enjoyed twice over (Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic).

But there were three books that didn’t even make my Challenge list because I didn’t totally complete their reading, but which are influencing my thought as much or more than most others: Rich Benjamin’s Searching for Whitopia, a study of population shifts within the U.S.; Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction with its macro-historic view of cycles of biodiversity on this planet; and Llosa's The Feast of the Goat. Like Kidd for TIoW, Llosa used dual plot lines, one largely historical, the other primarily fictional. However, between the two books, in Kidd’s the historic plot moved me; in Llosa’s, the fictional one disturbed perhaps even more than the historic.

But, I haven’t mentioned Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys (I much preferred it to Olive Kitteridge of a few years ago, although I understand that adaption has been a smashing success.) nor Dickens’s Bleak House nor …. Oh, I’m supposed to have quit long ago. Still, don’t forget these 2014 NBA winners, Redeployment (Klay) and Age of Ambition (Osnos), worthy of their honors imho.

(hide spoiler)]

I agree with the comments on Saturday and Hilary Mantel is a wondrous historical fiction writer. I adore her. This year, I read a lot of books I liked, but few that I loved.

1. The Narrow Road to the Deep North. I really didn't want to read it. How many books of war can there be? But it was gripping. And so well done.
2. The Human Stain by Philip Roth. Yes, he's a great, concise writer, but there was something about the twist in that story that was both predictable and unpredictable. Brilliant.
3. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrop. There are very few narratives like this on this part of American history. I couldn't put it down.
4. I re-read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. There are very few better at this craft than she. It is such a small book, yet packed with hefty themes and the prose...
5. Where'd You Go Bernadette. So funny!
6. Purple Hibiscus. Not as good as Americanah. But I learned so much and I wept, uncontrollably, at the end.
7. And since I spent much of my year touring and reading from my own book, which I love, I will end this list with my debut novel, 'Til the Well Runs Dry.

I'm not going to give a list, because my opinions change practically moment to moment, and if I went through a list of what I read last year, I'd probably end up re-rating half the books, and muttering dire things about my own taste. Instead, I'm going to bring up a book that has stuck with me the most, even though I gave it four, not five stars: Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake. Yes, the one written in a made-up blend of Modern and Old English. Yes, it is a bizarre conceit, and yes I had to read it with a copy of A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary at hand for reference, but possibly because of the very effort to read it, the characters and situation seems to have colonized my mind, and they're in there still, at the back, muttering direly to themselves.

Some amazing books here. I particularly concur with the glowing words about:

The Poisonwood Bible [a book that I read many years ago but that has stayed with me very strongly], Wild Swans [heartrending and as they say unputdownable], HHhH [incredibly clever and refreshing], Things Fall Apart [more people need to have read this, and yes, Conrad pales], and Wolf Hall/Bring up the Bodies.

My best ten this year [in rough order]:

1. Stoner by John Williams [there's no 'rough' about this one being top; astonishing writing, simple but transcendant -- pulls off the trick, by telling the simple details of one man's life, of being plainly about every life]

2. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt [big, bold, brash and thoroughly engrossing and thought-provoking]

3. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier [classic for a reason... sumptuous prose]

4. Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel [so enjoyable; a protagonist you know is flawed but you root for the whole way, and amazing evocation of the time and place]

5. Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann [Sprawling and very real, a set of lives spiralling into each other]

6. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson [so quiet and soft, so beautiful]

7. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel [brought the French Revolution to bloody life for me]

8. Invisible by Paul Auster [enigmatic, sharp and inventive]

9. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler [so sad, so so sad]

0. Pure by Andrew Miller [surprisingly deep, pulling off a delicate balance between a gothic tone and very real characters]

I really enjoyed all of those, but the first three or four were the ones that really cleared the bar and for me are all-time classics, up there with my favourite books ever such as Hesse's 'The Glass Bead Game', Heller's 'Catch-22', Eugenides' 'The Virgin Suicides', et al.

This is a quaint and inspirational novella that combines history and love into a neat little package.

1. Suspect by Robert Crais
2. The Bees by Laline Paull
3. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
4. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
5. The Madman's Daughter/Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd

I really want to read The Bees. I loved Watership Down growing up, and this seems in the mould.

Terry wrote: "I really want to read The Bees. I loved Watership Down growing up, and this seems in the mould."

I highly recommend it! One of my very favorite books!

These are some really nice lists! My favourites of last year were Faces in the Crowd by the wonderful Valeria Luiselli, Fundbüro by the great German author Siegfried Lenz, De kunst van het vallen by Gaea Schoeters (Belgian author) and last but not least The Trout Opera. Strangely, only one English written book, because normally I mostly read in English.

The first brilliant book I read this year was English luckily: How to be both, Ali Smith's latest.

And I'm really looking forward to A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, which I just know is going to be brilliant. But I owe it to her to find an appropriate time to read it, unburdened by work and other interferences from real life ;-)

In 2014, the five best books I read were:

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
2. Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser
3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
4. The Fault in our Stars by John Green
5. The Shining by Stephen King

These were the five novels that had the biggest impact on my train of thought during the year, whether it changed the way I see things, the emotional chord it struck, or just left me with the feeling of being haunted, they were striking!