My list keeping can be a little compulsive at times, but unlike other compulsive behaviors of mine (ear cleaning being a prime example), the lists can actually be helpful. I posted 2014's list on my other blog last year, and it was a fun way to sort of review the year via book reminiscing, so here I am again. And again I am forced to wonder: why do I read so dang much self-help????
January:
Maus 1 - Art Spiegelman
Maus 2 - Art Spiegelman
Dune - Frank Herbert
Brown Girl Dreaming - Jacqueline Woodson
Because I Said So - Ken Jennings
I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You - Courtney Maum: I really liked this book, but now I can't remember anything else about it. I think I recommend it?
10:06 - Ben Lerner: I heard about this book from an NRP interview, and it turned out to be a really excellent read, but I wish I'd read his first book, Leaving the Atocha Station, first, because the whole thing is apparently kind of meta and I probably missed that aspect of it. Either way, I highly recommend.
How Children Succeed - Paul Tough - I really wish I had a better memory. My children will probably never succeed because I don't remember anything this book said on the topic.
February:
Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit - Sean Hepburn Ferrer
Aha! - William B. Irvine
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion: Charming romance with a much more interesting narrator than most, but it is kind of heavy on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, which is a major pet peeve of mine. Worth reading for the perspective of the narrator, a scientist devoted to order and efficiency who understands very little about people (and hence requires the MPDG.)
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling: I'm generally a fan of Mindy, but I didn't think this was all that funny for some reason. I might have been in a mood that day? Or my sense of humor is no good?
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler: This was a recommendation from my mom, and I really loved it. Well written, interesting, and entertaining, with a mind-expanding twist. Read it.
40 Days of Dating - Timothy Goodman & Jessica Walsh: Ugh. This book. These two. David and I followed the blog (David more regularly than me) wherein Tim and Jessica set themselves up on a dating experiment and documented their experiences and feelings. We enjoyed it at the time, but for some reason the book just seemed self-indulgent and silly to me. The two of them are designers, though, so the book itself is cool.
10% Happier - Dan Harris: Documents Harris' experiences with meditation which, in spite of the book's title, really seem to have made him more than ten percent happier.
The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg: Super interesting read. Maybe my favorite of the many self-help-ish books I read this year. (Which, why do I read so many of those??)
An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison
How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran: I loved this book so much. Probably the funniest book I've ever read, and also super insightful and smart. I would recommend it to everyone, except that the language is strong, and I think some of the content might have been a bit on the inappropriate side. If not for those things, I would probably be handing copies of this book out on the sidewalk. With those things, I'll just give you a warning and a strong recommendation that you read it if you think you'd like it. Brilliant book.
Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay: I think I would have enjoyed this more if it hadn't come on the heels of Moran's book. I still really enjoyed Gay's perspective, but it wasn't, you know, delightful. Read it anyway.
Dorothea Lange - Mark Durden
March:
Yes Please - Amy Poehler: I love Amy Poehler. I thought this book was just OK. Worth a read, but I preferred Bossypants.
Not That Kind of Girl - Lena Dunham: I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. Recommend.
Best American Essays 2014 - edited by John Jeremiah Sullivan: Best American Essays are BAE.
Redeployment - Phil Klay: Excellent collection of short stories related to war. Highly recommend.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee: I REMEMBER NOTHING ABOUT THIS.
Swamplandia! - Karen Russell: Excellent novel. I love Karen Russell. Read it.
April:
Screen Fiend - Patton Oswalt: Documents Oswalt's addiction to movies. Another thing I heard about from NPR. Enjoyable. Made me simultaneously want to watch all the movies, and never watch anything ever again.
May:
The Choice - Slade Combs
This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper: I'd give a bit of a content warning on this one, but I really enjoyed it and would recommend it. Also liked the movie.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - Marie Kondo: This book made me want to get rid of everything I own except, like, one cashmere sweater and a pair of yoga pants. David blames it for giving me what he calls "an unnatural aversion to material things." I think I had that aversion before reading this, but the book made me feel justified. It's not a literary experience, but read it anyway. And then go take all your stuff to Goodwill.
Norway - Lonely Planet
Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn: Not nearly as good as Gone Girl.
Cuckoo’s Calling - Robert Galbraith: J.K. Rowling, as always, is the best. This book is too long, but it's so readable that it doesn't really matter.
Denmark - Lonely Planet
June:
Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer: This book wanted to be more interesting than it actually was.
I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron: Heavens I loved this book. I want Nora Ephron to be my totem animal.
The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank: Picked this up on a book trade cart in Brooklyn Bridge Park to read while Graham was at the playground. Didn't think it'd be nearly as good as it was. It's a light read, but very enjoyable.
The Party, After You Left - Roz Chast
July:
On Looking - Alexandra Horowitz: This book follows Horowitz as she walks around NYC (and sometimes other places) with experts on various topics to try to see the world through their eyes. Really interesting, good read.
New England - Lonely Planet
The Crossroads of Should and Must - Elle Luna
100 Greatest Trips - Travel & Leisure
The Wordy Shipmates - Sarah Vowell: Loved this book about the Puritans. Incredibly interesting and also somehow very funny. Recommended.
Committed: A Love Story - Elizabeth Gilbert: I think for some reason Eat, Pray, Love is kind of a hiss and a byword for "cool" nonfictionists, and I haven't read it in a while so I don't know how I'd feel about it now, but I really liked that book when I read it, and I liked this follow-up about the history of marriage, too.
The Ideal Bookshelf - Thessaly La Force & Jane Mount: Really fun book of short pieces about the favorite books of various artists/notable people. Some of the entries are hilariously pretentious, too.
The Secret - Rhonda Byrne
The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz
Food Rules - Michael Pollan
In Praise of Stay-at Home Moms - Dr. Laura Schlessinger: This book annoyed the heck out of me, even as a stay-at-home mom myself. I generally agree with Dr. Laura, but don't understand why she has to say everything in the least empathetic way possible.
100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life - Pam Grout
Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
Delicious! - Ruth Reichl: I really enjoyed this novel by food writer Reichl about a girl who gets a job at a food magazine. Very New York-y, very enjoyable.
The Days Are Gods - Liz Stephens: Loved this book of essays about Stephens' experience living in Wellsville. Beautiful writing and I loved her voice. Made even better when I realized that her husband, who shows up quite a bit in the book, used to work at the Old Lyric theater with me in Logan. Chopper, as I knew him, had become sort of a mythical figure for me over the years, which is a different story, and I was beyond delighted to figure out he was the same person as the Christopher in the book.
There is a Country - ed. by Nyuol Lueth Tong
August:
In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan
The Mastery of Love - Don Miguel Ruiz
Indoor Kitchen Gardening - Elizabeth Millard
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami: Murakami is so weird and so wonderful. I loved this book.
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Loved.
The Proper Care & Feeding of Marriage - Dr. Laura Schlessinger: Ugh. Dr. Laura again.
Sophie's Choice - William Styron: This book is wonderfully written and the characters are SO INTERESTING. The climatic scene was horrifying, but readable in context. But then we watched the movie. Meryl Streep is mind-blowing, but I will never forgive that movie for being utterly, life-ruiningly sad. I sobbed uncontrollably for a full hour. We had to pause the movie. Do not watch while pregnant.
September:
Loving What Is - Byron Katie
McSweeney's 43
Sugar Blues - William Dufty
Atonement - Ian McEwan: I felt like I should like this more than I did. I ended up kind of speed-reading it to get to the conclusion. David says the movie is better.
On Looking - Lia Purpura: I didn't enjoy this book very much until I decided to read it as poetry instead of essays. Then it was beautiful. But with the exception of a few pieces, I didn't get it at all.
Spark - Julie Burstein
None of This is Real - Miranda Mellis
The Trouble with Poetry - Billy Collins
San Francisco Poems - Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Loved this.
The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff
Candide - Voltaire
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings- Maya Angelou
Fun Home - Alison Bechdel: So, so, so good.
100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write - Sarah Ruhl
Making It - Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen
Sketch - France Belleville-Van Stone
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen: I generally hate long books because I can't keep up momentum. This was an exception. I loved it.
October:
Collected Poems - Dylan Thomas
Simplicity Parenting - Kim John Payne
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami: Much easier to read than Wind-Up Bird, and left me thinking for a long time after I finished.
McSweeneys 41
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself - David Lipsky: In which Lipsky goes along with David Foster Wallace on Wallace's book tour for Infinite Jest. Which I haven't read. I've read enough DFW that I think I could still appreciate this, but I wish I'd read Infinite Jest first. I don't know if I'll ever get around to that, though, because it's about the most intimidating book in the world. To me at least.
The Book of My Lives - Aleksandar Hemon: Of all the memoir-y nonfiction I read this year, this was probably my favorite. Deals with Hemon's experiences growing up in, and eventually leaving, Bosnia. Beautifully written and tremendously interesting.
Show Your Work! - Austin Kleon
Three Kinds of Motion - Riley Hanick
Goodbye to All That - ed. by Sari Botton: A collection of essays about writers living in and loving, and mostly leaving, NYC. There were a few very good essays, but mostly I got pretty annoyed by the theme of, "I loved New York and it made me who I am today and it was so awesome when I lived there in the 70s/80s/90s/00s, but then the rent got too high and I was forced out and now I've retroactively decided it was a garbage dump and all the cool things are gone anyway and all the new people have ruined it. But if it weren't so expensive I'd be back in a heartbeat." Yeah, ok.
November:
Almost Home - Joan Bauer
Design Mom - Gabrielle Stanley Blair
The Odd Woman and the City - Vivian Gornick: Gornick generally gets a little too into the idea of her uniqueness, which I find annoying, but it's so gosh darn beautiful writing that I don't really mind.
The Balcony Gardener - Isabelle Palmer
About Grace - Anthony Doerr: Everything Doerr writes is required reading.
The Screwtape Letters - C. S. Lewis: My favorite book.
The Great Divorce - C. S. Lewis: C.S. Lewis is a grade A mind-blower.
Four Seasons in Rome - Anthony Doerr: See above.
December:
Upside Down - Eduardo Galeano: My goodness. This book. Everyone in the whole world should read this book. This absolutely blew my mind. And also turned me into a socialist. Important, mind-altering stuff.
Big Questions from Little People - Ed. By Gemma Elwin Harris
The Gifts of Imperfection - Brene Brown
The Gratitude Diaries - Janice Kaplan
2 comments:
Thank you for the list and your perspective...except of course, on Dr. Laura! There are books you recommended that I will read as soon as I can. But I'll bet I don't become a socialist.
I had a good long laugh about the Dr. Laura posts. My dad used to listen to Dr. Laura on the radio and then give her advice to all the women (my mother, his sister, his mother, me) until all of us refused to listen to him, or Dr. Laura, ever again. The sad thing is, I also think she's right a lot -- a very lot. But not terribly empathetic.
Also, your husband is right about the movie version of Atonement being better than the book. In fact, it's quite a bit better.
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