Best reads of 2014 - a round-up

So the presents are all wrapped, and I am feeling on top of the holidays for once.  I guess that is one of the advantages of your children outgrowing Santa -- presents can be wrapped over several days and not all in a mad rush on Christmas Eve.  (Of course that assumes that one did shopping early and nothing gets lost in the mail...)

Now as it happens, I have not hung the stockings, mostly because I've been getting home late all week, but I will make sure to get home earlier tonight and take care of that.  If I happen to see the chocolate gold coins, I'll pick up a few as stocking stuffers, but essentially I am done.  It's a nice feeling.  (Actually, the stockings are now hung, but not stuffed.)

 

I don't think I did much of a round-up of the year last year, particularly my favourite books read in 2013, partly because I knew I was transitioning to a new job, and I had a lot to deal with, so I wouldn't leave my former co-workers high and dry.  I guess I was roughly halfway through Proust (but not enjoying it) as 2013 closed, and I was reading a fair number of Molly Keane and Barbara Comyns books, since they generally weren't available in Toronto libraries. Of the Keane, I liked Two Days in Aragon (probably read in 2014), Conversation Piece and Taking Chances.

I liked Comnys in flashes and small doses -- The Skin Chairs was pretty good and there were some interesting moments in A Touch of Mistletoe and The House of Dolls.  It's possible that with Comyns I saved the best for last (The Juniper Tree, which I should get to in early 2015).  I think that is probably the case for Molly Keane as well.

It would take quite a while to reconstruct what I really liked in 2013, though Faulkner's The Reivers was a lot of fun, and I appreciated Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy quite a bit, once I finally committed to reading it.  I also got through Anna Karenina, though this is a case where I wasn't really blown away by it.  My more recent reading of Tolstoy's short novels have generally left me cold, and I am clearly never going to be in his camp (much preferring Dostoevsky and Turgenev).

In terms of my top 5 books read in 2014, it would be:

• Dostoevsky's Demons
• Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia Trilogy (saw & read this in 2014)
• Joseph Roth's Hotel Savoy
• Iris Murdoch's Under the Net 
• Michel Tremblay's The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant

(The best novel I reread during 2014 was Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.)

Honorable mentions for 2014 go to:

• Turgenev's Sketches from a Hunter's Album
• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
• The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
• The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy
• Rebellion by Joseph Roth
• Soul by Andrey Platonov 
• The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neill

Overall it was a kind of strange year, heavily dominated by Russian literature and books read somewhat out of obligation.  While I still am trying to get through a fair number of books that I can then donate (and clear out my shelves a bit more), I have tried to skew the ever-growing TBR pile towards books I am really excited about reading in 2015 and beyond.  There are actually quite a few at the top of the list that I have wanted to read for a long time, and only one that feels a bit like an obligation (perhaps you can guess which one that is).

Now if I can only remember to carve out some time for my own writing in 2015...

Anyway, Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year.