Books I enjoyed in 2014
Jan. 3rd, 2015 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiI failed miserably at logging books last year, but here are eleven (plus an honorable mention) I really liked. It's not a comprehensive list, of course, but the ones I most remember (not counting PW reviews):
Six that were published in 2014:
City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Just as a book I read in December of 2013 (Ancillary Justice) was the best SF book of the year, a book I read last month was the best 2014-published one I read. Like AJ, this deals with colonialism and postcolonialism and the after-effects, and is actually more effective as a commentary on that front (although it sacrifices the look at gender and language). It's got elements that remind me, of all things, of the Narn/Centauri relationship in B5, albeit filtered through (or back through) the India/England one. It's a spycraft novel set on an alternate earth in which the gods once ruled, but no longer do (so yes, Max Gladstone comparisons are apt). But it's also so much more than that, a near-flawlessly written story with some wonderful lead characters, some incredible commentary on human nature, and just a solid and effective plot. I wish I'd seen more love for this on end-of-year lists.
Thrown, by Kerry Howley. God, so good. Literary nonfiction about MMA. Incredible stuff, helped by the amazing narrative voice that "Kit" uses. I don't care if you don't care about cage fighting (I'm certainly not very into it). This is great stuff, the story of two fighters -- one a veteran towards the end of his career, one a kid hoping to become a big shot -- as told by a grad student in philosophy.
The Fever, Megan Abbott. I've raved about Abbott before, and will continue to do so. She's one of the great crime writers of our time, and if she's not writing "traditional" crime books any more (not that her early hard-boiled tales were "traditional," anyway), that's fine. This is the story of a town where a bunch of teen girls get mysteriously sick, but it's not horror and barely a mystery, instead a look at teen sexuality (a theme of her recent works) and the tale of a family's struggles.
Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher. If you work in academia, you need to read this. It's a tiny little book -- maybe an hour's read -- but it's hilarious and, once you get into it, tells a surprisingly compelling little story. The conceit is that it's essentially a one-sided epistolary novel, the cranky letters -- often letters of recommendation -- written by a middle-aged professor in a stalled career at a mediocre school.
The Forsaken, by Ace Atkins. The Quinn Colson series just keeps getting better (but as these are hardly procedurals, you should be starting with the first), as Alabama-born Atkins continues to tell tales of some truly ugly events and people in a place that he clearly still loves.
Shovel Ready: A Spademan Novel, by Adam Sternbergh. This is a grim book set in a devastated New York, told in a absolutely gripping narrative voice.
Honorable mention: Consumed: A Novel, by David Cronenberg. It's not great (or possibly even good), but it is engaging, and very, well, Cronenbergian. I much prefer Tobe Hooper's Midnight Movie as far as debut novels of indie horror directors of the '70s go, but if you like Cronenberg's movies, you probably should read this.
Five from prior years:
The Devil All the Time, by Donald Ray Pollock. This is a book about horrible, horrible people doing bleak and awful things. Yet it's gorgeously written. We've got serial killers, con men, thieves, awful preachers, corrupt sheriffs, and just-plain angry teenagers set loose in rural Ohio and West Virginia over twenty years from WWII through the '60s. Not always pleasant reading, but really, really good. Like high literature good.
Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson. If you're reading Ms Marvel (and you should be, seeing as it's the best book published by either of the Big Two these days), you should also read this, Wilson's novel about hacking and magic and revolution in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Wilson also includes my favorite authorial insertion character since Lanark.
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language, Arika Okrent. I'm just going to quote what I said before, since this was one of the few I actually logged: This is a ridiculously entertaining and informative book as much about the people who create languages as it is about the languages themselves. Esperanto and Klingon get mentions, but so do Loglan and Láadan. Philcon and Wiscon both get mentioned during the book (neither of them in the context of Klingon); it's not surprising that artificial language creators are also other kinds of geeks. We learn about power struggles, political infighting, and even how Esperanto and modern Hebrew are connected. It's just plain fascinating.
The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. Okay, it won the NBA, so it's not exactly obscure, but this tale of a freed slave named Henry rescued by John Brown and living as a young woman is brilliant, funny, and just a hell of a read.
Baltimore Blues, by Laura Lippman. I was incredibly late to the Tess Monaghan party, but damn, she's good. A Jewish/Irish detective in Baltimore, with some really nice twists and a wonderful narrative voice. The best book in the series is actually Sugar House (which can be triggery for anyone with eating disorders), but the series does work best when read in order (especially since Tess, unlike, say, Kinsey Millhone or V.I. Warshawski, does not start the series as a detective).
Six that were published in 2014:
City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Just as a book I read in December of 2013 (Ancillary Justice) was the best SF book of the year, a book I read last month was the best 2014-published one I read. Like AJ, this deals with colonialism and postcolonialism and the after-effects, and is actually more effective as a commentary on that front (although it sacrifices the look at gender and language). It's got elements that remind me, of all things, of the Narn/Centauri relationship in B5, albeit filtered through (or back through) the India/England one. It's a spycraft novel set on an alternate earth in which the gods once ruled, but no longer do (so yes, Max Gladstone comparisons are apt). But it's also so much more than that, a near-flawlessly written story with some wonderful lead characters, some incredible commentary on human nature, and just a solid and effective plot. I wish I'd seen more love for this on end-of-year lists.
Thrown, by Kerry Howley. God, so good. Literary nonfiction about MMA. Incredible stuff, helped by the amazing narrative voice that "Kit" uses. I don't care if you don't care about cage fighting (I'm certainly not very into it). This is great stuff, the story of two fighters -- one a veteran towards the end of his career, one a kid hoping to become a big shot -- as told by a grad student in philosophy.
The Fever, Megan Abbott. I've raved about Abbott before, and will continue to do so. She's one of the great crime writers of our time, and if she's not writing "traditional" crime books any more (not that her early hard-boiled tales were "traditional," anyway), that's fine. This is the story of a town where a bunch of teen girls get mysteriously sick, but it's not horror and barely a mystery, instead a look at teen sexuality (a theme of her recent works) and the tale of a family's struggles.
Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher. If you work in academia, you need to read this. It's a tiny little book -- maybe an hour's read -- but it's hilarious and, once you get into it, tells a surprisingly compelling little story. The conceit is that it's essentially a one-sided epistolary novel, the cranky letters -- often letters of recommendation -- written by a middle-aged professor in a stalled career at a mediocre school.
The Forsaken, by Ace Atkins. The Quinn Colson series just keeps getting better (but as these are hardly procedurals, you should be starting with the first), as Alabama-born Atkins continues to tell tales of some truly ugly events and people in a place that he clearly still loves.
Shovel Ready: A Spademan Novel, by Adam Sternbergh. This is a grim book set in a devastated New York, told in a absolutely gripping narrative voice.
Honorable mention: Consumed: A Novel, by David Cronenberg. It's not great (or possibly even good), but it is engaging, and very, well, Cronenbergian. I much prefer Tobe Hooper's Midnight Movie as far as debut novels of indie horror directors of the '70s go, but if you like Cronenberg's movies, you probably should read this.
Five from prior years:
The Devil All the Time, by Donald Ray Pollock. This is a book about horrible, horrible people doing bleak and awful things. Yet it's gorgeously written. We've got serial killers, con men, thieves, awful preachers, corrupt sheriffs, and just-plain angry teenagers set loose in rural Ohio and West Virginia over twenty years from WWII through the '60s. Not always pleasant reading, but really, really good. Like high literature good.
Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson. If you're reading Ms Marvel (and you should be, seeing as it's the best book published by either of the Big Two these days), you should also read this, Wilson's novel about hacking and magic and revolution in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Wilson also includes my favorite authorial insertion character since Lanark.
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language, Arika Okrent. I'm just going to quote what I said before, since this was one of the few I actually logged: This is a ridiculously entertaining and informative book as much about the people who create languages as it is about the languages themselves. Esperanto and Klingon get mentions, but so do Loglan and Láadan. Philcon and Wiscon both get mentioned during the book (neither of them in the context of Klingon); it's not surprising that artificial language creators are also other kinds of geeks. We learn about power struggles, political infighting, and even how Esperanto and modern Hebrew are connected. It's just plain fascinating.
The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. Okay, it won the NBA, so it's not exactly obscure, but this tale of a freed slave named Henry rescued by John Brown and living as a young woman is brilliant, funny, and just a hell of a read.
Baltimore Blues, by Laura Lippman. I was incredibly late to the Tess Monaghan party, but damn, she's good. A Jewish/Irish detective in Baltimore, with some really nice twists and a wonderful narrative voice. The best book in the series is actually Sugar House (which can be triggery for anyone with eating disorders), but the series does work best when read in order (especially since Tess, unlike, say, Kinsey Millhone or V.I. Warshawski, does not start the series as a detective).