So before someone yells at me “Enough with the lists!”, I took that list of Best Books of 2014 – A List of Lists and I made another list – the books that appear most frequently on all of those lists.
Trawl through all the lists or save time by simply adding the 2014 Commonly-Agreed-by-the-People-Who-Publish-Best-of-2014-Book-Lists-in-November top 22 books to your To-Be-Read stack.
Books that made three lists –
1. Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
2. Bark by Lorrie Moore
3. Euphoria by Lily King
4. We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas
5. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
6. Us by David Nicolls
7. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
8. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
9. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Books that made four lists –
10. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
11. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
12. Family Life by Akhil Sharma
13. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
14. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
15. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Books that made five lists –
16. Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
17. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
18. The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
19. Station Eleven by by Emily St. John Mandel
Books that made six or more lists –
20. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
21. Lila by Marilynne Robinson
22. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
I’ve only read two of these (actually, one I abandoned). I own another 11 of them and intend to finish the year focused on those 11 books. Maybe I should turn this into a reading challenge…?
I’m dying to read Station Eleven and All the Light. Tons of other popular ones I’ve seen but never really checked out.. maybe I should. 🙂
Have just started All the Light – only 10% in but already LOVING IT – the writing is just beautiful.
Interesting list! Ive read 4, have 4 on my tbr pile and there are another 4 I’d like.
Thanks for doing all the legwork on this! There are so many lists this time of year — too many to keep track of really, so I like this compilation quite a lot. Station Eleven has caught my eye the most and I already have a copy, but I would also like to read All the Light We Cannot See and The Paying Guests (though I may wait for that chunkster to come out in paperback!)
The website I work for Eat Your Books does something similar for cookbooks each year and I’m very curious to see which ones make the top spots for 2014 when the final list comes out.
My pleasure! I’ll be curious to see what’s on the Eat Your Books list (I have a cook book buying habit – don’t cook from the books much, just like looking at the pictures and reading recipes – I know you won’t think that’s weird!).
Nope, not weird at all! I am a total cookbook junkie myself 🙂
Hi again Kate! Just wanted to let you know the best of the best cookbooks list I mentioned is up — can’t say I’m too surprised by the book that took the #1 spot!
Eat Your Books’ 2014 Best of the Best Cookbooks List
Brilliant! Thank you for this. (My TBR and wallet are bracing themselves….)
It made me realise that I’d missed so much! Wondering if I attempt to read a bunch of these over the next few weeks will I become jaded? Should I space all this potential aceness out?
I think space them out. Make the aceness last!
We must be reading different lists. The book I’m seeing over and over again on the Best lists is ‘Fourth of July Creek’ by Smith Henderson, and I’m actually reading it now because of that fact. So far it is a winner for me.
I did see Fourth of July Creek mentioned on a couple of lists – perhaps it got a bigger rap in the US (as opposed to UK and Australia)? Here are the lists I worked from: https://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/best-books-of-2014-a-list-of-lists/
What a service to humanity! Number crunching greatness! Clearly I’m going to have to read Lila. I’m overdue for another Marilynne Robinson anyway. I’m saving The Bone Clocks for a holiday. I’m also keen to read Us, having loved One Day.
Oh dear, yet more books to add to my must read list.
Thank you!!!
What a fascinating compilation! I really thought the lists would have more similarities. Maybe they really do try to distinguish themselves from one another. Who knew?
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I have only read two and loved them–Everything I Never Told You and All the Light We Cannot See. However, also like you, I own five more, and another five are on my TBR list. Dang! This is sad. It is early 2016 and I still haven’t read these 10 books! 🙁
Never-mind – at least next time you’re trying to decide what to read next you can feel assured that there are some probable gems in the TBR stack – all these reviewers can’t be wrong, right?!
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