It’s that time of year (the penultimate reading day of 2014) where I pick my favourite and bests. The first nine are in no particular order:
The Heart Broke In by James Meek
When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson
Golden Boys by Sonya Hartnett
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna
My favourite book of 2014: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
I finished We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves on a packed commuter train & had to try & cry discretely amongst my fellow travellers – great choice!
Were you bawling?
More like quietly snivelling to myself, but I still wasn’t successful in hiding it from people!
I feel like the year is alright because we have one in common. Relieved. 😉
I suspect we’ll have another match when I finally get around to Evie Wyld. And Bell Weather.
I just ordered the Fowler book with a gift card! And The Goldfinch made my list too.
I’ve been a bit of a book-pusher when it comes to the Fowler. I knew the big twist (read it in a review…) but it didn’t make any difference to my enjoyment of the book – life was on hold while I was reading it.
I really want to read Fowler and everyone loves All the Light You Cannot See. I’m afraid I didn’t love The Goldfinch as much as most people. It had a lot of interesting themes, but a main character that was very hard to sympathize with.
I can see wht The Goldfinch divides opinion – some of it was self-indulgent but I’m a sucker for orphans (probably explains my John Irving obsession as well!).
All the Light We Cannot See was brilliant – long but moves quickly. Oddly, there are similarities with The Goldfinch in that both stories are about a missing museum treasure (but don’t let that put you off!).
You obviously had a great reading year. I hope to catch up with some of your top reads this year too. I’ve heard good and bad about The Goldfinch.
The Goldfinch divides people I think – always a good sign in my opinion! I’d rather read a book that gets either 1 star or 5 star ratings, as opposed to a solid 3 stars from everyone – does that make sense?!