The end of the year. Everyone's favorite time to put out lists upon lists of all the best things from this year, and also the best things to look forward to about next year.
At the beginning of 2014, I made a goal for myself to read 30 books this year. I chose 30 because in 2013 I only read 14 books. When I was in college, I had to read 30 books for 1 class, in a semester where I was taking 5 classes. So I figured 30 should be doable easily, if I just read more consistently.
Goodreads, which I love, has a place where you can set a book challenge for yourself for the year and then as you add your read books and reviews, it neatly puts them together and tells you how you're doing in your own challenge. If you look through mine, you will see that consistent reading was not done, not even a little bit. I think I read about 5 books in the first 6 months of 2014, then played catch up the last few months, reading 7 books in September and then 10 in December to accomplish my goal. But I did it!
Not all of these books were published in 2014, but this was the year that I read them. The following books are the ones that I rated the most highly on Goodreads. I hope you can find something that you may like, too.
11. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
My review: 4 stars
This book is so cheesy. So unbelievably cheesy. I'm talking Twilight Bella gushing about Edward cheesy, and I ATE IT UP. I'm not ashamed to admit it either.
Anna is an American from Atlanta who has been "cruelly" (but really, get over yourself) forced to attend her senior year of high school at an American school in Paris. She is so upset to be leaving her best friend Bridgette and crush Toph behind. But then on her very first day there she meets Meredith, her dorm neighbor, and Mer invites her into her group of friends. So she is so sad that she is alone in Paris but she makes friends immediately and keeps them through the whole school year. You're probably judging me for liking this already but whatever.In this group of friends is Etienne St. Clair, a half-American half-French kid raised in London so he has a British accent. His one flaw is that he is short. But the way Anna and everyone else is in love with him, his height is clearly not an issue. The story goes through their whole senior year, with Etienne still having a girlfriend who is in college in Paris complicating the relationship.I can't even really relate how cheesy it is. It's just awful. But I loved it. Anna and St. Clair become "best friends" but obviously that is not true and they totally love each other the whole time. It builds and builds until SPOILER ALERT they admit they love each other and get together. The end.The characters are pretty one-dimensional, but for a story like this, they have enough depth to keep it interesting. It is good that Anna has some realizations about what kind of friend she is and how she needs to improve. And the way she feels when she does go home to Atlanta and everything is different--I think we've all felt that way at some point, and it's a hard but good thing to learn about. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Twilight and the like. I loved the Paris setting as well because I'm in love with Paris.
10. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
My review: 4 stars
I enjoyed this story. I wonder why it seems that it takes some sort of epic sadness or tragedy for a lot of people to be inspired to travel or do crazy things in the world.
Cheryl Strayed had a crazy messed up life. It must have taken years of therapy (beyond just being in nature) for her to really heal and tell this story.
It doesn't sound like a glorious experience and it does at the same time. Like there are awful things, like how painful it was and she lost 6 toenails and was always sore from walking 20 miles a day and at one point she lost her boots and had to wear sandals to hike for several days until she could even reach a point to get new ones
but being alone in the wild would be exhilarating. Just nature and you and nothing else. I don't think I would ever be...crazy...enough to do the Pacific Coast Trail, but she made the Appalachian Trail sound interesting enough. Maybe someday. I'm not much of a hiker.
It's interesting how much of the story came about and was worth telling due to her lack of preparedness. I'm sure a lot of people have great tales to tell about their hiking adventures, but things are always better when something goes not quite perfectly. Maybe because it gives us something to root for, and let's face, people love an underdog.
I hope in my own life that it won't take a divorce or death for me to go on adventures. But I was happy that Strayed found some sort of healing and was able to share it in this way.
9. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
My review: 4 stars
I have a strange pattern when it comes to reading books that are slow in the beginning--I start out and take my sweet time, reading a bit here and there and putting the book down sometimes for weeks (or more at a time), and then when I decide to read the book again, I pick it up and finish it in the matter of a day or two. I don't know why this is, but it is a trend, and this trend has once again happened when I read The Joy Luck Club.
It does have a slow start. The stories are all interesting but since the connections between them are harder to recognize in their introductions it feels a bit disjointed. But as each voice tells her story and the connections between them, connections between people and places and then connections between mothers and daughters, become apparent it was much more enjoyable.
I cried. I want to cry and cry. The mothers come from such amazing and tragic beginnings, all of them. How do people live through such tragedy? I don't know that I could do it. I pray I never have to.
I wonder so much at how it would be to live in another country even now. The daughters all struggled to appreciate their mothers and vice versa, which is so hard. It's a good moral to take away, to appreciate where you come from and try to understand how it makes who your parents are, and how that in turn makes you who you are.
The mother Suyuan Woo who had to leave her twin baby girls on the side of the road as she fled for her life. I can't handle it. I don't want to spoil the ending but I will say it was beautiful and so extremely bittersweet for them. Yin-ying St. Clair's story was so interesting. It's crazy to imagine that you could go your whole life and not know anything about your parents' lives. And apparently not really care? I felt like there was some understanding and healing that came to each set of mother-daughters as they grew. I wish there had been more, but not in a way that is critical of the author. More in a way that I loved their stories and wanted for them to find that common ground and be happier together. I think Waverly Jong was the least likable daughter of them all.
I was told before I read this that it was sometimes difficult to remember who belonged to whom since the chapters are so spread and random. I agree with that, and did find myself going back to refresh my memory of which story was tied to which and how. It would have been easier if I hadn't taken a break in reading from the first part to the rest but that is my own fault. I would recommend this book for sure to mothers and daughters.
8. Where She Went by Gayle Foreman
My Review: 4 stars
** spoiler alert ** I liked the first one enough to want to read this one and it sucked me in just as much as the first. I liked that it was the story of Adam, obviously I was curious about what happened to Mia but it's so true that a tragic event like the one they all go through in the first book would effect lots of people in lots of different ways.
Adam as a rock star was a classic jerk but instead of hating him for it I pitied him, which it seems like was the intention. He was struggling so much after Mia left and he obviously never dealt with the accident for himself which is probably true of a lot of people who focus on trying to help someone else through hard times.
Even though the ending on this book is more cliche when it comes to "happy endings" I was happy with it. I wanted Mia and Adam to get back together and I think the way that it happens was really good. I think I was even more willing to like the ending because even though they end up together there is still the sadness of her family being gone, and other big changes like him leaving the band. I didn't like it quite as much as the first but I'm still glad I read it and would recommend them as a set to anyone.
7. If I Stay by Gayle Foreman
My review: 4 stars
Whew this is a super emotional book. I kind of think that for some reason when I read a book for the first time and it's a really sad, tragic type book I don't cry as much as you would think. But then once it's over and I have time to think about and process the story, then I cry. Probably will be the case with this one although tears did fall at least twice while I read.
I'm glad I read the author's notes and discussion questions afterward because I don't think I would have overtly noticed or really taken a second thought about how Mia's parents lives effect her life and her decisions so much. As a parent though it is really interesting to consider that side of things. I was appropriately horrified a the descriptions of her parents bodies after the accident, holy graphic. I'm glad the author omitted describing her brother Teddy afterward although I'm sure that was probably because she didn't really want to imagine it either.
I was surprised at how short the book was but it seemed to be a perfect length, not dragged out at all which could have been done considering the subject matter.
I really appreciated the authentic high school relationship that was portrayed, how things changed between Mia and Adam once they realized they may not be living in the same place after school is over. I think high school love can still be real love but I'm glad it wasn't sugarcoated. And really, I loved the other characters more than Adam I think. Kim and Gramps are the two that stand out to me, although Willow's strength is admirable and how I imagine nurses in most cases to be. I liked that whether she stayed or not was not just about Adam, it was about her whole life with all of these people.
I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys YA lit. Well written and moving. I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for days and am already considering buying the next one.
6. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
My review: 4 stars
** spoiler alert ** What did I think? I've given myself a day to process everything before writing the review and I'm still not sure I can do justice to what I'm feeling about this book. I loved some things about it, and others were tedious and boring. The first almost 200 pages were rough. Even though I understood the premise going into it, I still struggled to understand what was happening for a lot of the first part. I still think that maybe repeating the birth so many times in the beginning was maybe not necessary. Once she was a child it started to make a little bit more sense thankfully, but I really had to just power through those first parts of the book.
Once Ursula turns 16 for the first time and everything awful happens in that version of her life, I could hardly put the book down. There were still a few chapters that were a bit disjointed and confusing but they did end up making sense as the story went on.
I loved getting a view point of so many different parts of WWII through her different lives. I can't imagine the horror of living through those bombings. The one where she was stuck in Germany and chose death over starving with her daughter was so crazy. I really appreciated that point of view because so often we hear how awful things were for so many people and even though Germans started the war, those people suffered too. I was grateful that out of all of her lives she only ever had a child in that one. I think it would have been even sadder and more difficult to get through if she kept having and losing children over and over. Losing her father each time was awful.
I have a theory that maybe Teddy was experiencing the same type of thing. I feel like it alludes to the possibility first when he says to her "What if we could do it again and again, do you think we would ever get it right?" (paraphrasing here, I don't have the book handy.) And then the fact that he lives in the war after he had died--there really wasn't an explanation as to why that happened that time, it didn't seem that there was anything that Ursula could have done differently to save him. UNLESS people's theories that Izzie's child Roland was the person who shot Teddy down originally and in that life he died young, but I'm not sure how that fits in...chronologically? Can there be a chronology when it's the same life over and over?
I'm glad I didn't give up on it and that I kept reading. I believe it was worth it. I'm so interested in the author's thought process and overall writing process, I'll have to find out more about Kate Atkinson just out of curiosity. It was well written overall and a very unique idea.
5. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
My review: 4 stars
** spoiler alert ** I knew as soon as I started reading that I would enjoy this book. I have a thing for awkward people, probably because I am a slightly awkward person myself (which has more to do with anxiety than actual social ineptness.)
Don Tillman is a character who is seems has Asperger's, but he is the narrator and never realizes it on his own, although all the indications are there and his friends try to lead him to that conclusion. I liked that regardless of whether or not he understood his own social differences or not, he viewed the abilities of people with Aspergers positively, and quickly identified strengths in those personalities with little regard for possible weaknesses.
Don is amusing without always meaning to be, but it never feels like the point was to make fun of him. He decides to embark on what he calls "The Wife Project," to meet the perfect match for himself. He creates a questionnaire to eliminate any women who would not be suitable. After several unsuccessful attempts at dating he turns the reins of choosing over to his best friend Gene. When Gene sends a woman ask Don a question, Don mistakenly thinks that she was sent as a prospective match and immediately asks her to dinner. This woman's name is Rosie.
Rosie has her own issues. I liked that she is a fun and good person with her own issues, but not the "manic pixie" persona that seems to be popular in the last few years. She doesn't sweep in to save Don from himself, more like he realizes that maybe he could live his life a certain way and not because she takes him on some grand journey and changes him. Yes, he changes, but he does so of his own accord and she loves him for who he is before he even attempts those things.
Rosie has a desire to find out who her biological father is, and that search is a huge basis for their relationship. As Don slowly helps her with the "Father Project," he falls for her.
The story was entertaining and fun to read. There is some language, which doesn't bother me but I include for recommendation purposes. I would recommend this to pretty much anyone. I really enjoyed it and would definitely read the sequel.
4. The Children Act by Ian McEwan
My review: 4 stars
Ian McEwan is one of the best authors I've ever read. His ability to write astounds me with each book of his that I read.
I admire so much an author's ability to write about something controversial and be able to tell the story well enough that you still genuinely have no idea what the result will be, or which side the book will end up on (if any.) The setting of this story is perfect for an impartial presentation of both sides of the issue, since Fiona is a high court judge tasked with working on family court cases. The situation is set up well from the beginning, with descriptions of other high profile cases that she worked on or other situations where religious beliefs played a role in her decision.
Adam Henry is a 17 and 9 month old teen with leukemia, who is also a Jehovah's Witness. The hospital is applying to the court for the right to perform treatment that includes blood transfusions to save Adam's life, which he and his parents are refusing due to their religious beliefs. Fiona has to hear both sides of the issue and make a decision based on the law while respecting a person's right to religious belief and also considering that Adam is only 3 months away from being a legal adult, in which case he could refuse treatment and the hospital would have to obey his wishes.
Fiona is in the midst of her own personal crisis, as her husband has asked her for permission to have an affair, which she has refused. He leaves her anyway in the beginning, so she is in turmoil as to the state of her marriage and what actions she will or has taken in regards to that. As a person who deals with divorce daily, she is embarrassed that her actions thus far mimick those couples who she judges as doing all the wrong things. But it is possibly her own personal issues that cause her to take action and go visit Adam in the hospital herself, to determine his state of mind and whether he is capable of making this decision for himself.
I won't spoil the result by telling what decision Fiona comes to in court. I will include that she uses precedent set up by the Children Act of 1989, which act was passed to enforce laws to protect a child's welfare--thus the title.
I wish I could read this book with an entire class and write and hear other people's papers about it. There is so much in it that I feel could be easily and skillfully explored further, the themes of religion and personal rights in regards to age or not, the music theme (Fiona is a relatively skilled pianist and runs through pieces in her head as she deals or doesn't deal with her emotions, and Adam has decided to teach himself the violin since being hospitalized), among others. I want other people to read it so we can talk about it. It leaves you thinking for sure and will not be something that will leave my mind anytime soon.
3. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
My review: 4 stars
** spoiler alert ** I haven't loved a book like this in awhile. It was darkly humorous and I really felt like the characters were relatable, the kind of people you know in real life. It was creative and intriguing. The way she described Seattle and how Bernadette hated it--I was nervous because I've always loved that area and have wanted to live there eventually but she made it sound horrible. I was very glad at the end that she came around. I appreciate female characters who are feminists without thinking about it or meaning to be, like Bernatdette as an architect. I was really moved by what happened to her and had to keep reading to find out what would happen later. The only thing that annoyed me was that Elgie got Soo-Lin pregnant--that I think was unnecessary, especially since it turned out he didn't even like her. The resolution was fantastic as well--I was not expecting Bernadette to find her creative outlets where she did but loved the way it all worked out. I would read it again and plan on sharing it with all my reading friends, and will be looking up Maria Semple's other books for sure.
2. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
My review: 5 stars
Khaled Hosseini is absolutely a masterful storyteller. I've read his other two books and while they were amazing I think I could comfortable recommend this one to anyone, where with the other two I am cautious because of how difficult the subject matter is. I really felt like in this book I was being taught about life in Afghanistan by learning about various people there and it was a very insightful presentation of life for the people who live/lived in or have been effected by life there. I come away from this reading really feeling like I learned something valuable about the Afghan culture and people. I loved the story that Markos shared probably the most. It never ceases to amaze me how much where we come from matters, how it mattered to the people in this book and effected the choices they made and how it changed them in so many ways. I never felt like I wanted to rush through or skip forward to find out what would happen to other characters because the story of the moment was always interesting and informative
1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
My review: 5 stars
I finished reading this last night and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I'm debating between rating it as amazing and as I really liked it, but I'm obviously leaning toward amazing.
Arthur Leander is an aging Hollywood actor from Canada, performing in a production of King Lear in Toronto when he dies of a sudden heart attack, on stage in the middle of a performance. And from there the story begins. A man in the audience, Jeevan, who is training to be a paramedic, jumps up and starts CPR. After the ambulance comes Jeevan stops and talks with a little girl, Kristen, who is upset by the events and is alone. Jeevan gets a phone call as he leaves the theater from a friend who works at the hospital, warning him that the Georgian Flu has landed in Toronto and he needs to get out asap. Jeevan goes and buys as much non-perishable food and water as he can from a local store and takes it all to his brother Frank's house, where they barricade themselves in and start surviving.
The story jumps back to other times in Arthur's life, and other people. His ex-wives, Miranda and Elizabeth, are influential in the post-apocalypse world explored in the rest of the book. Miranda is the author of a graphic novel called Station Eleven, about a group of people who escaped Earth and are living in a moon-sized space station. This comic book is given by Arthur to Kristen, who is part of a traveling symphony and Shakespeare company in the post-apocalypse.
We get to see Arthur as a young man, meeting his best friend Clark, starting and then a few years later ending his relationship with Miranda, and coming back home to Canada for this performance. We get to see Kristen in the after-world, experiencing things that were not so much issue in the before.
What really struck me was how quiet the world became after 99% of the population is wiped out by disease. I think the quiet of the world is perfectly reflected in the quiet of the writing. Nothing is in your face or over-reaching in description or explanation of the after. I really appreciated and enjoyed that there were shades of rebuilding society, even mixed with the crazy people who inevitably exist. I don't want to give too much away as to the story, but Arthur's life and actions really inform and change the world even though he died before the apocalypse even truly started. It has the same feel as Justin Cronin's The Passage, but I'm glad it wasn't another vampire/zombie story. It is almost more frightening that it isn't, though, because it makes it that much more realistic.
I would recommend this to anyone. The writing is beautiful and accessible, and I would gladly read the other books she has written.
There you go. My year in books. The rest of the books that I read I either gave only 3 or 2 stars to, and those reviews can be found on Goodreads. I'm thinking of aiming for 40 books in 2015. Any suggestions for what I should read?
