Books in 2014!
Jan. 13th, 2015 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarBooks! I read a bunch of them, this past year. And when I saw ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nerak_rose did this meme about books, it looked like fun. Here we go!
BOOKS MEME
How many books read in 2014?
38 actual books, plus so much fic. But less fic than last year! And definitely more books than last year, too! When I discovered fanfic a few years ago, my (previously voracious) reading of published books took an alarming dive, and this was the first year I deliberately pushed to get it back up again.
How many fiction and nonfiction?
32 fiction, 6 nonfiction.
How many male authors, female authors or books written by both?
19 female, 18 male, 1 both (if you count by total number of books).
16 male, 13 female, 1 both (if you count each author only once, even if I read multiple of their books).
Favorite books of 2014? (Not in any particular order.)
•Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Swept me up and gave me insight into a very different life…but nonetheless somehow rendered it in a way that was familiar enough that I could empathize with the characters, rather than just looking at them from the outside.)
•Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (One of the best YA fantasy books going. Highly recommended.)
•Maurice by E. M. Forster (Forster, oh Forster! I know he has later books that I probably ought to read in which he further wrestles with his life philosophy, and yet this one feels to me like a pinnacle. Also, he wrote a gay love story where the protagonists didn’t have to suffer a horrible end, decades before anyone else would dare to do it!)
•The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers (Cleverly constructed – to say more would be to give it away!)
•The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness (Never made me desperate to turn the next page, and yet in a quiet way it’s stuck with me – and gave me so much more insight into the not-so-distant-past Iceland behind the hyper-modern Iceland I love today.)
•One Thousand Languages edited by Peter K. Austin (My parents gave me this coffee table book with short sections about, well, one thousand different world languages. And being such a language dork, I read them all.)
Oldest book read?
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
Longest and shortest book titles?
Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results by Michael Scott Moore
Fire by Kristin Cashore
Longest books?
This is slightly cheating, since I started it in 2014 but finished it in the first days of 2015, but: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, at a whopping 1006 pages!
After that, I guess The Book Thief by Markus Zusak at 576 pages, then Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell at 528 pages.
Any translated books?
The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness (translated from Icelandic)
…Unless you count all the professional translation work *I* did this year!
Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?
It’s a nicely split tie between Neil Gaiman, Dorothy Sayers and Tamora Pierce, at 4 each.
Any re-reads?
•The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (I was traveling to Dartmoor, and this seemed an appropriate book to revisit!)
•Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers (I’d read it before, but came across the audiobook and very much enjoyed hearing its Britishness and 1920s-ness aloud)
•Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (even better the second time around!)
•Fire by Kristin Cashore (again, I was discovering audiobooks and revisited some old favorites that way)
Which books wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?
•The Magicians by Lev Grossman (stereolightning recommended it)
•the Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers (a friend raved about them years ago)
•When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka (it was the “everybody in the community reads the same book” book in my town a bit ago, and my parents gave me their copy)
•The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (so many people had mentioned it, so I finally picked it up)
•The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot (Eliot is one of those poets who get referenced a lot by fic writers)
•Neil Gaiman (all the (geeky) world seems to be in love with him, so I thought I’d finally see what the fuss was about!)
•Maurice by E. M. Forster (not precisely a recommendation, but I only discovered Forster because I watched the movie of “Maurice,” which I watched because Rupert Graves was in it, and I only knew Rupert Graves because he’s in Sherlock. Thank you, Sherlock! Because now I love Forster.)
•The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling) (though clearly I love JKR, I’m not much of a mystery novel person – with exceptions made for a few particular authors! – so I might not have gotten around to this if friends hadn’t recommended it)
•Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (again, a book it seemed like the whole world was talking about)
•Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (thank you to my friend R!)
•Tamora Pierce’s Alanna series (stereolightning recommended them)
•Fire by Kristin Cashore (R also introduced me to the Graceling books)
•The Secret History by Donna Tartt (a friend handed it to me when I was saying that my writing tends to be quiet and character-centered, with not much action, and she suggested I read it for a successful published example of that)
•The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (another book I’d heard mentioned again and again)
•Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (R told me I should read it; I asked “Because it’s actually a good book, or just because I write fanfiction?” And she said, “Both.”)
•Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (a friend raved about this book)
Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?
•The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (seemed like a classic I ought to have read)
•Neil Gaiman in general (I thought I ought to read him, so I started picking up whichever books of his I happened to come across)
•The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot (again, a classic)
•Maurice by E. M. Forster (I’d watched and loved the movie, but hadn’t been able to get my hands on the book for a while; finally got to read it when my parents came to visit and brought it with them!)
•To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (I’d always felt I ought to read at least one thing by Woolf; now I have)
•The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness (on my second visit to Iceland, I finally read a Laxness book; as to which specific book, though, this is just the one my local English language book store happened to have on hand at the time)
•The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (I’d heard of this forever, finally read it!)
nerak_rose did this meme about books, it looked like fun. Here we go!BOOKS MEME
How many books read in 2014?
38 actual books, plus so much fic. But less fic than last year! And definitely more books than last year, too! When I discovered fanfic a few years ago, my (previously voracious) reading of published books took an alarming dive, and this was the first year I deliberately pushed to get it back up again.
How many fiction and nonfiction?
32 fiction, 6 nonfiction.
How many male authors, female authors or books written by both?
19 female, 18 male, 1 both (if you count by total number of books).
16 male, 13 female, 1 both (if you count each author only once, even if I read multiple of their books).
Favorite books of 2014? (Not in any particular order.)
•Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Swept me up and gave me insight into a very different life…but nonetheless somehow rendered it in a way that was familiar enough that I could empathize with the characters, rather than just looking at them from the outside.)
•Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (One of the best YA fantasy books going. Highly recommended.)
•Maurice by E. M. Forster (Forster, oh Forster! I know he has later books that I probably ought to read in which he further wrestles with his life philosophy, and yet this one feels to me like a pinnacle. Also, he wrote a gay love story where the protagonists didn’t have to suffer a horrible end, decades before anyone else would dare to do it!)
•The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers (Cleverly constructed – to say more would be to give it away!)
•The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness (Never made me desperate to turn the next page, and yet in a quiet way it’s stuck with me – and gave me so much more insight into the not-so-distant-past Iceland behind the hyper-modern Iceland I love today.)
•One Thousand Languages edited by Peter K. Austin (My parents gave me this coffee table book with short sections about, well, one thousand different world languages. And being such a language dork, I read them all.)
Oldest book read?
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
Longest and shortest book titles?
Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results by Michael Scott Moore
Fire by Kristin Cashore
Longest books?
This is slightly cheating, since I started it in 2014 but finished it in the first days of 2015, but: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, at a whopping 1006 pages!
After that, I guess The Book Thief by Markus Zusak at 576 pages, then Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell at 528 pages.
Any translated books?
The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness (translated from Icelandic)
…Unless you count all the professional translation work *I* did this year!
Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?
It’s a nicely split tie between Neil Gaiman, Dorothy Sayers and Tamora Pierce, at 4 each.
Any re-reads?
•The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (I was traveling to Dartmoor, and this seemed an appropriate book to revisit!)
•Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers (I’d read it before, but came across the audiobook and very much enjoyed hearing its Britishness and 1920s-ness aloud)
•Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (even better the second time around!)
•Fire by Kristin Cashore (again, I was discovering audiobooks and revisited some old favorites that way)
Which books wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?
•The Magicians by Lev Grossman (stereolightning recommended it)
•the Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers (a friend raved about them years ago)
•When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka (it was the “everybody in the community reads the same book” book in my town a bit ago, and my parents gave me their copy)
•The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (so many people had mentioned it, so I finally picked it up)
•The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot (Eliot is one of those poets who get referenced a lot by fic writers)
•Neil Gaiman (all the (geeky) world seems to be in love with him, so I thought I’d finally see what the fuss was about!)
•Maurice by E. M. Forster (not precisely a recommendation, but I only discovered Forster because I watched the movie of “Maurice,” which I watched because Rupert Graves was in it, and I only knew Rupert Graves because he’s in Sherlock. Thank you, Sherlock! Because now I love Forster.)
•The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling) (though clearly I love JKR, I’m not much of a mystery novel person – with exceptions made for a few particular authors! – so I might not have gotten around to this if friends hadn’t recommended it)
•Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (again, a book it seemed like the whole world was talking about)
•Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (thank you to my friend R!)
•Tamora Pierce’s Alanna series (stereolightning recommended them)
•Fire by Kristin Cashore (R also introduced me to the Graceling books)
•The Secret History by Donna Tartt (a friend handed it to me when I was saying that my writing tends to be quiet and character-centered, with not much action, and she suggested I read it for a successful published example of that)
•The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (another book I’d heard mentioned again and again)
•Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (R told me I should read it; I asked “Because it’s actually a good book, or just because I write fanfiction?” And she said, “Both.”)
•Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (a friend raved about this book)
Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?
•The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (seemed like a classic I ought to have read)
•Neil Gaiman in general (I thought I ought to read him, so I started picking up whichever books of his I happened to come across)
•The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot (again, a classic)
•Maurice by E. M. Forster (I’d watched and loved the movie, but hadn’t been able to get my hands on the book for a while; finally got to read it when my parents came to visit and brought it with them!)
•To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (I’d always felt I ought to read at least one thing by Woolf; now I have)
•The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness (on my second visit to Iceland, I finally read a Laxness book; as to which specific book, though, this is just the one my local English language book store happened to have on hand at the time)
•The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (I’d heard of this forever, finally read it!)
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no subject
Date: 2015-01-15 05:59 pm (UTC)Glad to see another thumbs up for Seraphina as I had a copy for Christmas and it's sat there waiting for me to finish my current book; it was also a recommendation to me by a friend. What did you think of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell as the TV version of it is soon to start here?
no subject
Date: 2015-01-16 06:59 pm (UTC)Yes, I've been loving finally discovering Peter Wimsey... The first book was pleasant enough, but didn't bowl me over; the later books, though just get better and better in their characterization. (I'm pages away from the end of "Have His Carcase" right now.)
Seraphina! I love that book, admire Rachel Hartman hugely, and recommend it and her whenever I can... I read it the first time and just liked it, but then I recommended it to stereolightning and she read it and loved it, which made want to reread it, and when I read it again with more time and care than I'd been able to give it the first time around, I LOVED it. YA fiction that's truly literary, hurray.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: I enjoyed it. It's funny, it's one of those books where I wouldn't say it was gripping or had me hugely invested in the characters – and yet, on the other hand, it's 1000 pages (!!) and I wouldn't say I was ever bored or wanted to put it down. I think it's neat how it's a book about magic...and yet it's very much a literary/historical novel, not your usual fantasy genre at all.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-17 11:21 pm (UTC)Love your list! I've never read Dorian Gray, gasp, and I probably should.
Seraphina sounds great, I 've heard good things about it :)
no subject
Date: 2015-01-18 02:26 am (UTC)Seraphina is wonderful, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. As for The Picture of Dorian Gray, I didn't find it enormously engaging, but I'm glad I read it since it's such a classic. MUCH MORE HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Maurice by E. M. Forster!
And btw, I *almost* got a chance to read The Brothers Lionheart... I picked it up and read the first couple chapters in the bookstore in Berlin where I needed to use up some book-buying credit before I moved away, but I didn't buy it because I figured I could always get it from the public library now that I'm back in the US... But they don't have it here!! Astrid Lindgren is so popular in Germany, I forgot that in the US she's basically just known for Pippi Longstocking and nothing else. What a pity.