Fanfare.....
Well, occasionally I do a "Book of the Month" when I read something I am especially impressed by, or I feel I need to raise the tone a bit, but here is a list of the books I most enjoyed during 2014
The Skull & The Nightingale Michael Irwin
I think I wrote about this earlier in the year, I thought it was fab, very well done, even if I didn't like the end.
A rather different, gruesome book was Ian Banks' The Wasp Factory - but it was gruesome with a point, and I thought it was brilliant.
The Hare with Amber eyes by Edmund de Waal - which was the most brilliant account of wealthy, secular Jews in Paris and Vienna in the 19th-20thC - just utterly fascinating sort of history.
Andrey Kurzov's Death and the Penguin and Penguin Lost were a brilliant pair of books, which gave immense insight into post-Soviet Ukraine/Russia/Chechnya - grim and funny in the best tradition.
Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union is the best detective book I've ever read, because the language is so fantastic and inventive and the plot is just ludicrous. It's a new school of "ludicrous realism" if you like - or that sort of Ionesco like absurdism... except that it all ties together so beautifully. It is one of those books that makes me feel "why do I bother?"
Other contenders (I didn't read too much dreck this year) include Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, Anne Patchett's State of Wonder, William Falkener's As I lay dying, Balzac's The Black Sheep - and the even more fabulous Cousin Bette. The Letters from Liselotte of course, which have had their own blog entry - Zola's The Ladies' Paradise (although I prefer the French title Au Bonheur des Dames) Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart which was a revelation.
I realise now that I have read virtually none of the contemporary "must read" books - I daresay I will in a few years' time. The one major re-read this year was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which did not in the least disappoint on second reading... I still love it.
Well, occasionally I do a "Book of the Month" when I read something I am especially impressed by, or I feel I need to raise the tone a bit, but here is a list of the books I most enjoyed during 2014
The Skull & The Nightingale Michael Irwin
A rather different, gruesome book was Ian Banks' The Wasp Factory - but it was gruesome with a point, and I thought it was brilliant.
Andrey Kurzov's Death and the Penguin and Penguin Lost were a brilliant pair of books, which gave immense insight into post-Soviet Ukraine/Russia/Chechnya - grim and funny in the best tradition.
Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union is the best detective book I've ever read, because the language is so fantastic and inventive and the plot is just ludicrous. It's a new school of "ludicrous realism" if you like - or that sort of Ionesco like absurdism... except that it all ties together so beautifully. It is one of those books that makes me feel "why do I bother?"
Other contenders (I didn't read too much dreck this year) include Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, Anne Patchett's State of Wonder, William Falkener's As I lay dying, Balzac's The Black Sheep - and the even more fabulous Cousin Bette. The Letters from Liselotte of course, which have had their own blog entry - Zola's The Ladies' Paradise (although I prefer the French title Au Bonheur des Dames) Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart which was a revelation.
I realise now that I have read virtually none of the contemporary "must read" books - I daresay I will in a few years' time. The one major re-read this year was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which did not in the least disappoint on second reading... I still love it.
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