BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014

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.

Books of the Month

March was a bumper reading month - I finished the Andrey Kurzov Penguin novels - Penguin Lost was even better than Death & the Penguin - I thought it was a great story, wonderfully detached style - no back story about the narrator - just straight in.  A sort of alienation which perhaps engages one's curiosity better?

Then I finally finished "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" by Michael Chabon - which was sensational.  True there were moments when the language was so dense I found it hard to take it in.  There were some excellent jokes, amazing characters, and after about 40 pages I began to get engaged - then it gathered pace and I got absorbed in it.  One thing was a little annoying: sometimes there were lines that "strike you as particularly fine" but the editors had not taken Johnson's "Strike it out!" advice....some of the lines were just a little bit OTT... but overall, a thoroughly enviable book, and enjoyable.

Finally I read, at top speed, Rohinton Mistry's "A Question of Balance" - it's a book that flows, you are just carried along, interested in the characters, and saddened by the events.  It seems very authentic, set during "the Emergency" and Mrs Ghandi's rule.  It reminded me in some ways of "A Suitable Boy" - but without the happy ending - yet it was curious how it ended - a surprise a few pages before the end, then a strangely almost cheerful last scene of a "life goes on" type.  I really enjoyed it.

I read more - but can't remember off the top of my head.   Too much arguably, after which I now find it difficult to settle to another book - so I am reading bits of non-fiction.