Dear Readers,
Last year I recommended non-book gifts for readers, and while those recommendations hold, I thought I’d recommend real live books this year.
Now, 2014 hasn’t seen one everybody’s-buying-it-even-if-they’re-not-reading-it hit like The Goldfinch (I myself got if for Christmas, and absolutely want to read it, I swear), but there have been a few high-profile books that have made the rounds of the top-10 and best-of lists (looking at you, The Martian, All The Light We Cannot See, Everything I Never Told You, The Book of Unknown Americans). Three cheers for those books and their authors!
But let’s branch out, shall we?
Fiction for Poets
Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea
Lindsay Hill, Sea of Hooks*
Howard Norman, Next Life Might Be Kinder
Something’s Up, and You Won’t Be Able to Put the Book Down
Kate Racculia, Bellweather Rhapsody
Rebecca Makkai, The Hundred-Year House
Big Sky and Taciturn Men with Unusual Names
Malcolm Brooks, Painted Horses
Kim Zupan, The Ploughmen
Lin Enger, The High Divide
Fabulous Tales, Re-Told
Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird
Alexi Zentner, The Lobster Kings
Historical Fiction: Colliding Worlds
Laila Lalami, The Moor’s Account
Joseph Boyden, The Orenda
Women at War
TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos
Laird Hunt, Neverhome
Worlds You Can’t See, Worlds You Don’t Want to See
Emmi Itäranta, Memory of Water
Sharona Muir, Invisible Beasts
Chris Beckett, Dark Eden
Poetry for Everyone (Everyone, Read More Poetry)
Hailey Leithauser, Swoop*
Saeed Jones, Prelude to Bruise
Mark Wunderlich, The Earth Avails
Charlotte Boulay, Foxes on the Trampoline
Books in Translation
Kyung-sook Shin, I’ll Be Right There
Elvira Dones, Sworn Virgin
In Which Letters Play a Part
Simon Garfield, To the Letter
George Prochnik, The Impossible Exile
Books by Authors Famous for Different Books
John Williams, Augustus
Jane Austen, Persuasion**
J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, Together with Sellic Spell (ed. Christopher Tolkien)
Brilliant and Uncomfortable Reading
Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
Richard Powers, Orfeo
Coming Up Next: Your Humble Blogger’s Reading Wishlist
*Yes, it came out last year, but I read it this year and it is awesome. So there.
** There is never a bad time to recommend Persuasion.
Rosemary and Reading Glasses 
Thanks for the list!
Quote of my week, thanks to you: There is never a bad time to recommend ‘Persuasion’ 🙂
Ooh, Rebecca Makkai has got a new book out, has she? How exciting! I read her debut novel, The Borrower, a few years ago and loved her style. I have added The Hundred-Year House to my TBR list!
Ah, I had the opportunity to get an ARC of The Wives of Los Alamos a few months ago, but I decided not to get it. Having read your review, I rather regret that decision now. Maybe I’ll add it to my TBR list anyway.
I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that “there is never a bad time to recommend Persuasion“, except that I would maybe broaden it to “there is never a bad time to recommend Jane Austen”. 🙂
I love how you have these books divided up into categories! You have read some good books this year, and your list is reminding me of some that I thought sounded great but still haven’t read. The story of my life…
Hah! Your categories cracked me up! I have read and enjoyed a few of those, and I have a couple in my pile, but you have listed quite a few I haven’t read! I’ll have to write them down.
BTW, reading The Goldfinch will definitely be worth it!
Great list, great category names!