Novels read in 2014 – part two

Posted on December 31, 2014 by stuartelden

Over the past few years I’ve been keeping lists of novels read – you can see the list from the first part of 2014 here. These are the ones I read between June and now. Back in June I said a bit more about why I read, what I read, how fast I read, and why I don’t say more about the books on these lists. But there are a few thoughts at the end.

  1. Michael Palin, The Truth
  2. Ian Rankin, Tooth and Nail
  3. Jake Needham, Laundry Man 
  4. Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark
  5. Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
  6. Maggie Gee, My Cleaner
  7. Taiye Selasi, Ghana Must Go
  8. Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
  9. David Nicholls, One Day
  10. Ursula le Guin, The Right Hand of Darkness 
  11. Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night (non fiction)
  12. Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
  13. Euripides, Medea (again)
  14. China Mieville, London’s Overthrow – a photo-essay as book, also available at http://londonsoverthrow.org
  15. Robert Harris, An Officer and a Spy
  16. Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (again)
  17. Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
  18. Ben Marcus, Notable American Women
  19. Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar (non fiction)
  20. Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
  21. Magnus Mills, The Scheme for Full Employment
  22. Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
  23. Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
  24. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
  25. Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
  26. Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
  27. Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (non-fiction)
  28. Henning Mankell, Faceless Killers
  29. Jim Crace, The Harvest
  30. Iain Banks, The Crow Road
  31. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 book one
  32. David Quamman, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus (non-fiction)
  33. Richard Preston, The Hot Zone (non-fiction, but rather embellished)
  34. Zadie Smith, On Beauty
  35. Maggie O’Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine
  36. Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir
  37. Chris Fraser, The Bookmaker
  38. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 book two
  39. William Golding, The Lord of the Flies (again)
  40. A.M. Homes, This Book will Save your Life
  41. David Stubbs, Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany (non-fiction)
  42. Monique Roffey, House of Ashes
  43. J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
  44. Donna Tartt, The Secret History
  45. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 book three
  46. Michel Faber, Under the Skin
  47. Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin

I really liked The Bonfire of the Vanities (as relevant today as then), The Luminaries, The Little Friend, Let the Great World Spin, Bring up the Bodies, 1Q84, Joseph Anton, The Secret History and We Need to Talk about Kevin. I wish I could write as well, while clearly doing enormous amounts of research, as Simon Sebag-Montefiore. I hope to read more of his work. I really struggled to enjoy le Guin, Carey, and McBride, but I enjoyed learning more about West Africa. I am continually amazed by Ben Marcus’s imagination. The novel I enjoyed the most this year was Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which is the longest book I’ve probably read on a screen, just edging Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. 

 

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