best of 2014: books

this gif has nothing to do with this post but I couldn't resist it

   Oh, the difficulty of picking out a mere few books from a year that had a spate of good reads. I read quite a bit this year and I'd probably recommend all of it (but not necessarily to everyone). And so: four stand-out numbers from the year:

• Homage to Catalonia / George Orwell
• Neverhome / Laird Hunt
• Antarctica / Gabrielle Walker
• No Country For Old Men / Cormac McCarthy

   Homage to Catalonia was by turns hilarious, heart-breaking, poignant, confusing, gentle, and passionate. I recommend it to one and all. If you read my post about Neverhome you know how I feel about it already, and I take none of it back. So good. I didn't write about Antarctica because most of the people I know are probably sick of hearing about my deep and abiding love for our southernmost continent and my ongoing desire to winter over at the South Pole despite my struggles with a lack of vitamin D. BUT if you want to read an excellent tome about past and present life in Antarctica with quite a bit of awesome science thrown in, read Gabrielle Walker's book. Sometimes I forget that I love Cormac McCarthy, until I pick up one of his books and say "WHAAAAAAAAT, this is amazing" and then proceed to speak in staccato sentences for the duration of my reading time. Go forth and read these books, but maybe skip the McCarthy if you are sensitive to violence.

   OKAY, here it is, the LIST. What I read in 2014, in the order I read them, sans comment because uuuugh that would take forevvvver and this post would be roughly 18 million words long. An * means it is a re-read, italics means non-fiction, underlined means comics.

1. Jerusalem / Guy Delisle
2. *Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins
3. Fatale v. 1-3 / Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips
4. The Girls of Murder City / Douglas Perry
5. *Catching Fire / Suzanne Collins
6. A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting / Guy Delisle
7. Book of a Thousand Days / Shannon Hale
8. Rabid / Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy
9. The Rook / Daniel O'Malley
10. Three Cups of Deceit / John Krakauer
11. X-Files Season 10 v. 1 / Joe Harris
12. Attachments / Rainbow Rowell
13. Locke and Key v. 6 / Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez
14. I Am Legend / Richard Matheson
15. How to Lie With Statistics / Darrell Huff
16. *Siddhartha / Herman Hesse
17. The Haunting of Hill House / Shirley Jackson
18. The Virgin Suicides / Jeffrey Eugenides 
19. At The Mountains of Madness / HP Lovecraft
20. The Never List / Koethi Zan
21. Shadows / Robin McKinley
22. A Life in Stitches / Rachael Herron
23. And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
24. Anne of Windy Poplars / LM Montgomery
25. Fully Present / Sue Smalley, Diana Winston
26. Batman: The Dark KNight Returns / Frank Miller, et al
27. In The After / Demitria Lunetta
28. Fun Home / Alison Bechdel
29. Boxers and Saints / Gene Luen Yang
30. The Madman's Daughter / Megan Shepherd
31. The Bear / Claire Cameron
32. Never Let Me Go / Kazuo Ishiguro
33. The Diary of Edward the Hamster, 1990-1990 / Miriam Elia, Ezra Elia
34. Redefining Girly / Melissa Atkins Wardy
35. David and Goliath / Malcolm Gladwell
36. The Rose That Grew From Concrete / Tupac Shakur
37. The Old Man and the Sea / Ernest Hemingway
38. The Talented Mr Ripley / Patricia Highsmith
39. Drive / James Sallis
40. No Country for Old Men / Cormac McCarthy
41. Good Bones / Margaret Atwood
42. The Spire / William Golding
43. The Diet Trap / Jason Lillis
44. Steppenwolf / Herman Hesse
45. Foundation and Empire / Isaac Asimov
46. The Remains of the Day / Kazuo Ishiguro
47. *Perelandra / CS Lewis
48. The Turn of the Screw / Henry James
49. The Practice of the Presence of God / Brother Lawrence
50. The Case for the Psalms / NT Wright
51. Antarctica / Gabrielle Walker
52. I Capture the Castle / Dodie Smith
53. Invasion of the Body Snatchers / Jack Finney
54. True Grit / Charles Portis
55. Neverhome / Laird Hunt
56. The Shining / Stephen King
57. Any Empire / Nate Powell
58. Love Does / Bob Goff
59. Relish / Lucy Knisley
60. What Every Body is Saying / Joe Navarro
61. Lexicon / Max Barry
62. Homage to Catalonia / George Orwell
63. The Pearl / John Steinbeck
64. The Imperfect Board Member / Jim Brown
65. Herland / Charlotte Perkins Gilman
66. *Inkheart / Cornelia Funke
67. *Beauty / Robin McKinley
68. The Ocean at the End of the Lane / Neil Gaiman
69. How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less / Sarah Glidden 

   And there you have it! My initial goal for the year was to read at least 52 books, and I am pleased to say that I exceeded it by 17 books. This is the most books I've ever read in one year; I'm excited to see what 2015 brings.

   Some notable bookish things from 2014:

• "Discovered" Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeffery Eugenides, finally finally. 
• Kept up with reading nonfiction
• Read more about the American Civil War era than I ever have in my life (???)
• Became more and more comfortable with tossing books I am not enjoying or getting anything out of
•  Participated in a Mini Readathon, which was delightful.
• Read a great deal about feminism and communication, in non-book form
• This isn't bookish but I finally have picked up a guitar and am more determined than ever to learn.

Homage to Catalonia / George Orwell

   This review is turning out to be difficult to write; this was such a good book and was so full that I am not sure how to correctly express my reaction to it and feelings about it. I finished it on Saturday and almost immediately pressed it into the hands of of friend with many a "you  must read this", and I sent texts to bookish friends telling them that Homage to Catalonia simply has to be their read, and I want to give it to people for Christmas and birthdays and hang over them until they read it. If that gives you any indication of my deep appreciation for this book, then maybe you too will find it and read it. The tone is conversational and gentle, and Orwell tries to be as even-handed as he can.

   Instead of several more paragraphs of gushing, I'll just put some quotes in here and call it a day:

"One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting"

"If there is one thing I hate more than another it is a rat running over me in the darkness. However, I had the satisfaction of catching on of them a good punch that sent him flying."

"Smillie's death is not a thing I can easily forgive. Here was this brave and gifted boy, who had thrown up his career at Glasgow University in order to come fight against Fascism, and who, as I saw for myself, has done his job at the front with faultless courage and willingness; and all they could find to do with him was to fling him into jail and let him die like a neglected animal. I know that in the middle of a huge and bloody war it is no use making too much fuss over an individual death. One aeroplane bomb in a crowded street causes more suffering than quite a lot of political persecution. But what angers one about a death like this is its utter pointlessness. To be killed in battle — yes, that is what one expects; but to be flung into jail, not even for any imaginary offence, but simply owing to dull blind spite, and then left to die in solitude — that is a different matter. I fail to see how this kind of thing — and it is not as though Smillie’s case were exceptional — brought victory any nearer."

"The word 'shot' gave me a sort of inward shudder. A bullet had entered my own body recently and the feeling of it was fresh in my memory; it is not nice to think of that happening to anyone you know well."

   Honestly, I wish I could get across what this book is like, but I don't think I really can. Read it, please.  It's available online here.