The 2014 Book List Starts Here

I don't even know why I do this. I told myself I wasn't going to do reading goals this year. But now that I'm sitting, here, I can't help it.

I read 37 books in 2013. I wish it was more but given all the other stuff I do and stuff I read that doesn't get counted, I guess it's not that bad. I also kept track of pages read with the idea of reaching at least 15K and I made it to 13K. Again, not counting the other stuff. I gave up on several books and I have a bunch of half-read things sitting in my room. I intended to finish them up by the ended of the year but became side tracked by Book #1 for 2014 which monopolized all of my reading time.

I gave up several magazines but in exchange we just subscribed to the New Yorker so I imagine my book total will look pretty similar at the end of this year.

37. The Fault in Our Stars

By John Green (313 pp)

I didn't really read this book in one day. I finished Verona the day before yesterday but forgot change the date when I posted. I read this in two days. This is a YA romance about teenagers with cancer. There is no reason a book like this should work as well as it does and obviously from the set up you know there is no way you are going to get of this without a box of tissues at your side. It's one of those stories that is as brilliantly funny as it is sad at the same time. And instead of hating the writer for doing this do you, you feel content in your sadness. I was thinking about leaving a quote but I'm afraid it might not work out of context. Recommend.

36. A Season With Verona

By Tim Parks (447 pp)
This is a terrific book that very few people that I share books with would appreciate.  It's written by a British man who ends up living in Italy and following the soccer team in Verona. He decided to attend every home and away game for one season and write a book about it. It's about soccer fan culture in Italy. I LOVED it. At 447 pages it's very long and it felt long at times. But the soccer season is both long and not long enough. I went to my last match on November 24 and already have the pre-season matches in February on my calendar. Here's a quote that perfectly captures it: "Everybody is yearning for that stupid excitement of waiting for a goal, for or against, trembling on the edge of our seats, on the edge of euphoria or disappointment." I have to add, however, that near the end there is a scene of horrifying sexual harassment that goes on forever and was so disturbing I had to skip over it because it threatened to derail my feelings about the entire book. Overall for soccer fans: huge recommend.

35. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever

By James Tiptree, Jr. (508 pp)

This is another one of those short story collections I've had for several years, reading a few stories here and there. I noticed I was about 2/3rds through and decided to hunker down and finish it. Tiptree is really Alice Sheldon. I discovered a Tiptree story called "The Women Men Don't See" in a giant science fiction collection I read a number of years ago. I still love it and re-read it fairly often. The stories in the collection are good but really grim endings so it's kind of a slog to read one story after the other. Many I should re-read since I think I missed something. Lots of vivid images that stick with you. Recommend.

34. The Shining Girls

By Lauren Beukes (368 pp)

It says on the book jacket that this is Time Traveler's Wife crossed with Silence of the Lambs. I'd say just Silence of the Lambs with time travel. Creepy and hard to put down. Recommend.

33. Glow

By Amy Kathleen Ryan (255pp ebook)

This is a YA book with a great premise. Two generation ships from earth are traveling across the universe to populate a new planet. One ship attacks the ship that our protagonists live on and they don't know why. Lots of intriguing questions and plenty of action. Unfortunately, the story loses its way in the middle and gets bogged down. I lost interest by the end. There is also a religious aspect that could have been interesting but is too heavy handed to work.

32. In the Presence of the Enemy

By Elizabeth George (623 pp)

This is a murder mystery that I picked because I read a writing book by this author (Book #31). I had some problems with this book but I think it's more because it's not my kind of book that problems with the book. I enjoy reading a murder mystery every once in awhile. This one seemed endlessly long, I had several episodes of character fatigue and I didn't care enough to go back and figure who was who, and there were a lot of details that I thought bogged the whole thing down. I think there is a type of murder mystery reader who loves those kind of details. There were also a couple of revelations that I thought were pretty obvious and I'm not the kind of reader who likes to crow about how "I knew it!" Recommend to people who like long murder mysteries.

31. Write Away

By Elizabeth George (pp 254)

This is a writing book that came highly recommended so I grabbed a copy. She does have some helpful stuff on research and process that I liked. I've never read her fiction so I picked up a paperback to add to the never ending stack of books to read.

30. The False Prince

By Jennifer Nielson (342 pp)

Kira passed this book to me when I was in Atlanta. It's a YA book about four orphans who are bought by man who wants to pass one of them off as the King's long lost son. It's a competition to see which boy could pull this off the best. Great protagonist and fun book to read.

29. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By Junot Diaz (335 pp)

This won the Pulitzer in 2008 and it is terrific. It's about a geeky fan boy who lives in New Jersey. His family is from the Dominican Republic and the story goes back a couple of generations to tell the story of their life in the DR. It is one of those stories that is both sad and funny. Great characters and a real world place that I knew nothing about. Recommend.

28. Cinder

By Marissa Meyer (298 pp ebook)

A couple of months ago I downloaded a bunch of samples of popular YA books into my nook. I was looking for something fun to read but it turned out to be a good exercise in seeing how the beginning of a book grabs you or not. This was one of the two titles that grabbed me.

It's a futuristic re-telling of Cinderella. In the first few pages we meet Cinder, who in this version has cyborg parts and is a talented mechanic. She's working at a big outdoor market when she meets the prince. Sounded like fun.

The book, I'm afraid, is not very good. While the story does take some interesting turns, the execution of both the future world, and the prose style, were weak and cliched.

27. Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies

By Blake Snyder (286 pp)

Normally I don't approve of certain kinds of non-fiction writing where it seems the author grinds out a variation of the same book over and over. I own all three Save the Cat! books and I love them all. They're all screenwriting books although I'd recommend the original book, Save the Cat! to any one who writes stories and likes to think about story structure.

I'm behind on my reading goals for the year. If I can read something the size of a George R.R. Martin book tomorrow, I'll be caught up.