Better Late Than Never - My 2015 Favorite Reads

So let's just pretend, shall we?  Let's pretend that the end of 2015 is nearly upon us, or maybe 2016 just arrived fewer than 48 hours ago.  Your now dusty Christmas tree is still holding court in the living room, the tree skirt rumpled and askew.  There are three Christmas cookies left, but they've gone stale and nobody wants them, and an arm wrestling bout is scheduled for later to decide the fate of the last of the Christmas ham.  You're back to work, but you still have that holiday sleep schedule hangover.  And if you hear one more Burl Ives Christmas carol, somebody is getting hurt.  That, my friends, is when the Best Of lists should appear on blogs and vlogs and websites everywhere.  NOT on January 12, 2016.  But we've agreed to pretend that I'm on top of things, so let's all just enjoy this land of make believe and talk about my favorite reads of 2015.


First, it's confession time.  I only read 55 books this year.  (Books read from beginning to end, not counting any DNFs.)  That's down from last year's number, and I'm slightly embarrassed.  I'm the first to admit that I'm fiercely competitive and acquisitional (is that a word?) with my reading, and I would have preferred to top my previous number.  But apparently, teaching and volunteering and chauffeuring took its toll, and I averaged just over a book a week.  MUST do better in 2016.

Now, on to my favorites.

FICTION

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

This wasn't my first Murakami, but I do believe it is my new favorite.  I'm always a sucker for a giant, doorstop of a book, and this "little" tome delivered.  Magical, dream-like, all the things we always say about Murakami, only there was just something else about this one that made it surpass The Wind-up Bird Chronicle as my favorite.  I can't really put my finger on what it is.  Maybe it was the badass lady assassin.  Maybe it was the happy ending.  Maybe the reason is as hard to pin down as one of Murakami's mysterious cats.  Loved this book.

Find Me, Laura Van Den Berg

If you haven't figured this out already, I'm a sucker for dystopian/post-apocalyptic/speculative fiction. Margaret Atwood is my jam.  I never miss an episode of The Walking Dead.  This beautiful book scratches my disaster itch with a story of a young survivor of a plague that has wiped out much of the US.  Van Den Berg is an amazing writer, and combining her skills with my favorite subject matter made for a book I couldn't stop reading (and recommending.)

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

I am so embarrassed to admit that I'd never read this book before this year.  It was just one of those bizarre gaps in my reading that I was determined to remedy.  This little book needs no explanation or blurbing.  Loved it.

Saint Mazie, Jami Attenberg

I'm listing these books in the order I read them, not in the order in which I loved and adored them.  Otherwise, this book would be near the top.  Heard about this title on the All the Books podcast, and it just intrigued me.  Reserved it at the library and proceeded to devour this story.  My only regret is that I don't actually own a copy.  If you love stories about the Depression, New York City, independent women, or immigrants, this based-on-a-true-story novel is for you.  It reads as a collection of journal entries, news clippings, and interviews.  It covers a lot of ground, but moves so quickly that you'll be in shock (and maybe in mourning) when it ends.  I need to read this one again.

Music for Wartime, Rebecca Makkai

Not just my favorite short story collection of the year, this may be one of my favorite short story collections of all time.  Another All the Books find, these stories are smart and beautiful and funny and sad in turn.  I especially recommend this collection if you are a lover of classical and/or orchestral music.  And if you need any more prompting to pick this one up, there's a story where a miniature Bach crawls out of a woman's piano and becomes her interim boyfriend.  Yeah, that happened.

In the Country, Mia Alvar

I've read comparisons between Alvar and Jhumpa Lahiri, and they're not off the mark.  This is a gorgeous short story collection about immigrants, outsiders, and the other.  Loved it.

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff

I'm always suspicious of hype, and this book came with plenty.  Somehow, though, it managed to live up to the raves.  Beautiful, sprawling book about a marriage.  If you liked The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer), you'll like this book.

The Maddaddam Trilogy, Margaret Atwood

So, I cheated.  This is actually three books, but I read the whole trilogy this year, and I couldn't just pick one of the books as a fave.  Loved, loved, loved these books.  Got to the end and wanted to immediately start over and read them all again.  Nobody does speculative fiction like Atwood.  Also, name drop...she tweeted me back!

HONORABLE MENTIONS - FICTION

The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma, was amazing and a must-read about Nigerian brothers living with a curse.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders, is another embarrassing gap in my reading.  One of the ultimate short story collections.  Took my breath away.

FAVORITE 2016 BOOK I'M STILL READING

This Angel on my Chest, by Leslie Pietrzyk - Do yourself a favor and read this book immediately.

NON-FICTION

Faith Unraveled, Rachel Held Evans
Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans

Out of Sorts, Sarah Bessey

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates - Here's a link to my previous mentions of this amazing book.

Well, there you have it.  My latest loves of the literary kind.  I'd post about my TBR, but it's grown to an unmanageable size.  Too much book shopping in Asheville over Christmas break!  (No such thing.)  So I'd better get back to my reading!

It's My Birthday And I'll Buy If I Want To

It's actually the day before my birthday, and it's a good time to be me (mostly). Last night was dinner with a few dear friends, courtesy of my husband, The Grill Master.  There was even GF red velvet cake from Coffee to a Tea.  So much cream cheese frosting goodness, and the first red velvet cake I've had since my Celiac diagnosis.  YUM!

I may or may not have had a piece of this for lunch today.

Tonight, it's off to Asheville, just the three of us, at my favorite GF restaurant, Posana.  Until you've been diagnosed with a severe food allergy/sensitivity, it is difficult to understand the glorious freedom of going to a restaurant where everything on the menu is safe to eat.  It's intoxicating.

But I didn't write to make you jealous of my dining option.  This entry is meant, instead, to make you jealous of my Amazon book order.  (Isn't that more important, anyway?) I made the dizzying decision to spend a chunk of my birthday money on one big book order.  I hadn't placed such a large book order since grad school, and never solely for books I wanted to read.  I was practically drunk on the choices.  And the best news?  I got a B&N gift card from a dear friend, which means I get to do an abbreviated version of that order AGAIN very soon.

So here are the soon-to-be latest additions to my TBR:

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff

I only ordered two new releases, and this is one of them.  Long listed for the National Book Award, this book already has so much buzz, and I can't wait to read it.

The Angel on My Chest, Leslie Pietrzyk

There was no way I was not [pre] ordering this book.  It doesn't come out for a few days yet, but this new release was written by my thesis advisor/faculty mentor from grad school.  I've read some of the stories from this collection previously, and they are amazing.  Can't wait to get this one.

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

Strangely, the only Zadie Smith book I've never read is her first.  Really looking forward to reading what the 24 year old Smith had to say.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

Sad and embarrassed to admit that the only place I've read Diaz is on social media.  Starting with his Pulitzer Prizer winner.

Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion

Joan Didion + fiction.  Can't go wrong.  How have I not read this before?

The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr

Okay, so I lied.  Three new releases.  (I forgot about this one somehow.)  Anyway, so excited about this book.  I am so obsessed with Mary Karr's memoirs.  Lit was mind-blowing, and Liars' Club was gutting.  This is definitely going to be a worthwhile (and instructive) read.

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

I'm finally going to get to start the Maddaddam Trilogy! I adore Margaret Atwood, despite being woefully under read in her books.  Handmaid's Tale, Blind Assassin, and Alias Grace were impossible to put down, though, so I'm thinking this trilogy will also be right up my very dystopian alley.

Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth

I am the world's biggest Call the Midwife fan (the tv show), so I cannot wait to start reading the first of Jennifer Worth's three books about her time as a midwife in East London.  I'm admittedly a little late to this particular book party, but I'll be all caught up in no time.

***

I started this post this morning while I was sipping tea in my jammies.  It's now going on eleven o'clock at night, and my jammies have reappeared.  Dinner at Posana was amazing (but that's a whole post of its own), and to make the night perfect, six of my eight ordered books were waiting on my porch when I got home from Asheville.  I had my own private unboxing on the bed, taking pictures of my new pretties.

Just look at those lovely virgin spines and crease-free covers.  Be still my heart

So now that you are gagging on all the saccharine-y goodness that is my perfect birthday weekend (well minus the monsoon weather that kept me from hitting the Asheville bookstores -- so sad), I suppose I will wrap up this post.  Look at this way:  At least it wasn't a rant!  And I'll be back to my grumpy self in no time.

The Tease, or Tarantino Writes a Novel

Like many readers, I enjoy suspense.  More than anything, I want to be so wrapped up in a story that I neglect household chores and family members.  Page numbers should be a shocking revelation (as in "I can't believe I just read 100 pages.  I wonder if dinner is now cooked to cinders?" NOT "Just 80 more pages to the end.  I can do this.")  The conflict in question doesn't have to be big, just compelling.  There doesn't need to be a hipster glasses-wearing zombie lurking outside your favorite dive bar hoping to get his last sip of IPA from you...the hard way.  (Though somebody please write that.)  But I do have to wonder what is going to happen next and give some cares about how this affects the characters in the story.  (Turns out the zombie was actually hopped up on caffeine from his previous victim, an espresso drinker, and gets impatient, moving on to a vintage clothing store where he manages to find the perfect ironic plaid western shirt for his next Zombies Anonymous meeting.  "People are friends, not food.")

But seriously, I'm all about some surprising but inevitable endings, and I can hang with perspective shifts with the best of them, but here's the thing:  I (and I imagine most readers) have a limit.  Remember that terrible show, Lost?  I didn't watch it.  Well, that's not entirely true.  My husband insisted that I was missing out, and so I relented and watched the last season and half.  (I'll never get those hours back, unfortunately.)  One of the most irritating parts of the show (and that's really saying something) was that on the rare occasion that something mildly interesting was happening on screen, the writers would laugh maniacally (in my head, anyway) and switch to some scene with two lovestruck people staring into each other's eyes, while looking inexplicably well-groomed (except for the three grains of sand stuck to their prominent cheekbones because, you know, realism.)  It wasn't so much about building suspense as it was just pissing me off.  Here's what you could be watching....PSYCH, just kidding.  Back to Love in the Time of Smoke Monsters.  So, why, with such a fine example of poor pacing and annoying cliffhanger music (Psycho meets Jaws meets the Law & Order musical gavel bang) readily available on streaming would you write a book that utilizes these same devices?

I've run into a string of these books lately.  Two, in particular spring to mind, and interestingly they're both dystopian/speculative fiction.  J, by Howard Jacobson, follows several characters through their sad and narrow lives in a mysteriously altered England (I think?).  I was really excited about this one.  The description was just bizarre enough (a guy who always held two fingers over his mouth when saying a word with the letter "J" in it, a post-event world--not necessarily an apocalypse--in trouble, characters with murky pasts) to lure me in, but the execution of Jacobson's concept (SPOILER ALERT) of living in the aftermath of a second Jewish holocaust was oblique at best and completely mostly opaque.

Here's the thing: if you do decide to use a shifting perspective, to dole out information like you're rationing food for wartime, you'd better have one hell of a revelation at the end.  Like a Luke, I am your father, he's been dead the whole time, Keyser Soze kind of revelation.  You can't leave your reader in total murkiness once you've built up that much suspense.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm fine with ambiguous endings.  What I'm not fine with is making it clear that the narrator has the answers, had some sort of revelation, but instead hands you a your-simple-little-reader mind-couldn't-handle-it kind of vagueness.

Which leads me to Area X, (Jeff Vandermeer) a mysterious place, a mysterious trilogy.  There was so much bizarre creepiness, delightfully icky and disturbing detail.  It was a book about unraveling the mystery of Area X.  It's a sprawling narrative with lots of characters, lots of time covered, and a whole lot of different perspectives.  It's dystopian, speculative, sci-fi with literary fiction level writing.  So why did I have to drag myself through the last 150 pages?  Because the explanation (at least as much as ever gets resolved in the book anyway) is strung out between so many different journal entries, interior monologues, and angry dialogues that stop and start the action too many times to count.  Yes, dear writer, we get it: You know the answers.  We don't.  But you don't need to keep slapping us in the head with this fact.

All this complaining and now I have to admit that this sort of dividing up the narrative to increase the suspense thing can actually work.  Enter All the Light We Cannot See, the latest Pulitzer winner for fiction.  (Anthony Doerr)  This guy does the shortest, quickest little chapter/perspective shifts I've just about ever seen.  So why does it work?

For one, he limits the number of people he follows.  While there are a few forays into the minds of some less central characters, Doerr focuses the majority of his chapters on the two main characters, flipping back and forth between their lives sometimes after only the briefest of snapshots.  But you don't have so many of those moments where you're suddenly taken completely out of the story to follow a seemingly unrelated character.

Another thing that makes his book work is narrative structure.  Within his date-stamped sections, he follows along fairly chronologically, so that each little tidbit furthers the action and the plot.  The reader may be shifting perspectives, but ultimately it reads more like a shift in camera angles than a fade to a different scene, especially as the conflict escalates.  Though admittedly, the quick back-and-forth of his structure took a few chapters to relax into the rhythm, ultimately the braiding of perspective felt organic, as we learned how these two characters' lives came to intersect so briefly.

Which leads me to my last point.  There needs to be a reason for doling out information in such a piece-by-piece way.  Doerr needed to show his characters in a parallel fashion so that the moment when they all converge makes sense and is powerful.  While with Jacobson and Vandermeer, it just felt like they were either figuring it out as they went along, making up backstory as needed, or just enjoyed teasing the reader with tidbits of useful (or not) information.

So, the moral of the story? I hated Lost.  Like really hated it.  Like can't understand why everyone is so freaking in love with JJ Abrams kind of hated it.  Also, don't watch Lost.

Promises, promises.

What I'm Reading

When people know you are a writer who also reads voraciously (is there another kind?), you gets lots of requests for recommendations.  This can be challenging when you don't know the person or their tastes or can't remember which books you've read lately that might be a good fit.  Enter the reading diary:

It's mostly just a list of books, authors, and start/finish dates (though there are occasional notes on especially good favorites), but it's something that never occurred to me to do until the beginning of 2014 (year of the #readwomen2014 movement).  I found that I loved keeping a list of what/who I read, and because I read acquisitionally (yes, that is a made-up word -- I read a book to absorb its powers and move on to the next), it's a great way to track the number of titles read in a year/month.  So here are a few of my recent reads:

How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran

This is not a book I would recommend to everyone.  I really enjoyed it.  I mean, really couldn't put it down.  The voice of the main character is funny and smart and a complete idiot, all the things we are as adolescents and young adults.  The subject matter is not a good fit for more conservative readers, however.  There is sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, but mostly sex and drugs.  Great feminist read.

Raised Right, Alisa Harris

This memoir is written by a woman who is -- as she freely admits -- awfully young to be writing a memoir.  Her exploration of finding her way through her transition from conservative to progressive politics is heartfelt and true, if not particularly broad or innovative.  It was still worth reading, especially if you're a young person still sorting out your own personal beliefs.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

I am a HUGE fan of Chabon.  I liked Wonder Boys and Telegraph Avenue, and I LOVED The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (one of my all time favorites.)  And this was another of his titles that had been recommended to me in the past.  The concept behind this story is so so interesting.  I love the alternate world where the book is set.  The main characters are wonderfully flawed and intriguing.  My only real problem with this book is that parts of it seemed really slow.  Still I finished it, and it had a satisfying ending.

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

This is the most beautiful book I ever didn't enjoy.  I feel really bad that I didn't love this more.  The writing and story are so lovely, and I think part of the problem for me was that I just wasn't in the mood for this kind of book at the time.  So chalk this one up as something I was able to appreciate but wouldn't recommend unless you're in the mood for a meandering meditation on God, religion, and rural life.

Area X (The Southern Reach Trilogy), Jeff Vandermeer

This is actually three books: Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance re-released in one volume.  I am presently about halfway through the second section (Authority).  So far, I am absolutely loving this book.  It's sci-fi.  It's dystopian (a particular weakness of mine).  It's written as well as any literary fiction you find on the New Releases shelf at your local bookstore.  So much creepiness and mystery and character study.  I find myself not wanting to put this book down, but also trying to pace myself so it doesn't end too quickly.  A must read for nerdy types who like good writing.

To Be Read

I am once again writing to you from the comfort of my own workspace.  Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of our visitors leaving.  Kiddo is still slightly in mourning for the unbridled frenzy of attention that is a Nana and Papaw visit, but Pizza Day at preschool seemed to help with her grief.  I on the other hand am grateful to once again be sitting in my writing chair and not furthering the damage to my already bruised and aching tailbone and lower back in that abomination that Barnes & Noble calls a cafe chair.  (There was a snow carnival incident.  I was the only adult to fall on the ice, and that includes the ones who were actually skating and not just walking around in boots like me.  There's a reason I'm a writer and not a ballerina, okay?)  Anyway, I'm enjoying my comfy cushion, my nearby space heater, and fast wifi.  (Also, my desk doesn't wobble, unlike the wonky table at BN yesterday.)

All ready to go.

Isn't this a happy chair?

But I digress.  Seriously.  My brain is all over the place today.  I have lots of work to do, and so my post will be short.  Now that I've shared a bit about my reading in 2014 and a little about what I'm reading currently, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of what books are on my To-Be-Read list for 2015.  So here they are in no particular order:

The Savage Detective, Roberto Bolano (This has been on my list for ages.)

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander  (I actually have this one.  It's just a matter of picking it up and reading it.)

This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz (Don't ask me how I've never read this one.  I'd also like to read The Brief Life of Oscar Wao.)

J, Howard Jacobson

The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters (I've never read anything of hers before, but this one made a lot of end-of-year lists.  Now I'm curious.)

The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro (This one is not out yet, but you can bet I'll be getting it as soon as it hits the shelves.  Also, on an unrelated note, auto-correct decided his name should actually be Kazoo.)

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

Tenth of December, George Saunders (I got this one for my birthday, and it keeps calling to me from the shelf.)

Jennifer Worth's Midwife Trilogy

Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam Trilogy

How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran

White Teeth, Zadie Smith (Not sure how I've missed this one either.  I've already read On Beauty and NW.)

Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon

There are so many other books that I want to read this year, but this is a list of the ones that have made the list that I carry with me at all times, my I'm-at-a-used-bookstore-so-check-for-these list.  I also resolve to read more Alice Munro because, well, that's always a good idea, isn't it?

So, what's on your to-be-read list for 2015?

Quick Thoughts and Slow Wi-Fi

Day 2 of the Great Barnes & Noble Exile of 2015.  My house is full of family, and I am working at my favorite BN cafe yet again.  Not complaining, though.  There are fewer distractions and temptations for procrastination here than there are in my little office/guest room, and the hot chocolate is so money (though not as good as mine, obviously.)  And on top of that Google Music is giving me my own personal Lilith Fair while I work.  (I've heard Shawn Colvin more in the past two days than I have in fifteen years.  I kind of wish that Sunny would just get home already.)  On the downside, I am so unspeakably tired, and I somehow managed to sit across from the magazine cover (Rolling Stone) with a giant picture of Nicki Minaj's boobs.  I have to say, it feels a bit early in the morning for that much cleavage.  But at least I'm not tempted to look up and get distracted, so there's that.  Also bumming me out is the inexplicably slow BN wi-fi this morning.  Let's just say that my music isn't the only thing having a 90's flashback.  The wi-fi is slow that I keep expecting to hear that dial-up modem noise and the AOL "You've got mail" message. #firstworldproblem

On the happy side, I started Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 this weekend.  If there's one thing I love, it's starting a massive novel, and this one certainly qualifies.  Coming in at a whopping 1157 pages, this erstwhile doorstop should keep me busy for a week or two.  I also just finished his YA(ish) illustrated novella, Strange Library, which was creepy and mysterious and wonderful.

Yesterday during my BN time I did take a few minutes to wander around looking for deals on books that I simply couldn't live without, and I made a great find.  I heard Jeff Bridges promote this a couple of years ago on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and I wanted to read it then.  Nothing like learning about Zen Buddhism by way of The Big Lebowski quotes.  And the book really ties my bookshelf together.

I've also been enjoying the latest season of Downton Abbey, and I can't wait to finally watch Sunday night's episode tonight.  Poor Steve will be banished to the living room yet again.  AND in less than two weeks The Walking Dead returns!  I don't think that statement requires any further elaboration.

Let's see, what else is new?  Found out yesterday that my spring term class is up to seventeen, so I'm super-excited about that, and I'm busily planning and reading lots of amazing essays to share with the ladies in my class.  My life is about to get significantly crazier with the beginning of the semester, but I'm just so happy to have this opportunity again.  Who'd have thought I'd ever be so psyched to be trapped in a room twice a week with 17 teenage girls?

Well, that's all I've got today.  Time to get busy working on lesson plans and writing.  Have a happy Tuesday!

Heavy Thoughts for a Tuesday Morning

These days it seems like I have so many thoughts and questions and concerns playing on a loop in my head that it's difficult to narrow them down to something reader-worthy.  I don't believe that the world is any more of a scary place than it was thirty years ago, but it sure feels like it recently.  And with the advent of social media, we now know everybody's opinion on said horrors, which is sometimes even more scary than the events themselves.  Some days, a quick glance at my newsfeed turns into a spiral of despair over violence, hatred, apathy, and the approval of these things by people I actually know.  Certainly we are not the first generation to fear what the future holds for their children, but it doesn't make the fear any less potent.

I wish that I had something new or relevant or important to say about those fears, but I'm afraid my thoughts settle into the same track as many other parents.  I've been on a bit of a dystopian reading kick of late, and suddenly, with conservatives desperately trying to chip away at a woman's right to birth control, books like Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale don't seem so far-fetched.  I fear for my daughter's future as a woman in a country where more and more it seems like to call yourself a Christian woman, you must also label yourself a second class citizen.  I realize that we are meant to be in-the-world-but-not-of-it, but that doesn't mean we are supposed to be different just for the sake of difference, which is what most of the anti-feminist vitriol feels like.  When did a woman having the same rights and status and pay as a man become a sinful, worldly idea?  And how do I teach my little girl to navigate these ignorant prejudices without becoming bitter and resentful toward her fellow believers?

These are heavy thoughts for a Tuesday morning sans caffeine.  I want to write about funny things, interesting writer things, amazing books I've read, but alas, my mind is stuck in this frustrating web of thoughts that just won't release me.  With all that's happened in the past week (yes, I know the loss of a cat seems small in comparison to world-sized issues, but just deal with it, ok) to me personally and add in horrors like what's been going on in Paris, the inadequate Ebola response, and the slaughter of hundreds and maybe thousands in Nigeria, it's difficult to focus on my reading and writing.  I must pray more.  For those around me, yes.  For those who are far away and unknown to me, yes.  For those who make our country seem small and ignorant, yes.  For those who work tirelessly to make America a better place for everyone, yes.  For my precious little girl who has not yet learned to edit herself or doubt herself or fear, yes.

2014 - The Year of Reading Women and Keeping Track of It

Christmas, New Year's, family, presents, decorations, baking, and here we are two weeks later with Kiddo back in preschool and my husband back to work (though thanks to car trouble, I had to drive him there) and I'm finally back to writing.  Even my reading slowed down during the holidays (unheard of, I know.)  But I'm back, and I'm finally ready to crank out my 2014 reading log post and maybe even mention some of the things I'm excited to read in 2015.

Despite being a prolific reader for my entire life, I've don't think I've kept any sort of reading log/journal since I was a kid trying to work my way to the top of my local library's summer reading program incentives.  Certainly in grad school I made lists of books to be read, but I can't remember making any lists of my reading acquisitions -- and make no mistake, I am very aquisition-minded when it comes to powering through as many books as possible.

My parents mark the dates read on the inside covers of their books, but that didn't seem very satisfying to me as I don't usually re-read, and it wouldn't give me an overall picture of my reading year.  Also, unless it's a textbook (and even then I struggle), I find it nearly impossible to write in a book.  It's right up there with dog-earing or breaking spines.  I just can't do it.

One of my favorite professors from grad school mentioned her reading journal in her blog one day, and for some reason that was a total revelation for me.  I have no idea why it didn't occur to me before.  Also, I took an online survey (I believe it was for Book Riot) about how many books I read in a year, and I had no idea what kind of numbers to even ballpark.  On top of everything else, 2014 was the year of reading women writers, #readwomen2014, and so what better time to track my reading habits? [Edit: Just realized that I didn't include a total count/list of women writers I read.  Will have to write about that in another post.]

So here's a summary of 2014:

Total # of books completed (not counting books started, but not finished): 56 (this counts Station Eleven, which I technically didn't finish until after the first of the year.)

Total # of books started but not completed: 9 (Technically, one of these is still in progress.  The rest are abandoned.)

Overall, I don't think this is a terrible record.  I have a real compulsion to finish books, even if I'm not enjoying them, so I look on those nine books as a bit of an accomplishment.

Some standouts in non-fiction:

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion - How had I never read this?

Jesus Feminist, Sarah Bessey - Absolutely life-changing.  I want to read this again.

Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber - Church of Christ girl becomes outrageously liberal/progressive church founder/minister.  A must read.

Brain on Fire, Susanna Cahalan - Because if you were ever foolish enough to trust our medical system, you won't after reading this.

Fiction favorites:

The Secret History, Donna Tartt - Why did The Goldfinch win the Pulitzer instead of this?  Such an amazing book.

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood - How had I never read any of her fiction before this?  Dystopian masterpiece. (Also read Alias Grace and Blind Assassins this year, and they were equally amazing.)

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - I cannot say enough about this book.  I read it, and then immediately made my friends read it.  And then I read everything else she's ever written.  And watched her TedX talk and her interview on Tavis Smiley and... Can you tell I'm obsessed?

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro - My first Ishiguro (I've since plowed through most of his books.)  This one blew my mind.  So beautiful.  So original.  So perfect from beginning to end.

An Unnecessary Woman, Rabin Alameddine - Just an amazing book that you should go buy immediately.

And last, but certainly not least...

The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert - Loved this book so much.  It was a whopper, but I flew through it like a novella.  Most wonderful/amazing/flawed/perfect/powerful female protagonist I've read in a long time.  I want to read this book again for the first time.

Looking forward to this year?

J by Howard Jacobson

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

The Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood

And here's my current read:

So, there you have it, folks.  Go forth and read!