Last year’s thread: Top Ten books you read in 2013 - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
Doesn’t matter when they were published, but you read 'em and loved 'em in the last calendar year.
Right. I see from my notes that I read 44 books last year. In no particular order, my top ten are:
11/22/63 by Stephen King - A time traveler tries to prevent JFK’s assassination but learns that history resists being changed.
Game Change: Double Down by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann - Engrossing, thorough, behind-the-scenes look at the 2012 Presidential campaign.
Machine of Death ed. by Ryan North et al. - Short story collection about a machine which dispenses cryptic but always accurate death predictions, and how it would change society forever.
The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy - Re-read this high school favorite of mine, about the desegregation of a Southern military academy (closely patterned after The Citadel) in the Sixties, and how it tears a group of four close friends apart.
Tool of the Trade by Joe Haldeman - Also re-read this favorite sf/spy novel, about a Soviet deep-cover agent who develops a practical method of mind control and then goes on the run from both the KGB and the CIA.
Counselor by Ted Sorensen - A moving autobiography by JFK’s top aide. Lots of good stories, and a candid assessment of Kennedy both as a man and as a President.
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs - Funny, thoughtful, sometimes even touching account of the author’s attempt to abide by all of the Bible’s 700-plus rules for an entire year.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - Epic novel of civilization and savagery, love and hate, music and dissonance across the centuries.
The Children of Men by P.D. James - Somber, dystopic tale of universal human sterility and the slow collapse of civilization. Very different from the movie, which is also quite good.
Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris - Charming, off-kilter, very funny collection of Christmas-themed short stories and essays. “SantaLand Diaries” is still the standout - the perfect antidote to forced holiday merriment.
In no particular order… I’d be hard pressed to rank them anyway:
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg I utterly loved the book in no small part because she didn’t pull any punches with the tricky topic of black treatment in the early part of the last century. Visually the book was a treat and I snickered all the way through it.
Rain Fall/A Clean Kill in Tokyo - Barry Eisler I’m a Japan geek, I admit it, and Eisler really brought Japan to life in this book. There was a little too much extrapolation at the beginning but the character of John Rain pulled me in and kept me interested.
- Lost Light - Michael Connelly* wow, Connelly’s stuff has really taken a turn for the dark and gloomy. But so well written.
Treachery in Death - J.D. Robb Potato chip reading really, but this one really tapped into the pyches of her characters and was actually quite tense reading.
Blood Work - Michael Connelly I really like Terry! It was a tension filled page turner, even though I worked out the killer long before Terry, I still enjoyed the journey.
The Halloween Tree - Ray Bradbury Could use some fleshing out, but it’s one of the first Urban fantasies to cross my path and so remains a favorite.
Billy Straight - Jonathon Kellerman The switching viewpoints is handled pretty well, though towards the end it felt like padding, and since it was written almst 20 years ago it isn’t as twisty as later books, so it’s a straight forward nail biting story about a street kid who witnesses a murder and the cop who needs to find him and protect him.
The Poet - Michael Connelly A real page turner, I liked most of the characters and even though I missed on the identity of The Poet, I was on the right trail for most of the book.
These last couple are Manga series, I read a LOT of manga last year and some of it very excellent quality.
Natsume’s Book of Friends Series - Yuki Midorikawa I read the three that came out this last year, as always she makes me cry laugh and cheer in each volume. I love the way she makes yokai, Japanese demons, sympathetic and in need of help instead of just scary monsters. Now that she’s delving into Natori’s backstory as well as Natsume’s, his character is getting rounder and more meaningful.
No. 6 Series- Atsuko Asano & Hinoki Kino A fairly standard story of a dystopian future and two boys determined to bring it down. What really made the story was te interactions of the characters and their relationshipto each other and to the other minor characters. I need to find the translations of the original novels and read them now.
Elendil’s Heir, I can’t remember whether you recommended The Year of Living Biblically to Me or whether I recommended it to you after yet another Doper recommended it to me. Long story short (!), it made my top ten list too. 
In no order whatsoever:
- **Red Country**by Joe Abercrombie
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
- Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
- After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn
- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
- **The Book Thief**by Markus Zusak
- How to Be Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life by Ruth Goodman
- The Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding
- The first 3 books in The Song of Ice and Fire series (yes, this is cheating, but too bad!) by George R.R. Martin
Honorable mention goes to **The Daughter of Smoke and Bone**and its 2 attendant volumes in the trilogy. A bit breathlessly YA at times, but creative and compelling world-building in detail. I also honorably mention Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King, something I absorbed unabridged on audio. It was first-rate!
I did a Goodreads 100 books challenge (that was a good experience, but tough - and it meant that I couldn’t re-read the books I read every year, and I’ve missed them). There was a lot of dross in there, but my favourites, in no particular order were:
Liane Moriarty - Big Little Lies
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Karen Joy Fowler - We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Nathan Filer - The Shock of the Fall
Karen Maitland - Company of Liars
Richard Flanagan - The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Stephen King - Joyland
Alexei Sayle - Stalin Ate My Homework
M. R. Carey - The Girl With all the Gifts
According to my book journal, I read 58 (new to me) books this year. Grouped roughly by type, but with no rank order, my favorite ten were:
Fiction
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The Time of our Singing, by Richard Powers. Satisfying and rambling novel about growing up biracial in mid-20th century America, also physics and music.
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The Magician’s Land, by Lev Grossman. I unabashedly love this series, and this was a terrific wrap-up.
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Hild, by Nicola Griffith. Historical fiction set in 7th century England. All the details about life in those times were just terrific.
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Mermaids in Paradise, by Lydia Millet. One of those odd books were I didn’t think I loved it AT THE TIME, but a lot of aspects have really stuck with me since I read it. Mermaids are discovered at a resort, and dippy honeymooners attempt to save them.
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My Real Children, by Jo Walton. One women’s recollection of two lives. It was very sweet and I cried at the end.
Non-fiction
6. The Killing of Crazy Horse, by Thomas Powers. Lengthy, epic look at Crazy Horse and the Indian Wars. I even knew the outcomes of most of the stuff he was writing about, and I still found it riveting.
- Bad Feminist: Essays, by Roxane Gay. I find her commentary delightful, even when I don’t always agree with her.
YA/Children’s Lit
8. Long Division, by Kiese Laymon. Absolutely unique and different YA time travel story anchored (kind of) by a teenager in rural, post-Katrina Louisiana.
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The Glass Sentence, by S.E. Grove. Very interesting middle grade fantasy novel based on the premise that time is moving differently in various parts of the world. It’s the first in a series, we’ll have to see if the follow ups stay as compelling.
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The Cracks in the Kingdom, by Jaclyn Moriarty. Second in a YA fantasy series about a girl in our real world discovering a link to a boy in a fantasy world. My favorite feature about this is the fantasy world is very much like our actual world with a minimal amount of magic/supernatural aspects mixed in. It seems more challenging, to have to create a believable alternative world with just a little magic thrown in.
Interestingly (to me), I remember that last year, I had given 10 books five out of five stars in my journal, so my annual top 10 was an easy task. This year, I had marked only four books as five stars, so I had to dip into my four star books to find the rest of this list.
I really enjoyed this series. I get how it mostly follows that formula that’s very popular in YA these days, with the gawky teen girl coming into her awesome powers and still finding the time to hook up with the cute boy, but I loved how the setting (a fantasy-world version of Imperial Russia) gave it a fresh spin.
Tell me that’s not 100 books in a year. I mean, I have friends that can read a book in a night and I know people on this board saying they can read 2 books a week, but keeping that up for a year has got to be tough.
My usual goal is a book a month. I’m slow reader and I don’t get to it every month. Some books take me 6 weeks, some 3, sometimes I really tear through one (like Gone Girl) in a week.
About a 2 years ago I moved from my Kindle to dead tree books because I wanted ‘something to show for it’ so to speak. I’m happy to have 19 books sitting next to me, some unread, and I feel like I can officially purchase a bookshelf and start filling it…because they are starting to get kind of piled up here.
I admire people who can tear through them like that, provided they’re not just skimming them and they’re actually reading them and getting everything out of them. My sister can read an entire book in a night, but she probably still reads one or two books a month. I have an aunt who’s thrilled when someone brings her an entire grocery bag of old paperbacks. A lifetime of books for me, but she’s ready for more a few months later.
Of course I watch a lot of TV, so I got that going for me.
I guess it just depends on what you like. I like reading books, but, to be honest, it is still a bit of a chore. At a certain time of night of I have to tell myself to turn off TV and pick up my book. It would be much easier to just leave the TV on a little longer and then go to bed. Especially if I’m in a book (like I am now) that I’m just not that into.
I don’t read too many books but happened upon The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition and was riveted. I highly recommend it if you like adventure/survival type (true) stories.
I did 100 my first year and damn it was hard. Towards the end I was reading all the time. I read 51 last year tho and ummm approximately 80 manga 
Yeah, I read A LOT and when I did 100 in a year, I was racing to do it. I know there were some books I was simply plowing through to get them on the list. Since I’ve been keeping track, my average seems to be about 55 - 65 new (to me) titles per year, and a handful of rereads of old favorites, and that “feels” right to me – I’m not rushing through anything, and really selecting books that I think I’ll enjoy.
I so agree, I want to savour the book like a good meal. Which is why I have set my subsequent Goodreads Challenges MUCH lower and then raised them as necessary.
I used to average about a book a week, but have slowed down a bit in recent years. I like watching movies too much to keep up that pace.
Small spoiler: the starship in Christopher Nolan’s recent sf epic Interstellar is the Endurance. A nice salute to Shackleton, who’s a hero of mine.
My feeling is that reading to succeed in some sort of challenge is an awful reason to read.
This sounds awful. I read to bring myself enjoyment or insight. Reading for a challenge seems to be reading to impress people. Competitive reading. Blecch.
Once upon a time, I had never gone to sleep without reading, even when horribly drunk. The habit of reading before sleep was so ingrained that I could put myself to sleep reading at other times during the day, so it remained my last activity of the night. Since the kids came, I fall asleep the second I climb into bed, so reading is a rare indulgence.
My top 1 book for 2014 is Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French. It is the only book I managed to finish this year. I enjoyed it well enough, though I suspect that if I still read as many books as I used to, it wouldn’t have been top 5, and may not have scraped into the top 10.
I started several other books, but have not managed to read any of them through, though this is not a reflection of the quality of the books and is more down to my nightly instant bed coma.
I read around 2 books a week, non-competitively. That’s my reading speed. If anything, I’m slower than I used to be.
- Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
- Take This Man: A Memoir, Brando Skyhorse
- The Barkeep, William Lashner
- Far North, Marcel Theroux
- The Secret Place, Tana French
- Fear Nothing, Lisa Gardner
- Long Knives, Charles Rosenberg
- After I’m Gone, Laura Lippman
- Plaster City, Johnny Shaw
- Moving Day, Jonathan Stone
I really liked Oh Dear Silvia, but either it didn’t make my top 10, or else possibly I read it in 2013.
You people can actually read ten books in a single year? Sorry, but that is beyond me. My lips get too tired.
And of the books that I read in 2014, none of them were published prior to 1950! Yes, I’m an “out of print” kind of guy.
It wasn’t a very highbrow reading year, for me. I split my time between nonfiction and guilty-pleasure, mildly smutty novels. In no particular order:
We Took To The Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich
A Home In The Woods by Oliver Johnson
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
Everyday Life in Prehistoric Times by Marjorie Quennell
Life in the English Country House by Mark Girouard
And in fiction, books from the two series that overshadowed all of my fiction reading for the year
Dark and Deep, Promises to Keep, Before I Sleep by Katharine Tree (the Settlement trilogy)
Drums of Autumn, A Breath of Snow And Ashes by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series books 5, 6)
I don’t keep track of what I read (although I’m going to try to do so in 2015), so this is off the top of my head in no particular order and I’m probably missing something I really enjoyed.
- Last Colony by John Scalzi. This is the third installment in the series that started with Old Man’s War. I thoroughly enjoyed this conclusion and thought it was better than the first two books.
- Wreck of the River of Stars by Michael Flynn. This tells the story of the second-rate crew of a formerly-luxurious ship disastrously struck by a small asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. Fascinating characters that really stuck with me long after I finished the book.
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. Y’all have probably already read this one.
- My Real Children by Jo Walton. Patricia’s life story is told twice based on one key decision. It was especially good as a contrast to Life After Life.
- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Revolutionaries take over the Vice President’s home during a party in a fictional Latin American country. The revolutionaries don’t have much of a plan, and the situation settles into a detente, with the military set up just outside the grounds of the house. The story is of the developing relationships between hostages and hostage-takers.
- Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead. Joan is a company ballerina who becomes temporarily involved with a Soviet dancer who defects. Later, her son seems poised to become the star she always wanted to be.
- Soulless by Gail Carriger. Delicious fluff set in a steampunk, paranormal London. I would guess that the author is a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse.
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Pacing is a bit odd, but in general two thumbs up.
- **Foundation **by Isaac Asimov. I can’t believe I haven’t read this before.
I can’t think of a 10th book to add to this list! Sad.