The first thing I thought of while trying to write this list was the pile of books I have not even started, that I feel guilty for not reading, or have not yet finished reading this year. I have problems with guilt. To stoke that fire, I’ll mention some books I reread (while I clearly should have been reading other books for the first time): I revisited Max Frisch’s masterpiece Montauk because while devouring Jenny Offill’s irreducible and totally beautiful Dept. of Speculation I noticed echoes between the two books. I was even compelled to write an essay about the experience. I “reread” Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood by listening to it on audio, and was amazed after I was finished to find all those voices, and accents, all that violence, and all those profoundly religious and genuinely creepy moments were delivered by Bronson Pinchot. What a reader! I had no idea. Truly a perfect stranger to me. I reread the first quarter or so of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus and once again found myself nodding off, wishing he would please stop already with the lecturing on musical theory and just get on with the story. I reread James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain only to discover I have been subconsciously stealing moves from that book for years.
I loved David Gerrard’s debut Short Century, a twisted tale of moral relativism, political posturing, drone strikes, and incest. What more could you want? Will Chancellor’s A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall knocked my socks off. Amy Jo Burns’s Cinderland made me cry and want to listen to Nine Inch Nails — at the same time, which is exactly how you should listen to Nine Inch Nails. I read Chelsea Hodson’s Pity the Animal, twice. It is quite short but huge in scope and ambition. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
2014 Homeruns: Roberto Bolano’s A Little Lumpen Novelita is impossibly good like all of his best stuff and while it comes in last chronologically (we shall see…), it leaps to the near head of the line as one of his best books. I would read Javier Marías’s “to do” lists with pleasure (then again, all of his books sort of read like deeply ruminated “to do” lists), and so I found The Infatuations, all of its secrets and obsessions, its violence and cheating, all of its murder and sex, a superb addition to my shelves. Jason Porter’s Why Are You So Sad? was by far the funniest novel of the year (and one of the weirdest, and one of the saddest, and one of the most philosophical). And the only thing that could have made Marilynn Robinson’s Lila better were if she rocked me in her arms as she read it to me as if I were her child.
More from A Year in Reading 2014
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles
The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews
Like what you see? Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, and follow The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.
