It’s been a good year in reading for me.
Old stuff:
I finally finished Parade’s End and started reading Middlemarch. The last three novels of Parade’s End I read in a sustained burst of reading, but I’ve been taking Middlemarch very slow, pausing from time to time amidst an increasingly hectic year to read a chapter here or a chapter there as a treat to myself.
I also started reading more Jonathan Edwards. I’d only known his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which I’d read in high school, and I was delighted to discover how much more there was to him. Of particular note, for me, is his essay, “Concerning the Nature of True Virtue.”
New stuff:
Scott Cheshire’s High as the Horses’ Bridles astounded me for several reasons. There are pieces in the book that are just dazzling displays of skill: a child sermonizing before a crowd of thousands in the 1980’s, a tent revival in the 19th century, a richly layered description of a taxi-ride through Queens. There’s a profound and searching look at religion and the loss of religious belief. And there’s just an incredibly beautiful generosity to the book, a warmth to it even in its darker passages.
Probably the most sheer delight I experienced reading a book this year was with Jason Porter’s Why Are You So Sad? It’s a short little book that, despite being an absolutely zany satire, packs a serious emotional punch. And it’s hilarious. I found myself reciting lines to my wife and friends as I read it. And it has one of the best descriptions of a groggy work morning that I’ve read, beginning: “Waking up was like reversing a burial……..”
Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves is just a stunning, stunning book. A huge, ambitious story that spans three generations, unflinchingly explores the deterioration of one character’s mind, and has a main character who goes to my high school (Regis, to which Thomas also went, though we did not overlap). Possibly the most emotionally engaged I’ve been with any book this year.
Vanessa Manko’s The Invention of Exile is a book that powerfully evokes the effects of political paranoia on individuals and families. Though it’s 1930’s anti-Soviet paranoia that strikes Austin Voronkov’s family, Manko’s main characters’ struggles are no less pertinent today.
I read a lot of great military-related books this year. The standouts are Rick Atkinson’s The Long Gray Line and Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie, both truly remarkable works of non-fiction about Vietnam. Elizabeth Samet’s No Man’s Land is a thoughtful, idiosyncratic, and moving look at the modern American military, how it prepares for war, and its relationship to the rest of America.
I read plenty of great poetry this year (Ted Kooser, Cynthia Huntington, Louise Gluck), but my favorite was Tom Sleigh’s Station Zed, a profound, sometimes uncomfortably incisive book. Sleigh’s essay for Poetry Magazine on the WWI writers Wilfred Owen and David Jones is brilliant, and this book is the proof that he lives up to theoretical challenges he poses in that essay for anybody daring to write about conflict zones. Just as good are the non-war poems. I just finished it, but have been carrying it around with me because I keep needing to go back to reread poems.
Karen Russell’s Sleep Donation is, like all her fiction, weird, hilarious, and brilliant. The consumption of the spectacle of emotional suffering, paranoia over dream contagion, the commodification of charity, a wood-paneled car with termites — what’s not to love?
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
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From where I’m sitting I can see the galleys of Maggie Nelson’s incredible The Argonauts, which will come out this spring from Graywolf, and Aaron Kunin’s brilliant, Cold Genius, just out from Fence. Chris Nealon’s Heteronomy, published by Edge, has been supporting me all fall. Nealon taps into the energies of popular culture without condescension or self-congratulation or (easy) irony; his poems are at once totally well-wrought and unaffectedly conversational; he is clear-eyed about the catastrophe of the present but refuses to descend into mere melancholy; he has no illusions about poetry’s practical power but he is not in love with — or particularly tortured by — its marginality; Nealon — an accomplished literary critic — neither disavows his learning or retreats into it. Please read this book with me because everybody who reads it gets to enter a meadow where we can dance and die together:
is this some kind of joke?
No, it’s not. These two have been fellating each other across the internet for the last couple of months. She’s thanked in the acknowledgements of his new book, then she reviews said book for the Los Angeles Review of Books, then he picks her book as his favorite books of the year and I’m sure if she gets a chance she’ll pick his book as her favorite book. I’m starting to get used to this logrolling. It’s what the internet is about. There’s no point in fighting it. Just recognize it for what it is and take every recommendation witha grain of salt.
Lerner and Kunin are also friends (per an old Believer interview). Hilarious. Doubt Lerner even read the Nelson or Kunin. “From where I’m sitting I can see the galleys…” Congrats on your ability to see!
Thank you! The meadow conceit is lovely and makes me eager to discover the rest of Nealon’s book.
I must also say I’m aghast at the crudeness, rudity, and absurd presumptiousness of the previous commenters. This whole series is a gift to readers, and a wonderful one, and it will be taken away from us, because who on earth would contribute again after responses like these?
I don’t think someone telling you to read their friends books is a gift. It’s PR. Don’t be so melodramatic. The people who are using this exercise to be thoughtful and recommending interesting books are being thanked; the logrollers are not, as they shouldn’t be. Ben Lerner’s recommending Maggie Nelson is the equivalent of Uncle Eddie’s handing his already half-drunk can of beer to Clark Griswold. “I bet you could use a cool one, huh?” “Now you’re talking.” That’s what kind of gift that is.
It’s a gift in the same sense a television advertisement is a gift.
In res: Wyatt’s comment
What is “rudity” supposed to mean? Is that a new alternative spelling for “rudeness”? And for “presumptiousness” – shouldn’t that be spelled “presumptuousness”?
Condescending to other commentators (particularly if they have a point which you don’t even address) by using fancy words usually works better if you use words that actually exist and if you spell them correctly.
Claudia,
The crudity rudiness of your commentarity is sickning!
All,
Newsflash, half of these year-end lists are PR for writers’ friends or their own publications. There’s no need to break out the fainting couch over this, it’s just a silly year-end exercise. Also, it’s possible to like a friend’s book in good faith. It isn’t, however, a “gift,” let’s be clear on that…
So far, Lerner gets the Matt Bell logroller of the year award, but we have yet to see Bell’s contribution, so until then, the champion holds the belt.
Wow, quick to the throat, aren’t we, and so witty! Rudity may have been a mistake, but it is fine by Webster’s online. Condescension was not what I intended, at least no more so than when my 4-year-old daughter angrily shouts at my 5-year-old son the most potent insult she knows: “You’re rude!” (She hasn’t learned yet how to mock style.) The comments here are unwarranted and unappreciated. They are self-congratulatory and mean, and completely out of the spirit of this series. These are the personal recommendations and reading experiences of authors. Truly, what does Mr. Lerner owe to you?
Would The Millions please offer some of our esteemed commenters a Year In Reading of their own? This is not a joke! I am really curious.
Or maybe you dumbasses could consider that having a personal relationship with the authors increases their impact?
Tom
Your question is incoherent. Learn how to properly write a sentence, dumbass.