Sometimes choosing one or two books from a whole year is like trying to pick the best meal you ate — great bites keep coming to you (wait, what about that fig and pancetta pizza?) In 2014, I ate well: Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation might have hit me the hardest; it’s airy, funny and haunting. Rebecca Lee’s Bobcat was so good it made me want to be a writer. I tried to be the last person in America to read Patti Smith’s Just Kids and I think the 2010 National Book Awards got that one right. I loved the sweep of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and the weightless beauty of Alejandro Zambra’s My Documents (coming soon) and got into John O’Hara (thank you Penguin for reissuing), especially the big, weird, funny, I-can’t-really-tell-if-this-is-great-or-terrible omniscience of BUtterfield 8. Just this week I read a terrific debut: Mitchell Jackson’s pulsing and powerful The Residue Years (which also serves as a great counterpoint to hipper-than-thou Portland). And finally, the Spokane Shakespeare Reading Club is nearing the end of its two-year project — drunkenly discussing each play — and hey, get this: it turns out Hamlet is pretty good.
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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