In 2013, I read 32 books. While nothing to sneeze at, I felt the number was kind of low so I resolved to read more books in 2014. I’m pleased to report that I accomplished this goal and, in fact, more than doubled the number of books I read. With great difficulty, I have attempted to order them by my own preference, beginning with the books I loved the most. So here we go, everything I read in 2014:
1. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
2.The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
3. Reaching for the Invisible God by Philip Yancey
4. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
5. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
6. The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels
7. The Confabulist by Steven Galloway
8. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
9. Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
10. Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill
11. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
12. All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
13. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
14. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
15. A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans
16.We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
17. The Dinner by Herman Koch
18. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
19. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
20. Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay
21. Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
22. February by Lisa Moore
23. Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese
24. Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
25. Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
26. Tell the Wolves I’m Home – Carol Rifka Brunt
27. Sweetland by Michael Crummey
28. Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon
29. Us Conductors by Sean Michaels
30. Man by Kim Thuy
31. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
32. Harvest by Jim Crace
33. Looking for Alaska by John Green
34. I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
35. The Sweet Girl by Annabel Lyon
36. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
37. Hellgoing by Lynn Coady
38. The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
39. The Devil on Her Tongue by Linda Holeman
40. The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neill
41. 419 by Will Ferguson
42. Juliet was a Surprise by Bill Gaston
43. Floating Like the Dead by Yasuko Thanh
44. The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith
44. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeymi
45. The World by Bill Gaston
46. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
47. Everything in this Country Must by Colum McCann
48. The Sad Truth About Happiness by Anne Giardini
49. The Eliot Girls by Krista Bridge
50. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
51. Seven Good Reasons not to be Good by John Gould
52. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
53. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
54. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
55. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
56. I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
57. Stars Between the Sun and Moon by Lucia Jang & Susan McClelland
58. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
59. Summer Crossing by Truman Capote
60. Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
61. Open by Lisa Moore
62. Writing with Grace by Judy McFarlane
63. No Relation by Terry Fallis
64. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
65. Projection by Priscila Uppal
66. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
67. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
68. Perfect by Rachel Joyce
69. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabriele Zevin
70. Little Children by Tom Perotta
71. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
72. If I Stay by Gayle Forman
73. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
74. Candide by Voltaire
75. Butterflies in November by Audur Ava Olafsdottir
76. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
77. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
78. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Re-Read this Year: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
So there you have it. 78 new titles read this year. My best month for reading was January (11 books) and my worst was August (4 books). This makes sense when you take into account the indoor weather of January and the fact that in August I was dealing with morning sickness and started a new job.
And just for fun, let’s lay down some stats! (Who doesn’t love stats?)
- 8% of the books I read were either short stories or young adult novels. (None were both at once. Have there been many short story collections for teens in recent years?)
- 9% were translations. These varied from Spanish to Icelandic but French seemed to dominate. Perhaps because it’s the second official language of my country.
- 10% were non-fiction. I hope to up this percentage in 2015. While I definitely prefer fiction, I hope to read more theological writing in the new year.
- 36% were Canadian. I’m happy with that percentage. I do make an effort to read Canadian writing but I also don’t want to ignore fantastic writing from around the world.
- I reviewed 43% of the books I read on this blog. Again, I’d like to do better at this in 2015. I think I started out very well, meeting my goal of a weekly book review but it sputtered in the summer and has been rather sporadic since.
- 47% of the books I read this year were written by men. 53% were written by women. Through no effort on my part, those numbers are pretty even and that makes me happy.
So what were the best books you read in 2014? What do I need to add to my list for 2015?
Karissa Reads Books 
Up to what number do you recommend?
That’s a good question. If I had to draw a (somewhat arbitrary) line, I’d say everything from #1-#48 is definitely worth reading. That said, I think you could read up to #68 without major regret!
[…] What I Read – 2014 […]