This is
my list of the top 14 books I read in 2014, they weren’t necessarily released
in 2014, but I read them in 2014. I don’t think there’s a particular order to
these, they’re just the top 14-ish. I’m going to be kind to myself and say that
if I finished a trilogy/series in a year, or read all that was published in a
series/trilogy in a year I count those as one.
I read
this quite far out in the year, but it made it high up. I feel like when I read
How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran I became very aware of feminism and
womanhood and my own feminism, and all that jazz, which is good. Reading Bad
Feminist I became more aware of the issues of race within feminism and the fact
that no one is a perfect feminist because you’d explode if you weren’t allowed
to do whatever you want sometimes. Gay has a huge knowledge of popular culture
and just culture in itself. She writes amazing essays and she has a great tone
and I feel sort of humbled, because I am obviously a woman of some privilege
being middle-class and white and there are some issues I just don’t understand.
So I feel like she opened my eyes quite a lot, and although I don’t know where
to go now, or how to do anything, I am still happy that my eyes are more open
because of Roxane Gay.
This is
my YA vampire-awesome book of the year. I thought the vampires/zombies were
really amazing, the mythology was fascinating and the way the world was set up
was amazing and cool. I loved Tana, she was very consistent, there was some
insta-love and while I don’t like that I didn’t care. Tana is strong and weird
and cool and she has flaws and it’s lovely. I loved it.
This was
a non-fiction book I read this year. I loved it. It’s about weird experiments
and odd science. And I love it when there are mavericks in the world of
science. I feel like when other scientists think no, it wouldn’t be ethical
these geniuses thought fuck that I want to find out this and I’ll do it to
myself if I have to. So I loved that. I think I’ve read two of his books, he
has one more, I’ll have to find that and read it. It’s lovely. It’s so much
fun.
This is
the third book in the Lunar Chronicles, and it focuses on the Rapunzel story.
It was great. I think it’s my favorite in the Lunar Chronicles. I thought the
Rapunzel fairy tale was handled beautifully and magically. I love Carswell
Thorne, I love him, he’s like a space version of Captain Jack Sparrow, less
drunk, and more cocky. I love him. I really liked Cress (Rapunzel), I think she
was done really well, because she’s gone sort of insane being on her own,
watching the earth and Cinder and Scarlet and their adventures.
I’d had
the first of these books on my shelves for like… ever, and when I read the Lies
of Locke Lamora it sort of took over my brain and needed to read the next ones
so I read Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves sort of
instantly. The writing is beautiful and wonderful. The stories are outstanding,
and the characters oh my God. Locke is unlikeable and wonderful all at once. He
is amazing. Jean is my boo. I love a good con story, and the stories are so
weird and complicated and they’re intensely well planned out. I love it.
Patrick
Ness is evil, I’m pretty sure. An evil genius. I finished the Chaos Walking
trilogy this year, and then promptly bought More Than This, because everyone
was just raving about it. And I loved the Chaos Walking trilogy. This was
amazing and wonderful. The way it was put together, and the way it was built
and the way it was told, oh my God. It’s about a boy named Seth who is drowning,
who dies, and then wakes up, naked and alone. And he has to figure out where he
is, what happened, and what to do now. And it’s so beautiful, and it sort of
feels hopeless all the time, and the “dreams” or flashbacks are just
heartbreaking. I loved it.
YA choice
number three. This is just so much fun. It’s legit hilarious. The writing is
absolutely amazing. It’s not like literary or anything like that, it’s just
solid and hilarious and it’s funny and clever. I love Lish McBride, and why I
haven’t read Firebug is beyond me. It’s about a kid named Samhain, Sam, who is
a necromancer and who is trying to figure out his place in the world after the
first book, and how to sort of cope with his new position in the supernatural
creatures world. It’s fun. Sam is a cool character, he’s kind and very just,
and he keeps trying no matter how often he is struck down.
Lolita.
Oh my God. It was incredible. I uh. I don’t know. Okay, focus. It’s the story
of Dolores Haze who is the newest obsession of Humbert Humbert. Dolores, or
Lolita, is 12, and Humbert Humbert is 37 and her step-father. He is obsessed
with her and when her mother dies he takes her away and travels across the
country with her. He is in love with her, although obviously he’s a pedophile.
He keeps rationalizing his love for her and he feels like she loves him too and
she actually seduced him. And it’s so creepy to see the world from his
perspective. And to see him explaining and rationalizing and defending what
he’s doing was just horrible. I loved it for how beautifully it was written,
and for how much it revolted me. I never felt like he managed to trick me into
sympathizing with him, I found him revolting, and horrible. He is very aware of
what he is doing and that he is doing something wrong, but he does it anyway.
I read a
lot of Rainbow Rowell this year, well, three. I loved Fangirl, not for any high
flying reason, not because it’s great literature, not because it’s necessarily
well written, but because they’re about something that really resonated with
me. It’s about a young lady named Cath who is going to college and for the
first time in her life she’s not sharing a room with her twin sister Wren. Cath
is taking a creative writing class at school. She has been writing Simon Snow
(a slightly campier Harry Potter) fanfiction since she was a little kid and she
doesn’t know if she can write actual creative writing that she thinks of
herself. I really recognized myself in Cath, she’s sort of angsty (she doesn’t
dare ask anyone for help when she can’t find the cafeteria, she’d rather
starve) and shy and she’s introverted, and I always loved Harry Potter and I
loved writing fanfiction, so I recognized myself in her a lot. I loved it. It
made me cry (easy to do), and it made me laugh (which is harder to do). And I
loved it.
I read
both of these this year. It’s just an amazing fantasy series. The third book has
no release date yet, because Patrick Rothfuss is evil. It’s about a guy named
Kvothe who was part of a band of travelling performers. He learns some magic
from a traveller who joins them for a while. His family is then murdered and
Kvothe goes to the University to learn magics and to learn about the people who
killed his family. The books are incredibly written and they’re amazing. There
are things that bug me, Kvothe is a horrible know-it-all, and best at
everything, and the love interest has no redeeming qualities and I hate her. I
don’t know why entirely.
This is
the third, final, book in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. It was a
lovely conclusion. The writing was beautiful and wonderful as expected. The
writing in these books is just so gorgeous. The story is fascinating, I love
Karou, I love Akiva, I love how far down Laini Taylor pushes them, how hard she
makes it for them before they are allowed to feel any relief. Yeah, I’m a
horrible person. It was just a great conclusion to the story.
This took
over my brain and I read all three books in 2014. The magic system is
incredibly interesting and complex. The world building is excellent, the
characters are great, Vin and Elend and the crew, they’re all so great. They
made me want to keep reading fantasy forever and never read anything else. So
that’s fun. I also want to read the second Misborn trilogy which is set in the
future in the same universe. So that’s exciting. I also want to read his other
series, the Stormlight Archive, but it’s a long ass series and I don’t know if
I want to wait a little. He has a huge bibliography so I have a lot of ground
to cover anyway. I’m excited about more Brandon Sanderson.
I feel
like I should have read this before. I don’t know what happened, but I was
slow, so there it is. It’s so beautiful and it’s so heartbreaking. It’s also
odd to see how the creature is portrayed in the book compared to the movies.
He’s smart, he’s self-taught, he only wants love and it’s so sad. And I want to
read it again like right now. It was just gorgeous
This was
the year I really got into graphic novels and comics and I started a lot of
series. And this wrap-up would not be complete without some graphic novel in
the mix. Rat Queens is about a band of battle maidens for hire. There’s monster
killing and drinking and arguing and fighting and it’s so good. I need volume 2
as soon as possible please. It’s so good. The art is amazing and I love the
characters and the story.
So these
are my favorites of 2014. Let me know your favorites, what did you read, did
you read any of these, what you think? And there will be more posts soon, I’ve
been slacking. I take Christmas off of everything. Yeah, I’m a lazy butt. Whoo.
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
Electrified Sheep by Alex Boese
Cress by
Marissa Meyer
The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch
More than This by Patrick Ness
Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride
Fangirl
by Rainbow Rowell
Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor
The (first) Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Rat Queens: Sass and Sorcery by Kurtis J. Wiebe