What were your favorite books of 2014?

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

I see a number of books which are still on my TBR list, so the endorsements here will help move them up and increases the probability that I'll read them in 2015.
I read almost all of the Molly Murphy books in 2013, finishing up the series in 2014. It's definitely one of my favorite series.
Stone Cold was the very first book I read on my very first Kindle (and therefore the first eReader I owned) back in February 2008. I had finished reading The Collectors just a day before unpacking the new Kindle, so I bought the next book in the series using the Kindle to execute the purchase.

I also read all of the Molly Murphy books. Some got 4 stars, some 2 and 1. I think only one book got 5 stars. I rue not reading Constable Evans' series by the same author, but I've decided to take a break from cozies.

From the moment I read the blurb of The first Camel Club book, I knew I'd like it. My first book on my kindle was A Test Of Wills, by Charles Todd, read in 2012.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I'd like to know is what are your favorite books that were published in 2014?

I know that wasn't addressed to me but I had drawn up a list of books that I've read published in 2014. Here it is :

Be Careful What You Wish For (The Clifton Chronicles #4) by Jeffrey Archer
The Beatles Are Here!: 50 Years after the Band Arrived in America, Writers, Musicians & Other Fans by Penelope Rowlands
Death Come Quickly by Susan Wittig Albert
The Target (Will Robie #3) by David Baldacci
Throw in the Trowel (A Flower Shop Mystery #15) by Kate Collins
The Diva Wraps It Up (A Domestic Diva Mystery #8) by Krista Davis
Small Town Spin (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery #3) by LynDee Walker
Insatiable: Porn - A Love Story by Asa Akira
Murder on Bamboo Lane by Naomi Hirahara
Deep Fried Homicide (Donut Shop Mystery #13) by Jessica Beck
Custard Crime (Donut Shop Mystery #14) by Jessica Beck
Lemon Larceny (Donut Shop Mystery #15) by Jessica Beck
City of Darkness and Light (Molly Murphy Mysteries #13) by Rhys Bowen
An Unwilling Accomplice (Bess Crawford #6) by Charles Todd
Bad Bites (Donut Shop Mystery #16) by Jessica Beck
Murder Strikes a Pose (A Downward Dog Mystery #1) by Tracy Weber

From that list, here are my high scoring and favorite books:

Be Careful What You Wish For (The Clifton Chronicles #4) by Jeffrey Archer
The Target (Will Robie #3) by David Baldacci
Deep Fried Homicide (Donut Shop Mystery #13) by Jessica Beck
Custard Crime (Donut Shop Mystery #14) by Jessica Beck
Lemon Larceny (Donut Shop Mystery #15) by Jessica Beck

All of the rest of my total list have disappointed me. Most books published in the same year tend not to be memorable. It's only when we pool in all the recommendations and follow our favorite authors that we get more of a bang for our buck. For 2015 I won't concentrate on books published that year. I'll just read what I think will be the best books.

[Synamon]

My favourite reads this year were:
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (harrowing drama set during the siege of Sarajevo)
The Emperor of All Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri Siddhartha Mukherjee (fascinating non-fiction about the history of cancer and its treatment)
I Hear Sirens in the Street and In the Morning I'll Be Gone (the second and third books in Adrian Mckinty's Sean Duffy police series set in Northern Ireland during the "Troubles") [the first book, The Cold, Cold Ground was one of my favourites in 2013]

Honourable mention to three other mystery series that I read this year:
Deborah Crombie's Kincaid and James Scotland Yard series
Elly Griffith's Ruth Galloway forensic archaeologist series
Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series

[HomeInMyShoes]

^Are you mixing The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee with Interpreter of Maladies by Lahiri Jhumpa?

I'm curious because the Jhumpa title has been on my to read list forever, but your description sounds like the Mukherjee title.

The Cellist of Sarajevo was a great read for me.

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

^Are you mixing The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee with Interpreter of Maladies by Lahiri Jhumpa?

I'm curious because the Jhumpa title has been on my to read list forever, but your description sounds like the Mukherjee title.

The Cellist of Sarajevo was a great read for me.

Oops, yes I am muddling those. Both were good actually, Interpreter of Maladies was one of my favourites a year ago.

[astrangerhere]

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

[GeoffR]

My best of 2014 so far ...

Science Fiction:
Paolo Bacigalupi, Pump Six and Other Stories.
C. S. Friedman, The Madness Season.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven.
China Miéville, Embassytown.
Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow.
Dan Simmons, Hyperion.
Peter Watts, Echopraxia.

Fantasy:
Daniel Abraham, The Long Price Quartet.
C. J. Cherryh, Fortress in the Eye of Time, Fortress of Owls. (Fortress series.)
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana.

Other:
Henning Mankell, The Fifth Woman, One Step Behind. (Kurt Wallander series.)

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Luffy

Most books published in the same year tend not to be memorable. It's only when we pool in all the recommendations and follow our favorite authors that we get more of a bang for our buck. For 2015 I won't concentrate on books published that year. I'll just read what I think will be the best books.

I have never focused on books that are published in the year. I just read what appeals to me. Typically, the "this year" books that I read are new volumes in a favorite series.

Top books I read in 2014 in the order that I read them. (I couldn't begin to rank them against each other!)

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley*
Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear*
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
The Martian by Andy Weir
Nightmares! by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller
The Paper Magician by Charlie N Holmberg
Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson


* Series book. Probably not enjoyable as a stand-alone read.

[ccowie]

Best books of 2014:

The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Stephen Galloway
The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neil (published 2014)
Crimes Against My Brother by David Adams Richards (published 2014)
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman (published 2014)
King Leary by Paul Quarrington

[mandy314]

2014 saw me drawn to "humorous crime" for my recreational reading. Yes - I know. Crime isn't funny and crime doesn't pay and men are more intelligent than women and the earth is flat. So that's that. (Same goes for cozy crime for sure)

For me the three best reads in 2014 were:

Colin Watson (1960) Bump In The Night (second of the Flaxborough Novels): A re-read after 30 odd years and highly enjoyable.
Lawrence Block (2013) The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (11th of the Bernie Rhodenbarr series): I'm very partial to all of Block's books, and - even with one book like all the others - every Rhodenbarr is well worth the reading time. Verbal slapstick - oh yeah!
Alan Russell (1995) The Fat Innkeeper (second of the two-header Am Caulfield series): Found this one on the list of Lefty Award winners. Now I have read both books of the series and would buy a new entry for sure. Plot, characters, etc are imho the right amount - and this is but just - under the threshold of "over the top".

In most cases I wait for the paperback edition (or better: the paperback prized ebook) - so I haven't read many 2014 new releases. Some came highly recommended by friends and were bought anyway. Memorable was: W. Bruce Cameron (2014) The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man - but not many books of 2014 to compare it with.

Last but not least a mention of all the work done for the Patricia Clark Memorial Library. Last week I started Melville, Herman: Complete Works v.2.1 (done by pynch). Having finished "The Piazza Tales" I must count this one as one of the best reads of 2014.

Season greetings and a good start for 2015

[Quake1028]

Favorite book published in 2014: The Crimson Campaign - Brian McClellan
Favorite book not published in 2014: First to Kill - Andrew Peterson

[pwalker8]

If we are going with books that were first published in 2014, there were really only a handful of books published this year that I would re-read (my benchmark for good). Larry Correia's Monster Hunter Nemisis was probably my favorite of the group. I liked Garth Nix's Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen as well, though it was a bit darker than I expected.

If we are talking about books that I first read in 2014, or books that finally became available as ebooks in 2014 in the US, there were quite a few. The new Roger Zelazny ebooks, the Karl Edward Wagner ebooks, Mercedes Lackey's Tregarde series, the Fionavar Tapestry by Kay and the Belgarion series were all highlights.

Books that I first read in 2014 would be Ready Player One.

There were also some non fiction that I thought was well done, including Bret Steven's "America in Retreat" (politically charged, but very well written). Nicholas Wade's book "A Troublesome Inheritance" was very interesting and thought provoking.

The non fiction highlight for backlist books that came out as ebooks is Sears' Chancellorsville.

Looking over my list of books read in 2014 at Goodreads, and those that I rated at four stars (I almost never give a book five stars) I decided to select six fiction and six non-fiction based on reflection.

Fiction:

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. I had actually never read this. Don't know how that happened.

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

Fools Crow by James Welch

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Non-Fiction

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow by Richard Wormser

Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel; New, Complete, Uncensored Version by A. Anatoli Kuznetsov. This was a second read, now the uncensored version.

A Time of Gifts (Trilogy #1) by Patrick Leigh Fermor

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, Alex Haley. Had read this before years ago.

Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World
by Wole Soyinka

Under Fire: the story of a squad by Henri Barbusse

I should note that I am currently reading A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Karen Armstrong. I am really liking this and it may bump one of these non-fiction books off by the end of the year.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Since I started this thread, I should probably contribute.

The first book I really want to recommend is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I rated this as excellent meaning "GREAT read, I would read again." While I expected to enjoy the book based on all of the reviews I had read I didn't expect to like it as much as I do. For anyone who grew up in the 80s and started playing video games on an Atari (or earlier) and has continued to play in some fashion or for people who have some weird obsession with the 80s this book should hit a lot of high points. Rated high for nostalgia in addition to having a fun, action packed plot, this book was one of my top 5 reads for 2014.

As a bonus there is a review by Patrick Rothfuss (author of the The Name of the Wind series) that made me laugh.

Spoiler:

Patrick:

I very much agree with Ready Player One (linked to my reveiw on GoodReads). It was definitely my most favorite read of the year!

I also really enjoyed: A Nameless Witch by A. Lee Martinez, and Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold.

[issybird]

I'm going with a ten-best list*, split between fiction and non-fiction, in no particular order.

Fiction:

Eucalyptus, Murray Bail
Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernières
Augustus Carp, Esq. By Himself Being The Autobiography Of A Really Good Man, Henry H. Bashford
Dirty Snow, Georges Simenon

Non-fiction:

Empires of the Dead: How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s War Graves, David Crane
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, Max Hastings
On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads, Tim Cope
A Woman in the Polar Night, Christiane Ritter
The Parade's Gone By, Kevin Brownlow

*Unusually for me, I re-read several books this year, mostly because of book clubs and the great war centenary. Only new reads qualified for this list.