Each year, I share a list with brief descriptions of the books I read that year. In 2014, the book I read and re-read the most was my novel Her Own Vietnam, as I prepared it for publication. But that still left time to read 45 other books – some of which might be just right for you.

Books are listed in alphabetical order by title. An asterisk (*) indicates a book I particularly enjoyed. I’ll post the list in three parts:

• This post: Nonfiction
• Fiction A – L
• Fiction M – Z

I hope you’ll find some good choices for your own reading in 2015. Feel free to share this list with other book-loving friends.

NONFICTION

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller

Enjoyable first-person account of a man who escapes the corporate cube farm and, with the support of his wife and children, strikes out to hike the full 2,168 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Although I would never undertake one, I am drawn to books about other people’s epic hikes. This one had all the standard elements: descriptions of the hike and its challenges; appreciation of nature and a life lived out of doors; colorful depictions of other hikers with their strange trail names (the author’s trail name is AWOL); a reflection years later on what the hike meant to him and his family – all well told, with solid, crisp writing.

*Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

A collection of smart, brave, incisive and pain-tinged essays about the flammable places where race, gender and popular culture meet. Like many essay collections, this powerful book is best digested in bite-sized pieces. It will stay with you.

*Home Fires by Don Katz

At first glance I thought: 640 pages that chronicle four decades in the life of a Jewish family in America? No thanks; I have a Jewish family of my own. But the book is riveting, and illuminated much about the decades of social and political upheaval everyone my age has lived through. An interesting note about the author (whom I know slightly): he is the founder of Audible.com. He had a distinguished career as a writer before he got the idea that people would buy audiobooks over the Internet.

*In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides

Riveting account of an American ship that in 1879 sailed beyond the known world in search of the North Pole, and found disaster and revelation in an Arctic land few humans had ever seen. The author does a fantastic job of creating a propulsive narrative about conquest and survival by weaving in details from the crew’s journals, letters from their family members, newspaper stories, and academic theories about what lay beyond the map. He also illustrates with devastating clarity how swiftly the incursion of Americans and Europeans into indigenous Arctic communities destroyed their cultures and the environments they relied upon.

*Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

What does it mean to be poor and black, to be a man or a woman, in America? In this searing and thoughtful memoir, the author of the award-winning novel Salvage the Bones revisits her growing up amidst extended family in rural Mississippi. “You need to know how we’re living and dying here,” she wrote. In her young adulthood, five young men she loved died violently, including her younger brother. The book is about their deaths, but even more about their lives and the lives of the women who bore them, raised them, loved them and buried them – a whole community trying to eke out a life beneath the crushing weight of racism and poverty.

The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

A British literature professor takes long walks – weeks and weeks long – across the ancient paths that traverse England, with a few side trips to Spain and the Himalayas. In precise and poetic language, Macfarlane’s thoughts wander with his feet, weaving in history, literature and personal stories that range from folklore to his own grandfather. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, particularly his descriptions of England’s chalk downs. But I could not help thinking of the wife he left behind to take care of their small children and all the responsibilities of family life while he took off on his rambling adventures.

*The Passage of Power by Robert Caro

Fascinating chronicle of Lyndon Johnson’s life during the tumultuous years 1958 through 1964, during which Johnson wielded enormous power in the Senate, reached for the Presidency with a baffling strategy guaranteed to fail, became Vice President, and gained the Presidency in a way he never expected. Oh, and he launched the War on Poverty and the most transformative civil rights policies since emancipation.

Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares by Carmen Oliveira

A strange hybrid of a book – part novel, part biography, part undigested chunks of research about the almost 20-year romantic partnership between a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet and the brilliant, intense Brazilian aristocrat. I knew nothing about either woman or their relationship before reading the book, and now feel well versed in their chaotic history.

*The Soil will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson

I come from generations of apartment dwellers, and I don’t care about the soil. (Although I do like to eat – and breathe). But Kristin Ohlson’s sparkling writing and clear, persuasive case compelled me to care – and made me understand both the promise and the stakes of what she called “our great green hope.” Full disclosure: Kristin is a friend of mine. But I read and loved her first book, Stalking the Divine, long before I met her.

Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? By Jeanette Winterson

Winterson’s well-written, powerful memoir of growing up in a cruel, twisted family that loved Jesus but hated everything about Jeanette that was special.

 

 Any suggestions?

Any ideas for great books to read next year? Suggestions welcome!

Each year, I share a list with brief descriptions of the books I read that year. In 2014, the book I read and re-read the most was my novel Her Own Vietnam, as I prepared it for publication. But that still left time to read 45 other books – some of which might be just right for you.

Books are listed in alphabetical order by title. An asterisk (*) indicates a book I particularly enjoyed. I’ll post the list in three parts:

• Fiction A – L
• This post: Fiction M – Z
• Nonfiction

I hope you’ll find some good choices for your own reading in 2015. Feel free to share this list with other book-loving friends.

FICTION M – Z

The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardarm

This is the second book in the “Old Filth” trilogy. (Filth is an acronym for “Failed In London; Try Hong Kong.”) The novel focuses on Elizabeth Feathers, an adventurous young Englishwoman who grew up in the East and spent much of WWII in a Japanese internment camp. She meets and marries Eddie Feathers, a rising attorney who is too conventional for bold Betty. They meet in Hong Kong and stay married for decades, finally retiring in old age to a Britain that feels alien to them. Betty Feathers is a vivid character, drawn with verve and wit by the author. A very enjoyable read.

*Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Every decade or so I reread this stunning novel, and each time I find something new to appreciate. The novel takes place in London, during a single June day in 1923. World War I is over, but its impact can be felt everywhere. Clarissa Dalloway, an upper class woman in her 50s, is preparing to throw a party. Peter Walsh, who once loved her and whom she rejected for the more predictable Richard Dalloway, has just returned to London after five years in India. A veteran is going mad in a way that makes perfect sense after the horrors of the war, and his immigrant wife is growing desperate. All of these people and more connect and intertwine and pull apart in unexpected ways as Clarissa Dalloway’s past and present collide.

Next Life Might be Kinder by Howard Norman

A sad and strange novel about a man whose wife has been murdered yet continues to hold long conversations with him almost nightly on a remote beach in Nova Scotia. Like the ocean, the novel is animated by undercurrents – the lure of the past, literary and cinematic allusions, therapy, “situational ethics” – that at different points both muddy and clarify this story of grief and determination.

*The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

In the years after the first World War, a young woman (Frances) and her mother are forced to rent rooms in their large house in suburban London to lodgers. They need the money and have room to spare: both of Frances’ brothers were killed in the war, and her father soon died, leaving them penniless. The married couple who move in are politely known as paying guests. Sharing a home is fraught enough, but then Frances and the wife fall in love. A domestic drama evolves into a murder and a trial at which not only a defendant but ideas of class, gender, loyalty and duty are under interrogation. The novel is gripping and suspenseful, and does a brilliant job of conveying in crisp human detail what it was like to live at that time, under those constraints. I particularly enjoyed the details about early 20^th century housekeeping.

Redeployment by Phil Klay

These fine stories peel back the skin to show the pumping blood behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as experienced by combat soldiers, administrative staff, ministers, chaplains and more.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Who knew Elizabeth Gilbert could write like this? The sweeping novel follows the Whittaker family – particularly Alma, the brilliant and singular botanist – through centuries and continents as she seeks the coded messages God sent to humankind through the secrets of evolution. An enjoyable romp of a book, shot through with ideas and curiosity.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

A middle-aged couple, devastated by their inability to have children, decides to move to Alaska. One night they build a snowman in the shape of a young girl, and the next day they see the girl running through the forest. I am weirdly drawn to stories that take place in cold locales, so I particularly enjoyed the details of what it’s like to work a farm in Alaska. The novel offers compelling characterizations of the couple and their neighbors.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

The fact that sociopaths have become such stock figures in popular culture may be due in part to Patricia Highsmith. This brilliant novel is about a young man who has all the yearning, striving and desire of other men – everything but a conscience. He kills the man whose love he was trying to win, and begins to live the victim’s life. Written in flat, simple, ice-cold language, the novel brings you deeply inside the terrifying Mr. Ripley and compels you to understand his drives and motivations.

Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore

A moody, intimate novel about the bonds between two sisters and the childhood secret they’ve kept for decades – even from themselves.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

A brief, beautiful novel about Mary, the mother of Jesus, who looks back on her life in the months following her son’s death, as her own death approaches. She never believed he was divine; considered his followers “misfits” and “men who couldn’t look a woman in the eye;” and despite the apostles’ conviction that her son’s horrific death will change the world, Mary cannot believe the sacrifice could possibly be worth it. I found this simple, powerful book very moving.

*To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

This is one of my favorite novels, which I reread every so often just to appreciate the beauty and precision of the language. Woolf’s portrayal of the two main characters, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey – whose first names we never learn – and of the tidal sweep of their relationship amidst their eight children remains powerful. The novel also contains the most shocking parenthetical phrase of any book I’ve ever read. This time around, I listened to the novel as an audiobook. Juliet Stevenson is the perfect narrator for Virginia Woolf.

The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol

Powerful short stories that explore how political events can scald human lives with the briefest touch, and what it’s like to search for or flee from a home on this turning planet.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye by Rachel Joyce

A pleasant novel about a bland, repressed, middle-aged Englishman who strolls to the mailbox to drop a letter to a dying friend, but surprises himself and everyone else by instead walking across England to the friend’s bedside.

The Visionist by Rachel Urquahart

I’ve attended two high schools called Shaker High, one in Ohio and one in upstate New York, so I’ve always been curious about the Shakers. This novel pulls you inside their world during an era in the 19^th century when girls were seized by visions of the divine. Another teenage girl with visions come to the Shaker village, left there by her mother as the family flees a traumatic event in their town. The newcomer is paired with a girl who grew up in the Shaker Village, and the two become close. But are the new girl’s visions glimpses of the divine or something else?

*We are all Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Award-winning novel about what it means to be human, and to love those who are not. When the narrator was 5 years old, her twin sister was torn away from the family for reasons that may or may not have been her fault. The fact that her sister was a chimpanzee is both the point and beside the point of this excellent book.

*We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride

Four tragic story lines narrated by four diverse characters converge into one moment of hope in a Las Vegas that tourists will never see. I particularly appreciated the sections written in the point of view of Bashkim, an 8-year-old boy. I often find child narrators annoying, either too cutesy or preternaturally wise and mature. Bashkim is unusually mature and responsible, but in the way that is typical of the children of immigrants, who must serve as their parents’ translators and protectors in their new world. The book brings the four main characters to life, with all their shortcomings and desperation, and the deep daily heroism of trying to do their best. Las Vegas, perhaps our country’s strangest city, also takes a star turn in this wonderful novel that is all about what is not visible on the surface.

Where’d you Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple

A renowned architect experiences a trauma and moves from Los Angeles to Seattle, where she lives with her Microsoft-guru husband and her adored daughter in a deteriorating mansion. The architect, Bernadette, has grown agoraphobic and has hired an online assistant to take care of life’s chores. Things get tricky when the family is about to embark on a trip to Antarctica. Bernadette’s skewering of Seattle and its culture was perhaps the most entertaining part of the book. This is a quirky, satirical novel that hides its dark heart in a veneer of frothiness.

Coming Up 

Tomorrow: nonfiction.

In 2015: who knows? What books do you recommend?

 

Each year, I share a list with brief descriptions of the books I read that year. In 2014, the book I read and re-read the most was my novel Her Own Vietnam, as I prepared it for publication. But that still left time to read 45 other books – some of which might be just right for you.

Books are listed in alphabetical order by title. An asterisk (*) indicates a book I particularly enjoyed. I’ll post the list in three parts:

• This post: Fiction A – L
• Fiction M – Z
• Nonfiction

I hope you’ll find some good choices for your own reading in 2015. Feel free to share this list with other book-loving friends.

FICTION A – L

A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn

The novel is a roller-coaster ride that hurtles the reader from the present day to the 19th century to the 12th century, all in search of answers to compelling questions about memory, history, identity and loyalty. It sounds heady, but there is a gripping plot to propel you through the story. An American software genius has created an app that records every moment of users’ lives. She is abducted in Egypt, and her sister, always jealous of her success, must decide how – and if – to save her. And why did the Egyptians kidnap this Jewish genius? Not for the reasons you might expect. All of this is tied up, in ways both wildly imaginative and practical, with the discovery of a rare manuscript more than 100 years ago, and a book written by the 12th century rabbi and philosopher Maimonides.

*Above the East China Sea by Sarah Bird

Two teenaged girls are at the heart of this luminous and compelling novel. Okinawan daughter Tamiko Kokuba has eagerly embraced the Japanese propaganda about the crudeness of her own culture and the superiority of the “true Japanese spirit.” She learns the truth in 1945, when she and hundreds of other Okinawan girls are pressed into service in the nightmarish cave hospitals of the Japanese army. In 2014, Luz James has just moved to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, yet another leap in the endless hopscotch of her life as the daughter of a single mom who’s a gung-ho U.S. Air Force sergeant. But this new assignment is different, because Luz’s beloved older sister has just been killed in Afghanistan, and Luz isn’t sure she wants to keep on living. Luz and Tamiko, separated by generations and cultures, are connected in ways Luz only begins to discover as she learns how to reckon with her family’s history and the long shadow of empire. Note the unexpected change in the narrative point of view toward the end of the novel.

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

Intensely atmospheric novel about a woman named Jake who flees a mysterious trauma in her Australian hometown and lives an almost solitary life, farming sheep on a wind-scoured British island. But her past continues to pursue her, along with some unknown menace – animal, human or hallucination? – that seems to attack her sheep and violate her home. A striking and unusual novel about a woman alone in the world.

All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This acclaimed novel follows the lives of a young German soldier who longs to be an engineer and a blind French girl who loves Jules Verne, as their lives intersect in surprising ways during World War II.

*Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A stunning novel about two Nigerian young people who leave the country to seek a future – she in America, he in England – and the very different paths their lives take. Ifemelu, who tries her luck in America, is a striking character – smart, lively, bold, yet almost broken by the frustration, powerlessness and hardship of immigrant life in America, even for an educated English speaker like herself. (Her aunt, a doctor in Nigeria, fares even worse.) Through her provocative and popular blog, Ifemelu becomes an analyst and observer of race in America for the non-American black. Themes of race, gender, power, immigration and empire lace through this compelling novel, which deserves all the accolades it has received.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

A collection of sharp, witty, unsettling short stories by a master writer. Never has England seemed more like a foreign country to me.

Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky

A fun, light book about a woman who is largely amoral, exempt from guilt or regret – or at least trying to be – and who screws up her life in magnificent ways within three weeks of being released from prison. Marie finds it’s hard to grow up when your best friend is two years old and every wrong turn brings you closer to your favorite things in life, including whisky and chocolate pudding. Underneath the wit, sly messages peek out about privilege, art and the difficulties of finding or recognizing love.

Canada by Richard Ford

The parents of two teenagers in Montana inexplicably decide to rob a bank in North Dakota. They are caught, of course, and imprisoned. The teenage girl, more resourceful than her brother, runs away, and a friend of the family sneaks the boy across the border into Canada to live and learn roughly with her reprobate brother. I enjoyed the novel, although there were a few plot and character developments that didn’t make sense to me.

Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett

This is the third book in a sweeping trilogy that follows five families – British, Scottish, Russian, German and American – throughout the 20^th century. This novel begins after WWII and encompasses the Cold War, the creation and destruction of the Berlin Wall, the civil rights movement, the season of assassinations in America, the perfidies of the Nixon and Reagan eras, and more. Follett is a clunky writer but a fabulous storyteller.

*Egg Heaven by Robin Parks

This collection of short stories shimmers with quiet beauty, offering the reader brief, intense immersions into other people’s harrowing and astonishing lives. Nine short stories about waitresses who work in diners and customers who can barely afford to eat there. Nine living worlds created in a hardscrabble Southern California swept by gritty sea breezes. Diverse characters are connected by filaments of hope amidst all the different ways a human can hunger. The author, Robin Parks, is a long-time friend of mine. And Egg Heaven is the first book published by Shade Mountain Press, which later published my novel. So no, I won’t even pretend to objective. But I did I love this book.

*The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld

The Enchanted takes place largely in an old stone prison, inside a basement dungeon that serves as the prison’s death row. The narrator is waiting his turn to die for a crime so horrific he will not describe it. Even The Lady, the intrepid death row investigator who is the novel’s main character, walks a little faster when she passes his cell. Her job is to find evidence that will get a prisoner’s death sentence commuted to life in prison. But her current client, a murderer named York, wants to die. An unnamed investigator with her own troubled past, a fallen priest, a heartbroken warden, a clutch of death row inmates, and a narrator who is a condemned murderer and is certainly twisted if not mad – these are not the usual ingredients for a thing of beauty. And yet the novel is beautiful. Open the book anywhere at random, and you’ll find an idea, a description, a piece of dialogue that is fresh and lovely.

*Euphoria by Lily King

Euphoria is about three anthropologists in the 1930s, studying and living among tribes in Papua New Guinea. The three scientists – an American woman who has written a shocking and best-selling book about the sex lives of a tribe, her Australian husband and an English man they know only slightly – plunge into a love triangle that’s a vortex of passion, intellectual zeal, rivalry, ambition, and perhaps a dash of madness. The novel immediately creates an atmosphere of peril and strangeness. By the time I read the first five sentences, I was hooked: I had to know what had happened and what would happen next, even though I suspected it would be harrowing. And it was – harrowing, and uplifting and most of all, fascinating. The details about how anthropologists conduct their work and their lives were astounding.

*Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

I resisted this book at first because I felt I had read enough “missing child” novels over the past few years. The novel is indeed about the aftershocks that shake a family and a community when a child vanishes. But this book is different from the others: Lydia was missing long before she disappeared. Her mother is a white woman who yearned to be a doctor but ended up a dutiful and despairing wife and mother. Lydia’s Chinese-born father is a college professor who specializes in studying that ultra-American icon, the cowboy. Lydia is the favored child, so obviously the focus of her parents’ love and ambition that her younger brother and sister get little attention from their parents. We learn about the story from the distinctive perspectives of several characters. The narrative voice itself has its own spooky character, telling us at one point that Lydia’s mother is wrong when she believes the local lake is shallow. In a book about the strictures of race, gender, identity and the meaning of family, I was particularly intrigued by the youngest and most isolated daughter, Hannah. Because her relatives rarely speak to her – and this family uses words like veils – she understands more than anyone else about what is really going on.

The Free World by David Bezmozgis

In the 1970s, a Jewish family flees the USSR for – where? They’re not sure: maybe the U.S., maybe Canada. Maybe Israel. They settle in Rome while they wait for their visas to come through. Everything about this novel is interesting: the situation, the location, the back stories –  but the characters, with few exceptions, make unpleasant company.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Gripping story about the lives of real-life abolitionists and feminists Sarah and Angelina Grimke. Their lives are bound to the fictional enslaved woman Hetty Grimke, who is “given” to Sarah when both girls are 11. The Grimke sisters were too radical for their South Carolina hometown, and even for the abolitionist Quakers of Philadelphia. In real life, the sisters became the most famous and reviled women in America. The novel depicts slavery from close up, surrounding the reader with its horrors.

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore

Puzzling novel about a British man taking a solitary walking vacation in Germany. The main character is distinguished only by his extreme passivity, and the book is written in a claustrophobic present tense. Clearly something deep and meta was going on during the intertwined stories of the British man on holiday and the German woman who runs the B&B where he stays – both stories featured cruel angry men, sexually predatory women, and Venus flytraps, of all things – but I didn’t catch on.

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom

You can’t go wrong with a book by Amy Bloom. Her latest novel is about two half-sisters who leave their feckless father and journey to Hollywood so the older sister can start a career in the movies. It’s the early 1940s, and naturally nothing works out as planned. Written in a breezy tone, the novel sweeps the sisters from Hollywood to Brooklyn to Long Island to London, encompassing the glamour and ruin of World War II, the myriad ways people can betray one another and shock one another with generosity, and the haphazard nature of families.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Two brothers who grow up in Calcutta as the closest of friends make drastically different choices in adulthood. One brother goes to America to become a scientist; the other becomes a social justice activist and is killed by the police. His murder changes the future for everyone, including his parents, his young wife, his surviving brother, and the daughter who never even hears his name until she is an adult. The book is full of jewel-like descriptions, but written in an oddly remote tone, as if purposely holding the reader at a distance.

Coming up

Tomorrow: the rest of the fiction titles. Wednesday: nonfiction.

Meanwhile, what were some of the best books you read in 2014? Please share your thoughts – and share this list with other bookish people.