My favorite books of 2014

I guess it’s become a bit of a holiday tradition to look back on my year in books and pick out favorites. According to GoodReads, I’m “behind” on my reading goal for this year, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.

Thanks in part to the YA Diversity Book Club, I was exposed to a really wide variety of stories in 2014, and that’s a trend that I hope to continue, if not improve upon, in 2015. My nonfiction reading was down, but I did end the year with a really thought-provoking book recommended by Andy called MINDSET. (Which might warrant its own post in the near future.) And surprisingly, my audio “reading” may be on the rise, due to my realization that it’s much easier to listen to my iPod while walking Riley than it is to hold a book and flip pages.

Anyway, in order of when I read them, here are my favorite books of 2014:

Easy (Contours of the Heart, #1) We Were Liars Caminar Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #3) Pointe Ruin and Rising (The Grisha, #3) The Walled City Landline Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3) Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
(If you’re curious, you can also check out my roundups from previous years.)

What were your favorite reads this year?


10 responses to “My favorite books of 2014”

  1. Jonathan Avatar

    Great choices! I know it wasn’t written this year, but I just finished The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and loved it!

    1. Kristan Avatar

      Oh yeah, lots of mine weren’t published in 2014; that’s just when I read them. :) Oh I’m so glad you loved ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY — it’s a (modern) classic!

  2. Anthony Lee Collins Avatar

    This has been a rough year for reading a lot of books, but my favorites were all written before 1910.

    I learned about several books from that period about female detectives, and since I had never heard of any of them, and since I write about a female detective, I dove right in.

    The best of them were written by Anna Katharine Green, who was writing mystery books (and quite successfully) ten years before Arthur Conan Doyle. I wrote about the various books here: http://u-town.com/collins/?p=4930

    1. Kristan Avatar

      Anthony-
      Your post was so interesting; I hadn’t heard of most of those women-written mysteries! Glad you enjoyed them.

  3. Shari Avatar

    Yay for Landline!

    I’m an audiobook convert, as well — I never thought I’d like it, but a lot of times I’ve found that listening to the book adds a whole other dimension.

    I just posted my list, too. Some of my favorites: The Baker’s Daughter, Yes Please, and You Knew Me When. :)

    1. Kristan Avatar

      Shari-
      I saw your post and can’t wait to read it! (Been a busy week.) Btw you can always share the link here, if that’s easier!

  4. Browsing the Atlas Avatar

    I want to read We Were Liars and Pointe.

    My favorite book this year was Prayers for the Stolen. It was an alarming look at girls being stolen in Mexico. While it was fictionalized as a novel, it seemed all too real, and after reading the interview with the author at the end, I couldn’t believe more world attention to this problem hasn’t happened.

    1. Kristan Avatar

      Juliann-
      I think you would like them (for the writing at least) but just be aware they’re both a bit on the heavy side. Emotionally, that is.

      PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN sounds heartbreaking but fascinating. I’ll have to look it up!

  5. yogadog Avatar

    I have been reading light and fluffy all year long, until three weeks ago. My favorites were anything by Lisa Lutz and Where’d You Go Bernadette.

    Three weeks ago, I read The Giver, and then had a disagreement with my neighbor about how it ended. (She thought it had a happy ending. I thought the main character died.) So I read The Gathering Blue to see how The Giver ended. But it didn’t tell me. I had to read the third in the series, The Messenger, to learn that I was wrong. The main character of The Giver did not die at the end. But (spoiler here) the main character of The Messenger did. Now I have to read the final book, just to see how everything turns out. May I just say, Lois Lowry is an excellent writer. She has a lovely ear for language and a good balance between action and detail. But she is a very dark woman.

    1. Kristan Avatar

      yogadog-
      Oh I can totally see you loving BERNADETTE. :D

      Funny enough, I did not like THE GIVER when I read it as a child… but I did love Lois Lowry’s book NUMBER THE STARS. (And yes, it’s also dark. It’s kind of like a fictional Diary of Anne Frank, I guess.) I also didn’t realize there were sequels to THE GIVER until last year, basically. I’m glad to hear they’re good reads!