The Pitch‘s 14 favorite books of 2014
Being a librarian, I am often asked for book recommendations. And, being a librarian, I know that offering such advice is an art, not a science. Every reader approaches a book differently. Each year, though, a number of titles emerge — fiction from an array of voices, nonfiction addressing a variety of subjects — that deserve broad notice. These are the books I enjoyed the most this year. I think there’s something on this list for just about any reader.
Best Novel to Read When You’re Sick
Station Eleven
By Emily St. John Mandel
Key to this novel is a deadly flu pandemic. With Mandel’s fiction so absorbing, I forgot at times that it wasn’t real. The book opens on the day the virus hits Toronto, and we learn that 99 percent of the world’s population will be claimed in just a few weeks. The story alternates between the time before society’s collapse and an era some 20 years later, and we circle different characters to see how they’re connected. Two decades after the fall, a troupe of actors and musicians roams the empty highways, performing music and plays wherever survivors remain. In one town, the troupe finds a doomsday cult and a man who calls himself the Prophet, leading to a power struggle and a race to civilization. Mandel’s book is scary, thrilling and sometimes moving.
Best Experimental Novel
How to Be Both
By Ali Smith
Half of this quirky novel tells the story of George (full name Georgia), a modern teenager coping with the sudden death of her mother. The other half follows Francesco del Cossa, who was a real-life Italian artist during the Renaissance. The two narratives are linked because George and her mother had traveled to Italy to see a fresco painted by del Cossa. The experimental part is that Smith’s publisher has printed half of the books with George’s story first, and half with the artist’s first. My favorite section is George’s, and her teenage thoughts move lightning-fast between past and present. Both parts have stream-of-consciousness prose, but the artist’s narrative is more poetic and fragmented. There are beautiful passages about how we communicate, the role of art in our lives, and the connections between the living and the dead. If you are up to the challenge, Smith’s latest is wondrous.
Best Novel Set in a Bookstore
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
By Gabrielle Zevin
What a charming novel this is! A.J. Fikry is a cranky widower who owns a small New England bookstore, and he’s upset that someone has stolen a rare book. One day, he finds an abandoned child in the store, and Fikry surprises everyone in the town by deciding to adopt her. He also falls in love with a fellow bibliophile, which is another avenue for the literary references that Zevin deploys as her story unfolds. Fikry is an admitted book snob, and I chuckled at some of his opinions. This novel is especially delightful if you like bookishness, small-town whimsy and a little romance.
Best Book for Downton Abbey Fans
The Secret Rooms: A True Story of a Haunted Castle, a Plotting Duchess and a Family Secret
By Catherine Bailey
Nobility seems to breed a wealth of problems, from which springs constant high drama. This fascinating book introduces us to the 9th Duke of Rutland, John Henry Montagu Manners, and the secrets he tried to hide. Before Manners died of pneumonia, in 1940, he locked himself into his archive rooms at Belvoir Castle and would not come out, working ceaselessly on a mysterious project. Later, his son closed the rooms and forbade entrance to them for decades. In 2008, Catherine Bailey, who was researching World War I, was granted access. She found gaps in the family’s records, followed the clues, and ended up writing a book about the cover-up. Fans of Downton Abbey are among those most likely to enjoy delving into this real-life drama of an aristocratic family.
Best Memoir About a Russian Immigrant
Little Failure
By Gary Shteyngart
Shteyngart was born in Russia, and his family immigrated to the United States in 1979, when he was 7. He fell in love with America, though his classmates made fun of his accent and occasionally beat him up. The boy’s luck changed when he started writing science-fiction stories and his teacher praised him. We watch him grow up, go to college, fall in love and become a successful writer. His memoir is brilliant and funny and insightful and so, so good. It’s my favorite 2014 book, and I haven’t stopped pushing it on friends.
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Best Book About a Foreign Language
Flirting With French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart
By William Alexander
Alexander is the king of project memoirs. First, he wrote an amusing book about the hassles of his huge vegetable garden (The $64 Tomato). Then he published 52 Loaves, about the year he succumbed to a baking obsession. In this latest book, he transfers his best-selling diligence to a new task: learning to speak French. He listens to CDs, takes online courses, corresponds with French speakers, and attends an immersion school in France. Along the way, he also shares some interesting history and research about language acquisition. (Tip: Start studying a foreign language before age 6. It gets more and more difficult as we get older.) In the end, Alexander learned a lot of French words but realized that he would never be fluent unless he devoted hundreds of hours to studying. Spoiler alert: He is going to advise his grandchildren to get busy learning Mandarin Chinese.
Best Book About Elderly Parents
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
By Roz Chast
Chast is known for her incisive cartoons in The New Yorker, but this graphic memoir, about the last few years that her parents were alive, is so powerful and well-written that it was a finalist for the National Book Award. Chast had a difficult relationship with her mother, who was bossy and had a temper, and her father’s high anxiety eventually gave way to senility. Chast’s book is, as her fans would expect, cleverly illustrated. But her writing is equally expert, walking that line between humor and pathos. As her mother would say, death is not a pleasant topic. But anyone who has coped with elderly parents will find comfort here.
Most Horrifying Memoir
Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings
By Michelle Knight
Knight’s book is a gripping real-life horror story. One of three women abducted by Ariel Castro in Cleveland, she was held captive in his house for almost 11 years. While imprisoned, she was frequently raped, beaten, starved and abused. In May 2013, one of the women escaped through an unlocked door and called 911. Castro was arrested and tried; shortly after he was sentenced to life in prison, he was found dead in his cell. Knight writes about her traumatic childhood, how she ended up crossing paths with a monster and, ultimately, how she survived. Sensitive readers should be warned that some parts of the book are deeply disturbing.
Best Graphic Novel About War
The Harlem Hellfighters
By Max Brooks
I like it when graphic novels are used to tell personal or historical stories, rescuing the form from superhero dominance. The Harlem Hellfighters, an African-American infantry regiment, were honored for their service in World War I. They spent 191 days in combat and became one of the most decorated units in the American Expeditionary Forces. Brooks, author of the best-selling World War Z, tried for years to get a movie made about the Hellfighters, but the big studios declined. Finally, Brooks decided to write the story as a graphic novel. Good call: He shows us the rats in the trenches, the gas and barbed wire of No Man’s Land, and the shell shock of the soldiers. And we see the racism that the Hellfighters experienced. This is an excellent introduction to a remarkable story.
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Best Book About Getting Rid of Your Stuff
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
By Marie Kondo
In this surprisingly inspirational book, Kondo recommends handling each one of your possessions and asking yourself a question: Does this spark joy? If what’s in your hands gives you happiness, keep it. Otherwise, get rid of it. She offers advice on how to tidy each area of your house, using another prominent rule: Before you toss something aside, take a moment to appreciate the item and how it served you. Kondo is a successful organizing consultant in Japan, and she gives examples of how simplifying a home can be a life-changing experience because you end up making more space for the things that truly matter to you. I did a major round of decluttering after reading this book, and Kondo was right: It sparked joy.
Best Book About a Beloved Movie
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride
By Cary Elwes
This book was basically written for me. I love the movie The Princess Bride, and I’ve read William Goldman’s book so many times that the cover is torn and the pages are falling out. As You Wish is the story of how the movie got made, as told by Elwes, who plays Westley. Other cast and crew members — director Rob Reiner and co-stars Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin and Wallace Shawn — also share behind-the-scenes tales about the production. My favorite stories are about the intense training that Elwes and Patinkin undertook for their duel, and the fond memories everyone shares of André the Giant, who died in 1993. This is a glowing, nostalgic look at a movie that has become a family favorite, and it would be “inconceivable” for any fan to skip it.
Funniest Book About Science
What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
By Randall Munroe
Munroe, who used to work at NASA, makes the webcomic XKCD. On his website, he takes “absurd hypothetical questions” from readers and tries to answer some of them. Some favorites: How high can a human throw something? If everyone on Earth jumped up at the same time, what would happen when they landed on the ground? What would happen to the Earth if the sun suddenly switched off? What makes this book so enjoyable, aside from the ridiculous ponderings posed by readers, is Munroe’s sense of humor. I frequently laughed out loud at his drawings and his answers — not something that usually happens when you read about science.
Best Book About a Beloved Book
Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened
By William Least Heat-Moon
I love it when writers talk about their process of writing, and this is a fascinating look at how a best-selling book was created. Blue Highways is a marvelous account of William Least Heat-Moon’s 1978 journey around the United States. He started his trip in Columbia, Missouri, and he stuck to back roads and small towns, chatting with folks along the way. In his latest book, Heat-Moon, who still lives near Columbia, describes the difficulties in writing the manuscript, the seemingly endless revisions, and the pile of rejection letters that he got from editors. The original road trip lasted three months, but it took him more than four years to finish Blue Highways. At one point, his girlfriend became so frustrated that she threatened to burn the manuscript. Anyone who loves the first book or who has struggled with writing would appreciate this story.
Best Mention of Kansas in a Travelogue
Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America
By John Waters
In 2012, cult film director John Waters hitchhiked from his home in Baltimore to his apartment in San Francisco, carrying cardboard signs that read “End of 70 West” and “I’m Not Psycho.” But Carsick is not your typical adventure memoir. First, Waters wrote a novella imagining the best things that could happen on his journey. Then he wrote about the worst things that could happen. Finally, in Part 3, he wrote what actually happened. Waters had 21 different drivers pick him up as he hitchhiked on Interstate 70, and only about half of them knew who he was. He made a pit stop in Kansas City (where he ate at Rosedale Bar-B-Q) but got stuck for hours in Kansas, calling it his worst day on the road. In the end, he praised the drivers who stopped for him and said he’d punch the next elitist jerk he hears using the term “flyover people.” Fans of Waters will enjoy his stories and film references, and he comes across as such a great guy that now I want to go on a road trip with him.
Diane Kockler Martin is a librarian at Metropolitan Community College and is ranked as one of the top 100 reviewers on Goodreads. Her reviews can also be found on the blog Shelf Inflicted.
