BOOKS: 2014 favorites, 2015 anticipations, & the year of reading women

In 2014 I read 54 books.  Hooray!  4 over my goal!  Except I'm pretty sure, looking closer at my Goodreads list, a lot were such classic literature as Pocket Piggies Numbers!: Featuring the Teacup Pigs of Pennywell Farm (review: "PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGS!") so I'm not so sure I should call my overachieving a rousing success...

Still, of the 54 books I read, these were my favorites:

NONFICTION

• Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace -- Anne Lamott  -- I've been dipping my toes into more spiritual books these days, and Anne Lamott is pretty much my favorite.  She walks that graceful line between irreverent but also awe-ful.  That's full of awe.  Not awful.  I love her to bits.  She could write me scribbles in the margins of the dictionary and I'd probably swoon.
• The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra -- Helen Rappaport -- I highly recommend the audiobook if, like me, you don't speak Russian.  I listened to it and found it fascinatingly tragic.  Obvious statement is obvious!
• To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care -- Cris Beam -- A punch to the gut, this one.
• Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits -- Kevin Roose -- I would not have picked this up except for the fact that I really enjoyed Kevin Roose's The Unlikely Disciple in which he enrolls at Liberty University for a "semester abroad" away from Brown.  As an undercover writer, he's entertaining and informative and it's easy to see how his subjects felt comfortable enough to tell him a whole lotta stuff that could get them fired.  The book almost makes you feel bad for the Richie Rich Wall Street kiddos.  Which is...surprising.
• My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with your Gut -- Hannah Hart.  -- I love Harto!  With its cheerful, pun-filled banter and easy-peasy recipes, this book did not disappoint.  It actually delivered far more than I expected, in that it's not only a cookbook, it's this profoundly optimistic guide to life, disguised as a simple cookbook.  
• Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity -- Andrew Solomon -- I listened to half of this on audio, read by the author, and only switched to the print version when I realized the second half of the library audiobook was missing!  I highly recommend the audio.  As far as the content itself goes, you'd think reading a book about parenting non-typical children across the spectrum when I was pregnant would be terrifying, but for me, it helped make pregnancy less scary.  The book covers a wide expanse of territory and it doesn't shy away from hard questions and opposing viewpoints -- Deaf culture, Dwarfism, autism, DS, prodigies (not as rosy as one might think in comparison), and more.  

FICTION

• The Magician's Land -- Lev Grossman -- This is the third in the Magicians trilogy.  It's one of my favorite favorite favorite trilogies ever.  Do you like Harry Potter and Narnia but are a smart jaded adult?  These are the books for you!

GRAPHIC NOVEL

• Blue is the Warmest Color -- Julie Maroh -- if getting punched in your feel-bone is your thing, then this is the book for you!

YOUND ADULT

• The Impossible Knife of Memory -- Laurie Halse Anderson -- a story of having a PTSD combat vet for a parent, told in LHA's always brilliantly empathic prose.  I've been recommending it every chance I get at the library.

BABY

• Kittens -- Laura Ellen Anderson -- Freddie LIGHTS. UP. at this book.  It's also surprisingly long for a board book!  AND ADORABLE.  The illustrations are bold and bright and the text is cute and clever.  Kittens love to claw at quilts, but it's so darn cute you can't help but smile.  At the end, everyone snuggles up to snooze.
• Puppies -- Laura Ellen Anderson -- See above.  Ditto the snuggling up to snooze at the end.  Adorable!
• Tubby & Toot -- Leslie Patricelli -- I get a kick out of the Baby series by Patricelli, but these two especially make me laugh.  The "we wash my hair" singular literal meaning/plural common usage duality kills me (since Baby only has one hair).  Also "mommy dries me // daddy dries the bathroom".  YUP.  And Toot's adorable questioning about farts is quite sweet -- Baby isn't sure if fishy toots, but is VERY certain doggie does.  I love that the wee one in the books could be male or female -- the ones I've read are very gender neutral (though they do feature female/male mommy/daddy parents -- not that this is a bad thing, just that the gender neutral-ness does not extend beyond Baby).

WHAT'S ON MY BOOKSHELF NEXT 

• Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances -- Neil Gaiman (February 2015) -- I'm mostly excited because this supposedly features a special American Gods short story called Black Dog.  Between that and the Doctor Who story I think that covers all his bases for people who will want to buy this.  Tempting me with a Doctor Who carrot would be the opposite of attractive -- it's just not my thing.  But an American Gods story?!  LET ME AT IT.  WEEE!
• The Buried Giant -- Kazuo Ishiguro (March 2015) -- Author of one of my favorites, Never Let Me Go.  It's been a while since he published, so I'm particularly thrilled.  Wait, has it really been ten years?!  Not counting short fiction...  Yep, doubly thrilled now.
• The Fire Sermon -- Francesca Haig (March 2015) -- It's being compared to The Hunger Games (is there anything that's NOT going to be compared to HG these days?) and The Road (I doubt this, just because....THE ROAD!) so we'll see.  I follow Haig on Twitter and she seems nice.  I know, like that's an indication of a good book right?  But I'm digging it.  I'm in.  I can't wait to give it a whirl.  I hear it's already been optioned by DreamWorks.  At any rate, I feel slightly ahead of the curve on this one, and I like to be ahead of YA Big Series Stuff for professional reasons (I never read Divergent, oops...and I have a fandom-carryover-dislike of Cassie Claire, also oops).
• All the Rage -- Courtney Summers (April 2015) -- I've seen this compared to LHA's Speak, so we'll see. 

Much like my friend Greg, I also want to try to deliberately read more books by women this year.  My to-read anticipatory shelf for 2015 is cut down the middle here, but my intention is to have the majority of the books I read be by women.  I've joined the GoodReads "2015: The Year of Reading Women" group so we'll see!

If you're still reading all the way to the end, here's one final shelf for 2014.

STINKY CHEESE SHELF  (That is, the shelf of things that weren't so great.)

• As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride -- Cary Elwes --I wanted SO BADLY to love this book.  But alas!  This book repeats its stories ad nauseam. Often, one story would be told, then there'd be an insert from another actor telling *the exact same story* but in different words (and sometimes barely different words), right after it was told. Stories in this book are repeated to the point of nausea.  SEE WHAT I DID THERE?  That's this book.
• Living with a Wild God -- Barbara Ehrenreich -- I really wanted to enjoy this, but the audiobook went on and on dissecting adolescent journal entries like they mean more than I think they do.  Everyone has boxes of journals from when they were ten.  It doesn't make them gold.  I tried, but couldn't finish this.  It felt like it wanted to be Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (LOVE) but...nope.

*I am using Amazon affiliate links throughout this post because why not**

**Why not Zoidberg?