My Top Ten (and more) Books of 2014 (and other years)
Will Not Attend by Adam Resnick (2014) - If you don't know who Adam Resnick is then please find out immediately. Some of this autobiographical vignettes could have just had the names switched around and become powerful short stories.
The Squared Circle by David Shoemaker (2013) - What can I say? I love wrestling! This is some of the most insightful writing about wrestling and elemental story telling out there.
Bark by Lorrie Moore (2014) - I was familiar with Lorrie Moore's woork before reading Bark, so I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of different modern, mediocre (in a good way!) characters within her stories. Like many say, she truly is one of our best short story writers.
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10. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925) - I read this for the fourth time this year. It's still one of my favorites and will always be. This time around I found more empathy for Clarissa than ever before.
9. Paper Lantern by Stuart Dybek (2014) - One of our best living short story writers delivered the goods one again at the ripe age of 74. Some of the sentences in this collection are staggering.
8. A Girl is a Half Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (2014) - It is inspiring that a book written in a high modernist style can be published let alone praised in 2014. While this book and its approach are certainly flawed, it is an achievement nonetheless.
7. Purple America by Rick Moody (1997) - I read this book for the second time. It hit me just in the right spot this time after watching my mother take care of my grandmother as she withered away and died. Moody's attention to language is phenomenal. The hospital chapter may be my very bit of "difficult" writing since Ulysses.
6. 10:08 by Ben Lerner (2014) - It took awhile for this book to win me over, but Lerner's writing is simultaneously bare bones and complex and his depiction of the unnecessary but somehow logical complications of modern, urban relationships were honest and insightful. Still a little too pleased with itself for my taste, but that's probably just my jealousy talking.
5. The Dog by Joseph O'Neil (2014) - One of my favorite contemporary novelists and writers. O'Neil always brings his unparalleled sense of style to the page no matter what you are reading. Here, its to a story of accountability, digital relationships, and knowing yourself and the people around you in Dubai in the modern age.
4. The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin (2012) - I'm a little biased since I interviewed the author, but this is a fantastic debut novel. The opening paragraph will have you spinning, but the subtle touches throughout the book that fully render a man who may or may not have lived a failed live in turn of the century Oregon will make you shake your head.
3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2013) - We all loved it no matter what year it came out in! Some master displays of plot control as well as the heady meditations at the very end.
2. My Struggle Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard (2012) - I just cracked open Book 2 and couldn't believe how much I missed Knausgaard's voice. He is no Proust, but he doesn't pretend to be and in the process becomes something wholly different and fitting for our times.
1. Independence Day by Richard Ford (1995) - I always struggle with deciding whether or not I like a Frank Bascombe book. But some of the pearls of wisdom and moments of quiet sadness in this book really stuck with me this year—as I imagine they will for years to come.
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