Here we are, at the end of 2013. It’s time for my Grand Book List, which I skipped last year (as I skipped reading for the most part, but that’s a long story). I’ve read more this year than I have in the past several. It’s possibly the most I’ve ever read. I’m not quite sure how it happened since I have a job, and such. Palmer says reading is a waste of time and a way for unhappy people to forget that they’re unhappy, but I don’t think it is. I’ve had a good year, all told. There is, of course, the Elephant in the Room, which makes everything difficult, but I’ve been dealing with it long enough, now, that it’s not that big of a deal. Reading does help me forget about that, sometimes, which is both good and bad. But I digress. Here, by the way, is an excellent article from Slate about the psychological and moral benefits of reading. So there.
For the past three years, I’ve set a quota for myself: 50 books. I started because, at the end of 2010, I realized that I’d only read about twenty books, which seemed ridiculous. I thought that if I set a goal, I could get my reading back on track. And I did! I squeezed in at the wire, but I did, and I was very proud of myself. In 2012, I set the same goal, but I didn’t even get close. I blame the Elephant – I was sick, my vision was blurry, and I was exhausted. After July of 2012, my world stopped for a while. This January, I decided I could no longer use ye olde Elephant as an excuse, so I jumped in for another fifty. If you pay any attention to my blog, you’ll know that I easily surpassed that number this year. I’m not sure why or how, especially since so many of thee books I read were huge.
Which leads me to a title for 2013: The Year of Long Books. Until this year, I hardly read books over three or four hundred pages because I didn’t think I could get through them. Jumping into A Game of Thrones and getting hooked cured me of that, I think, and I think I’ve decided that I love long books the best because I can get more into them without feeling rushed. That’s not always easy to do with this quota, though.
So here’s my list. Yes, it’s long. I’ll use the same system I used for my 2010 and 2011 lists: Bold means I really liked it, and italics means I really disliked it. If it’s neither of those, it was good enough.
- The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
- Le Grand Meaulnes
- Orlando
- Madame Bovary
- Robinson Crusoe
- Player Piano
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s
- Guards! Guards!
- Love in the Time of Cholera
- A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel
- Kafka on the Shore
- Anne of Green Gables
- Amerika
- Eric
- A Game of Thrones
- Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Panorama City
- The Catcher in the Rye
- The Bell
- Across the River and into the Trees
- Pretty Monsters
- Lud-in-the-Mist
- Moving Pictures
- Stoner
- A Clash of Kings
- Beautiful Ruins
- A Confederacy of Dunces
- Salem’s Lot
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane
- A Moveable Feast
- The Third Reich
- All the Pretty Horses
- Anansi Boys
- A Storm of Swords
- A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
- The Angel Esmeralda
- The Autumn of the Patriarch
- Coin Locker Babies
- The Book Thief
- Ivanhoe
- Anna Karenina
- Facing the Music
- MaddAddam
- A Feast for Crows
- Damned
- Hear the Wind Sing
- Pinball, 1973
- A Wild Sheep Chase
- Dance Dance Dance
- Zealot
- The Circle
- Wizard and Glass
- Jacob’s Room
- Wheat Belly
- The Worst Hard Time
- World War One: A Short History
- The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
- The Magus
- Snow Country
- Bleak House
So there you have it. I read some pretty good books this year. But which one is the best? In 2010, the prize went to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and in 2011, One Hundred Years of Solitude won. Last year, there was no winner, as, well, you know. Elephant. What could I possibly have chosen this year? Drumroll please…
Yep, Stoner. If you read this blog regularly, you probably saw it coming. Stoner is the best, most amazing novel I’ve read in years. It’s perfect on just about every level. I was crying and entirely speechless by the end of it. Oh, so good.
But Stoner wasn’t the only good novel I read this year, so I’m adding a couple of runners-up. I liked these novels almost as much, though they weren’t quite as mind-blowing as our winner.
First, there’s Orlando, which is hilarious and fantastic and addictive. I want to read it again. After some reflection, it definitely wins my top spot in the list of Virginia Woolf‘s novels. I know that a Discworld novel, of all things, probably doesn’t fit in too well, but I absolutely adored Eric, and I can’t help myself. It’s definitely my favorite Discworld novel so far. There’s also The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which is no my favorite of Neil Gaiman‘s because it’s an overwhelming fairytale that I couldn’t quite have understood when I was a child. This one qualifies as mind-blowing, too. I’ll make myself stop there, though I’m having a hard time not adding more.
2013 was definitely a good reading year. So many books make for so many interesting experiences, most of them good. Next year, I’ll do the same, and it’ll be especially pleasant because my super-awesome husband made me a library out of what had been a storage-bedroom in our house. It’s beautiful, but I still need to clean up a bit and hang art before I post official photos. I’ll be spending lots of 2014 curled up in my papasan, feet propped up and reading. I can’t wait.
