2014 Book Roudup

From glancing at the lists, this seems to be about what I did in 2013, as well, with maybe slightly more fiction and non-fiction in 2014. Fiction favorites were the much-anticipated Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones and Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey (I'm not entirely sure about this, but I'm almost positive I bought the latter through seeing a recommendation by the former. Funny how that works out.). Poetry highlights were one of my first ventures into erasure, Radi OS by Ronald Johnson (a brilliant erasure of Paradise Lost), and Head Off and Split by Nikki Finney (the opening poem, "Red Velvet," about Rosa Parks, blew me away). For non-fiction, Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams is, by far, my favorite, followed by Toms River by Dan Fagin, which has some pretty extensive research and reporting (this is, apparently, why some didn't like it, but I'm usually more appreciative of non-fiction in this vein, as opposed to the lighter, more poppy stuff).

I've definitely scaled back on chapbooks in recent years, but my love for them hasn't diminished (it's likely I didn't even note all the ones I read). I also read somanyfreaking journals that I didn't list them, this year, though I wish I had, as there was so much memorable stuff in the journal world, this year, both online and in print.

2015 reading goals. I would like to do ONE of the following:

1. Finish Proust's In Search of Lost Time

2. Read a ton of Dostoyevsky, alongside the three-ton Dostoeyvsky biography

3. Read Ulysses

4. Read Gravity's Rainbow

5. Finish all of Roth's Zuckerman novels

Okay, less talking, more reading now. Enjoy my 2014 "Books Read" list below.

Fiction

Dune – Frank Herbert

If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin

Silas Marner – George Eliot

Martha Quest – Doris Lessing

Speedboat – Renata Adler

Leaving the Sea: Stories – Ben Marcus

Barry Hannah – Airships (unfinished)

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

Rabbit Run – John Updike

Rabbit Redux – John Updike

Crystal Eaters – Shane Jones

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage – Haruki Murakami

Stone Mattress – Margaret Atwood

Nobody is Ever Missing – Catherine Lacey

The Laughing Monsters – Denis Johnson

Rabbit is Rich – John Updike

Rabbit at Rest – John Updike

Poetry

Singing School – Robert Pinsky

Lines of Defense – Stephen Dunn

No Planets Strike – Josh Bell

Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems – James Baldwin

3 Sections – Vijay Seshadri

Morning in Serra Mattu – Arif Gamal

Opening the Doors of the Temple – Annalee Kwochka

You Might Curse Before You Bless – Allie Marini Batts

Rome – Dorothea Lasky

Bicentennial – Dan Chiasson

Voyager – Srikanth Reddy

Radi OS – Ronald Johnson

Saint Friend – Carl Adamshick

The Heart is Strange: New and Selected Poems – John Berryman

Morning in the Burned House – Margaret Atwood

Selected Poems II: 1976 – 1986 – Margaret Atwood

American Smooth: Poems – Rita Dove

Everything Else in the World – Stephen Dunn

Here and Now: Poems – Stephen Dunn

Head Off and Split – Nikky Finney

Citizen: An American Lyric – Claudia Rankine

Paper Doll Fetus: Poems – Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Faithful and Virtuous Night: Poems – Louise Gluck

Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals – Patricia Lockwood

Nonfiction

Baby Knows Best – Deborah Carlisle Solomon

Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo – Anjan Sundaram

Toms River – Dan Fagin

Far From the Tree – Andrew Solomon

The Empathy Exams: Essays – Leslie Jamison

Reality Hunger – David Shields

Not That Kind of Girl – Lena Dunham

Bad Feminist – Roxane Gay

Updike – Adam Begley

The Birth of the Pill – Jonathan Eig

Lives in Ruins – Marilyn Johnson

Chapbooks

Red Demolition – Juliet Cook

Hints – Rose Auslander

Folding Water – Rose Auslander