The best book I read in 2014 was... [add yours]

[chicaguapa]

1 month to go and I already know that this will be the best book I read this year. I absolutely loved it. It's £2.99 for the Kindle version and you'll want to read it again as soon as you finish.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

I liked Life After Life though wish id had a real copy as it didn't work brilliantly on kindle. Needed to be able to focus back and forth a bit.

I've loved the shardlake series and also Dominion by the same author.

Enjoyed And the Mountains Echoed by the chap who wrote Kite Runner

Quite liked The Casual Vacancy though I can see why Rowling was criticised for how she writes working class speech. They all talk like hagrid...

Copied from the 50-book thread, mine are (not in order):

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius - Graham Farmelo
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - Viv Albertine
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Shattered (iron druid) by Kevin hearne

Or

Waistcoats and weaponry by Gail carriger

OP I just read a sample of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. I am totally hooked. Haven't got so into a book in ages. Thank you

I enjoyed Apple Tree Yard, also The Girl you left behind by Jojo Moyes. My favourite probably was The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker

I've been reading The Luminaries over Christmas - what a talent she is, she wrote it at 28. Unbelievable.

Starting and ending the year with great books: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and finishing with The Goldfinch, which I am loving.

Some great ideas for my To Read pile for next year!

Just bought the first fifteen lives of Harry August :-)

There have been so many but the one I finished most recently is The Book Thief.
I thought it was very thought provoking.

I need to stop looking through this thread. I've got a nook and a kindle and I just bought 5 new books between them :-/

I know it's not new but I just finished The Rosie Project and really enjoyed that.

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown; I had my mind blown several times reading that one.

The Martian by Andy Weir. Loved loved loved it.

"I’m stranded on Mars.

I have no way to communicate with Earth.

I’m in a Habitat designed to last 31 days.

If the Oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the Water Reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.

So yeah. I’m screwed."

The best novel I read in 2014 was definitely Ali Smith's How To Be Both. I thought it was incredible.

Not new, but I also enjoyed Minimum of Two by Tim Winton, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, all of which I read for the first time in 2014.

Two best books

Devil's Acre by Jonathan Bastable (got from a recommendation on here when I was looking for a book on Russia and absolutely LOVED it).

And Life After Life, which was a birthday present from a friend. Couldn't put it down.

Liked The Golfinch, Life after Life and The Golem and the Ginni, but my favourite was

All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr.

My best 'new book' reads of 2014 were:

The Humans (Matt Haig)
The Paying Guests (Sarah Waters)
Life After Life (Kate Atkinson)

And of classics that I read for the first time last year, my favourites were:

North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemmingway)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Bronte)

Least enjoyable books I read last year were:

The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass)
The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

The Goldfinch and Stoner, equal first position for me.

The Paying Guests

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

How To Build A Girl (and going to Caitlin Moran's book reading was ACE)

Another one I quite liked was Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill which is a dystopian novel set in a future world where girls are genetically engineered and raised in a school where they are taught how to please men. On their 16th birthday there is a ceremony and each will be chose by men to be either a wife or a concubine. The remaining girls become chastities. If you liked the Handmaid's Tale you will like this.

The Humans bybby Matt Haig was wonderful.

Perfect by Rachel Joyce comes a close second.