Far From Brooklyn

Pretty much every book I liked best in 2014 is a complete downer.  Consider yourself warned.  

Now, 2014 was not the happiest year, personally or globally – so you decide: Were the best books of the year depressing, or was it just me?  Was this not actually such a depressing year, and only seemed that way, thanks to the depressing books I kept reading?  Or did these books just seem depressing in the context that they were read?

Well, no, scratch that last one.  This is a bunch of depressing-ass books.

Best Books of 2014

1. Family Life by Akhil Sharma
   Books pretty much don’t come more depressing than this.  An immigrant family from India copes with a catastrophic accident that leaves their son in a persistent vegetative state. But the writing is harshly clean, and the story offers a fascinating, cockeyed view into the Indian-American community of the 1980s.
2. On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman
   A remarkable sociological portrait of inner city America.
3. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
   Highly recommended, and best approached without knowing what the story is about.  Narrated by an extremely unusual woman.
4. All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
   This is probably the funniest depressing book on my list–a novel (that apparently parallels the novelist’s actual life)–about a brilliant young woman who is desperate to end her own life. The story is narrated with dry humor by her more-ordinary sister. 
5. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
   The second-funniest depressing book on my list this year.  The cartoonist illustrates her parents’ long, awful slide to death.  
6. Redeployment by Phil Klay
   It’s an uneven collection but the shorter stories in the first part of this volume are quick, brutal, slashing, and even sometimes funny in a horrible way. It’s a dark, sad portrait of American soldiers in the wake of the Iraq war.
7. Every Day Is for the Thief by Teju Cole
   I am alternately amazed and frustrated by Teju Cole. What has he got against structure, plot, and all that good stuff?  But the floating sensation of his work is pretty amazing – and this volume felt more cohesive and therefore more satisfying than his first book, “Open City.”  This new book also offers a satisfying, insider view of day-to-day life in modern Nigeria.  
8. The Scent of Pine by Lara Vapnyar
   This is an unusual story of a brief affair of two academics, enfolding a recollected coming of age story.

Honorable Mention 

• Spoiled Brats by Simon Rich
• The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
• Ghost Lights
• Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano
• The Emerald Light in the Air by Donald Antrim
• The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Deception and Freedom in the New World by Greg Grandin
• Decoded by Mai Jia
• The Unamericans by Molly Antopol
• Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi 

2014 books novels and stories begun but not finished…

• My Struggle Vol. 3 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Nobody Is Ever Missing by Catharine Lacey
• A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor
• F: A Novel, by Daniel Kehlman
• The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink
• The English Disease by Joseph Skibell
• Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya
• A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman

Books for Greece

Ahead of a two-week trip to Greece in late September, I loaded up on Greek and Mediterranean history and lit.  

• Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
  I had tried this at least once before and found it slow going.  But this time out I loved it.
• The Summer of My Greek Taverna by Tom Stone
• Athens by James H.S. McGregor
  Great book to read ahead of a trip to this amazing city.
• The Great Sea:  A Human History of the Mediterranean by David Abulafia
  Wonderful history of “Our Sea.”
• 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
  If you can around some of the infantile writing, this is a decent overview of the collapse of the Mediterranean civilzation some 3,000 years ago, and the various competing theories of what caused it.  My favorite, even if I don’t really buy it fully, is that of Julian Jaynes.)
• Crete by Barry Unsworth
  Really prosaic. It felt as if Unsworth was fulfilling a publishing contract with this.
• Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell
  Overwrought, as you might imagine.  It’s Durrell.
• Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles)
  Brilliant essays by Fagles in this edition.
• Eros, Eros, Eros: Selected Poems by Odysseas Elytis
  One of two Nobel-winning Greek poets.
• George Seferis: Collected Poems
  The other Nobel-ist.  Beautiful modernism flecked with shards of myth and ancient history.
• Mission Box: Aris Alexandrou
  Brutal novel of the Greek civil war.  
• The Late-Night News by Petros Markaris
  Standard issue noir-ish police procedural set in Athens. I thought it might give me a sense of the city but it felt rather generic.
• The Maze by Panos Karnezis
  Very nice novel by a Greek-born, UK-resident novelist.  It’s the story of a Greek battalion looking to retreat back to Greece after that country’s disastrous attack on Turkey in the wake of World War I – a debacle known in Greece as “The Great Catastrophe.”
• Little Infamies by Panos Karnezis
  Short stories mostly set on the islands.
• Bar Flaubert by Alexis Stamatis
  Fascinating post-modern novel.
• and I reread Selected Poems of C.P. Kavafy
  The greatest modern Greek poet. 
  

Mysteries

• Still Life by Louise Penny
• Lullaby Town by Robert Crais
• Sunset Express by Robert Crais
• A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
• Voodoo River by Robert Crais
• Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca
• LA Requiem by Robert Crais
• Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith
  I’m still a sucker for Arkady Renko novels.

Business Books

Sometimes I have to read business books for work.  

• It’s Not the How or the What but the Who
• Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love

Other books read (or at least started) in 2014

• Spilt Milk by Chico Buarque
  Fantastic 20th Century tale of Brazil. 
• Cocteau: A Biography by Francis Steegmuller
  Didn’t really explain for me how Cocteau was Cocteau.
• Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
  After slamming Pynchon’s latest couple works, “Inherent Vice” and “Bleeding Edge,” I thought I should go back and try this one again.  No luck.  The guy’s got an amazing vocabulary.  But seriously, this is puerile stuff.
• Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey
  Brilliant mix of history, sociology and travelogue.  Read it.
• A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople by Patrick Leigh Fermor
  A beloved volume among travelogue readers, this didn’t really do it for me… might have been my mood at the time.
• Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
  See my Fermor comments above.
• Leave it to Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse
• The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
  Post-apocalyptic novel narrated by a small-plane pilot.  I didn’t like it much but my son gave it thumb’s up. So if you like this kind of thing….
• A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin
• Fear: A Novel of World War I by Gabriel Chevalier
• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• The Modern Mind by Peter Watson
• All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw by Theodore Rosengarten

Photo credit: Skógafoss, Iceland, July 2014; Martin Falbisoner via Wikimedia Commons