Happy 2014!  Since it is the beginning of a new year, I thought I would take some time to reflect on the reading I did during 2013 which may also give you some new ideas for reading material for the New Year!

First however are the statistics for this year.  I read 82 books this year with 4-5 of those  in the 900 t0 1000 page range.  As usual, I mostly read fiction: 30 books in the Thriller/Mystery category and 6 in the Fantasy/Science Fiction category.  I also read 6 non fiction books ranging from the Help, Thanks, Wow by Ann Lamott to The Economists’ Megachange: the World in 2050 as well as Rich Atkinson’s An Army At Dawn, the first volume of his 3 volume series on World War II which I plan to review more fully soon. The remainder were general fiction.

The following are my Best Books of 2013:

1. The Orphan Master”s Son by Johnson was the most interesting book I read this year. This story about a North Korean man and his struggle to thread his way through the shifting realities of North Korean politics was  so prescient as world events unfolded this year. I often felt that the news reports I read were quoting directly from this book.  Johnson tells a great story, with great characters who are immersed in a true Kafkaesque reality.

2. A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon by Marra is one of the those books that slowly envelopes you. The writing, the characters, the evocative descriptions of life in war torn Chechnya and the interconnectedness of each story line are compelling and drew me in, making me a part of the story. There was also a gentleness to this book that raised the hope that in spite of man’s inhumanity to man, there is always the potential for love, grace and redemption to triumph in the end.  This book has resonated with me all year!

3. The Circle by Eggers is one of those books that made me question what I know about social media and the power that large companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google have now or might have in the near future.  Told from the perspective of a new hire for a  large social media company called The Circle, the story follows her step by step as she turns over certain personal information, for convenience or just in order to make connections with others, and in that process the author raised the question of whether by doing this she was losing something even more precious-a sense of privacy and anonymity.

4. Ordinary Grace by Krueger is a meditation about a preacher’s son coming of age in the Midwest and having to confront both change and loss. Kruger writes in a lyrical way which allowed me to settle deeply into the story and see things through the eyes of this young boy who becomes a young man over the course of one summer. This was a book, both powerful and gentle, about family and grace.

5. Canada by Ford is a powerful book about a young boy and what happens when a family falls apart.  From the opening lines; “First, I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders that happened later,” I was  drawn into a web of dysfunction and mayhem with only the narrators voice which was grounded and wise, to guide me through to the end. This was an unforgettable story.

Other books which I would highly recommend are And the Mountains Echoed by Hosseini which I reviewed last week; In the Garden of Beasts by Larrson,  The Tiger’s Wife by Obrecht, Consider the Fork by Wilson and The Abundance by Majmudar, all of which I have reviewed this year and really enjoyed.

I hope that from this list you might find a great book to read in this new year!

Thanks for following my blog and I hope to hear from more of you this year!

Gratefully,

Brenda