Books of the Year 2014

Dear All,

2014 has been another eventful year where there has been just about enough time for me still to average reading a book a week, whether at home or on the road. Travel has taken me to places as glamorous as Brazil and Bahrain for work and Bournemouth and Bonn for pleasure. Here follows 2014's list - 

Top ten novels read during the past year (in order) - 

Competition was exceptionally tough this year and the latter choices on this list were the product of much musing on my part. I am also indebted to my Father for his recommendation of "Bonita Avenue" and my friend Eleanor for hers of "The Sisters Brothers." Regular readers of my list will know that my focus tends to be on contemporary fiction and indeed just one book (by Evelyn Waugh) was published prior to my birth, while six of my choices only saw light of day this decade. To suggest that I only read modern fiction is, of course, incorrect and one other highlight from the year was a return again, perhaps for the tenth time in my life, to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (published in 1902). To my mind, this work has had a greater influence on modern literature than almost any other. The character Marlow's observation that "man has to live amidst the incomprehensible, which is also detestable" continues to ring very true.  

Without wanting to spoil 2014's top reads for any interested parties, the list is undoubtedly as broad as it is eclectic. Just concentrating on the top-five, "Bonita Avenue" is a first novel by an up-and-coming Dutch author focusing on the darker side of our nature, how someone who seemingly has it all, ends up with nothing; "Coin Locker Babies" is a precursor to the works of Ryu's better known namesake (Haruki - they are not related) and discusses the weird and dystopian nature of modern-day Japan; "Sweet Tooth" is a post-modern thriller about spying and the process of writing by one of Britain's best-living authors; "Every Contact Leaves A Trace" is a murder-mystery set in my former Oxford college, written by an alumna of the college; and "Secrecy" marks a change of direction from the superb Rupert Thomson, a fabulous work about secrets, set in Medici Florence. 

There was also time for quite a few non-fiction works (a ratio of around one for every four novels), but of deserved mention are "Sixteen, Sixty-One" by Natalie Lucas (2013) and Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" (1959). The former is a true and autobiographic memoir about a sixteen year-old who embarked upon an increasingly complex and troublesome relationship with a sixty-one year-old. It is compulsive reading and totally shocking - one has to remember this is fact and not fiction. "Man's Search for Meaning" shocks in a different way and is a reminder of what really matters. Frankl recounts his experiences having survived time in four different concentration camps. The key realisation seems to be that even when one is stripped of all dignity, one neither loses one's memories of the past nor the capacity to love and to hope.