My Favorite Books of 2014

My New Year's resolution is always Read More Books, and usually I end it there. In 2014 I was able to do a lot of reading. Yay! Meanwhile, Norman is working on his great list. Stay tuned.

In 2015 I am most looking forward to works by my friends Mary Norris and Emily Nunn. Mary's Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (W.W. Norton) is due out in April, and Emily's book, The Comfort Food Diaries (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster), hits the shelves in September. I can't wait!

If you have a book being published in 2015, please mention it in the comments. I don't want to miss a thing.

Here are some of my favorites from last year. Don't you love saying that on January 1st? I don't know how many books I read total; I always space out and forget to keep count. I do the same thing with swimming laps.

Bad Feminist: Essays, by Roxane Gay (Harper Perennial, 2014) 

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulsen Books/ Simon & Schuster, 2014)

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? A Memoir, by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury, 2014)

Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner (Random House, 1987)

Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng (Penguin, 2014)

Family Life, by Akhil Sharma (W.W. Norton, 2014)

Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family, edited and with an introduction by Joy Castro (University of Nebraska Press, 2013)

Fire Shut Up in My Bones: A Memoir, by Charles M. Blow (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)

Gabriel: A Poem, by Edward Hirsch (Knopf, 2014)

Half a World Away, by Cynthia Kadohata (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014)

Harumi's Japanese Cooking: More Than 75 Authentic and Contemporary Recipes from Japan's Most Popular Cooking Expert, by Harumi Kurihara (HP Trade, 2006)

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic, by Professor X (Viking, 2011)

The Juggler's Children: A Journey Into Family, Legend, and the Genes That Bind Us, by Caroline Abraham (Random House Canada, 2013)

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondo; translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano (Ten Speed Press/Random House, 2014) 

Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books, 2014)

Men We Reaped: A Memoir, by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury, reprint edition, 2014; original hardback, 2013)

My Life in Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead (Crown, 2014)

Nora Webster, by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2014)

Postcards from Cookie: A Memoir of Motherhood, Miracles, and a Whole Lot of Mail, by Caroline Clarke (Harper, 2014)

The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, by Richard Blanco (Ecco, 2014)

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League, by Jeff Hobbs (Scribner, 2014)

A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki (Viking, 2013)

Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books, by Nick Hornby (Believer Books/McSweeney's, 2013) 

Traveling Heavy: A Memoir Between Journeys, by Ruth Behar (Duke University Press Books 2013)

The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, by Olivia Laing (Picador, 2013)

Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education, edited by Jennifer De Leon (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) 

Writing Is My Drink: A Writer's Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), by Theo Pauline Nestor (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013)