With 2015 here, that means it is time for me to reflect on the books I have read during 2014. It was particularly hard to whittle down this list to my favorite three as there were so many notable titles. Honorable mentions definitely go to The Alchemist, The Phantom Tollbooth, and A People’s History of the United States, all absolutely incredible books. But here are the real top three. Well, actually top nine.
Harry Potter…all of them.
Obvious choice, some might say. Pop-lit bullshit, others might say. Seven books that changed a generation, I would say. In high school, my AP lit teacher told me that what separated literature from all other books is the test of time. So I am not here to debate the literary qualities of Harry Potter, I leave that in the hands of time. What I will say is that these books affected so many of my generation so profoundly because we grew up with Harry Potter. Literally. As Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the gang became older and grappled with bigger concepts, so did I as a reader. Rowling progressed through the series to a darker tone and more challenging ideas. I’ve reread this series three times now. Before I started it again this past year I wondered whether I would get sucked in as I did when I was younger. I expected not to, but how wrong I was. Blasting through each one in a day or two, I closed the seventh book within two weeks of starting. I cried about the same deaths, felt anxious in the same scenes, and laughed at the same jokes that I already knew were coming. That is one of the many appeals of the series. If you are a Harry Potter hater, then I will likely not change your mind. But for all those who know the magic of this series, let us not forget, as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did, what we discover as the most powerful magic of all, the magic of our own world: Love.
Cloud Atlas
Maybe you saw previews for that fantastical movie with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry dancing through the distant past, the present, and the distant future. Maybe not. Either way that fantastical movie was based off a fantastic novel which weaves together six unlikely stories spanning centuries of time. The structure of the book can be jarring at first. Mitchell presents half of one of the six stories which is interrupted by another half story until he gets to the sixth story. This sixth story is written in its entirety but ends with a tie in back to the fifth story which then ties back into the fourth and so on creating a sort of pyramid narrative. Here is how one of the characters describes the structure, which he is using within the story to write a piece of music
Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year’s fragments into a “sextet for overlapping soloists”: piano, clarinet, cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late.
Besides the structure, the novel covers a wide range of time and connects each story through an idea that all of the main characters are reincarnations of each other, playing out the same roles over and over. Each story is fascinating by its own right, taking on a completely different style of writing. The culminating themes of the novel point to a cycle of life which is predetermined, one in which we take advantage of each other and abuse each other, but we are capable of making individual choices to subvert that narrative. Whether it is an 18th century notary rescuing a slave, a 20th century journalist seeking the truth of a dangerous cover-up, or a post-apocalyptic tribesman fighting his own demons, we all are presented with this opportunity to support rather than exploit one another. You can totally get lost in this book and, at the very least, I’m willing to bet you will like one of the six stories.
I Ching
Known as The Book of Changes in the West, this text is an ancient Chinese divinatory work. And when I say ancient, I mean this text may be as old as 11th century BCE. It is considered the oldest classic of Chinese literature and is something that is still consulted today (Carl Jung was using it throughout his psychological research). But it isn’t an easy book to pick-up and start reading because it is so foreign to our Western senses. Basically the book is a treatise on 64 hexagrams which are made up of six broken or unbroken lines. The broken and unbroken lines are where the idea of yin and yang come from. Depending upon the combination of broken or unbroken lines, a different meaning is manifested and the text goes through and analyzes each of the hexagrams. The central theme of the book, which you may guess, is change. We live in a world which fluctuates from one extreme to the next, yin to yang, light to dark, good to evil. For the most part we do not have power over these forces but are merely swept along its force. The I Ching serves to guide “the superior man” to correct action by demonstrating the state of the world. The book even goes so far as to advise “the superior man” to completely retreat from the world when darkness is in full swing, to wait until the light comes back. This book has undoubtedly changed the shape of the world as we know it and even though it is difficult to penetrate, it serves as an enlightening read for those who desire a holistic understanding of where we are now.
2014 Book List
The Book Thief [Markus Zusak]
Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of my Family’s Schizophrenia [Patrick Tracey]
The Alchemist [Paulo Coehlo]
Voodoo in New Orleans [Robert Tallant]
The Godfather [Mario Puzo]
The Phantom Tollbooth [Norton Juster]
Cloud Atlas [David Mitchell]
1984 [George Orwell]
A People’s History of the United States [Howard Zinn]
The Seventymile Kid [Tom Walker]
Denali: A Literary Anthology
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone [J.K. Rowling]
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [J.K. Rowling]
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [J.K. Rowling]
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [J.K. Rowling]
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix [J.K. Rowling]
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [J.K. Rowling]
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [J.K. Rowling]
Sweet Agony II [Gene Olson]
The Well and the Shallows [G.K. Chesterton]
I Ching [attributed to Fu Xi, transl. by Richard Wilhelm]
The Best American Essays: 2004
A History of Education in Antiquity [H.I. Marrou]
Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans
A Streetcar Named Desire [Tennessee Williams]
The Zombie Survival Guide [Max Brooks]
Doctor Sleep [Stephen King]
The Elements of Feng Shui [Man-Ho Kwok & Joanne O’Brien]
see what you need to see 