The Smart One - Jennifer Close
The Secret Place - Tana French
Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers - Tom Rachman
Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
Counting by 7s - Holly Goldberg Sloan
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
The Martian - Andy Weir
The Interestings - Meg Wolitzer
The Storied Life of AJ Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin
For more random details about these books, keep reading!
How Does This List Hold Up Over Time?
I think I may say this about every year, but this was a really strong year. I gave 7 of these books a 5 star rating at the time, which I think was a record for me. So needless to say this is a list of some pretty beloved books. Add to that the fact that this list is from only 5 years ago, and I actually remember all of these books! If you're wondering, the 3 which only got a 4.5 star rating from me rather than 5 stars were The Smart One, Big Little Lies (long before the HBO miniseries), and The Interestings. Of those, I'd say The Smart One was probably the least memorable though I did love it. On the flip side, picking a favorite from the rest of them is so hard because I loved them all so much. I'm going to go out on a limb though and say "The Martian" (also well before the movie), just because it was the book I loved so much I memorably made Dan switch kindles with me on vacation so he could read it immediately (this was before Amazon family share), and went on to try to convince everyone else I knew to read it whether they were science fiction fans or not. But I really, heartily, endorse every single book on this list.
Genres
This list has one traditional mystery (The Secret Place), one science fiction book (The Martian), one young adult novel (Fangirl), one middle grade novel (Counting by 7s), and the rest are an array of contemporary fiction, ranging from the lighter contemporary women's side (The Smart One and Big Little Lies) to the rather literary (The Goldfinch and The Rise and Fall of Great Powers), with two contemporary novels that fall somewhere in between (The Interestings and The Storied Life of AJ Fikry).
Popularity
The most read of these books on Goodreads was The Martian, with over 693,000 ratings at the time I am typing this, though Big Little Lies, The Goldfinch, and Fangirl all have quite a lot of ratings as well. The least read was The Smart One with 6,320 ratings as of today, with The Rise and Fall of Great Powers rights behind it.
The most read of these books on Goodreads was The Martian, with over 693,000 ratings at the time I am typing this, though Big Little Lies, The Goldfinch, and Fangirl all have quite a lot of ratings as well. The least read was The Smart One with 6,320 ratings as of today, with The Rise and Fall of Great Powers rights behind it.
Other Random Stuff
Interestingly, as it seems to be the case many years when I look up the books I chose on Goodreads, the highest rated is the most read - The Martian with a whopping 4.40 average rating, and the least read is also the lowest rated - The Smart One with an average rating of 3.35. Doubly interesting is that also comports with my thoughts above about which was my most favorite of this list and which was perhaps the 10th out of 10.
This is the 4th book (out of what at this time was a series of 5 books) by Tana French to make my list, after her double appearance on 2010 (when I cheated and put 11 books on my top 10 list just so I could include her first two books), and then her 3rd book landed on my 2011 list. And this was the second appearance for Liane Moriarty after What Alice Forgot in 2012. It's also the second appearance by Rainbow Rowell after Eleanor & Park in 2013. It's also the second appearance by Donna Tartt after The Little Friend in 2004 (and if I'd been making lists back in 1993 when I read her book The Secret History, that surely would have been on a list as well).
The big award winner of this batch is The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer Prize for 2014. I feel like the Pulitzer's taste and mine don't always match up (maybe a subject for a future post), but on this one I agreed on the book's brilliance, though I know The Goldfinch was a major love it or hate it book among people I knew. The Martian won the Goodreads Choice award for science fiction, and several of the other books were Goodreads Choice nominees.
At this point in time I had really committed to my kindle - if memory serves correctly, I read 9 out of 10 of these books on my kindle. The last book, Counting by 7s, I read the same paperback copy as my daughter (she loved it too, if you're wondering). Half of these books were published in 2014, and half were published in 2013.
I first started using Netgalley in 2014, so this list marks the first appearance of a book I got from Netgalley, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. (If you're not familiar with Netgalley, it's a website where you can get free advance digital copies of books in exchange for an honest review.) Interestingly, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers was the very first book I got from Netgalley and I absolutely loved it. But I assure you my opinion was not tainted by the fact that the book was given to me for free by the publisher - my second Netgalley read was of a new Anne Rivers Siddons book which I totally panned - for I think the most popular Goodreads review I ever posted!
None of these books were for my bigger book club, but The Interestings was for my 2 person book club with my friend Sarah - though weirdly, I don't really remember that fact and only know it because I tag all my books on Goodreads as I read them.
***
Note that I'll give all these posts the tag "Top 10," so you should be able to click on the label "Top 10" at the bottom of the post and see all my other Top 10 posts. And if you just want to see all my old Top 10 lists now without waiting, you can also click through to my Goodreads profile - I have a separate shelf for each of my old lists.
No comments:
Post a Comment