What I read in 2014:

Oh dear, oh dear it’s already the end of the year and every year my reading count drops down by about 10 books. If this continues, I’ll never be able to fulfil my goal of 70 books a year!

Only 33 books this year… couldn’t even get to 40. What was I even doing this year? Why haven’t I been reading??

As usual, Australian authors marked with a star, favourites and stand-out books marked in bold.

1: Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie – David Lubar

2: Swerve – Phillip Gwynne *

3: Out – Natsuo Kirino

4: Being Billy – Phil Earle

5: After Dark – Haruki Murakami

6: Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

7: The Turn of the Screw – Henry James

8: Lolita – Vladamir Nabokov

9: The Well – Elizabeth Jolley *

10: Orlando – Virginia Woolf

11: The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak *

12: Almost Transparent Blue – Ryu Murakami

13: Asleep – Banana Yoshimoto

14: Animal People – Charlotte Wood *

15: Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe

16: On the Road – Jack Kerouac

17: The Red Shoe – Ursula Dubosarsky *

18: Parade – Shuichi Yoshida

19: The Alchemist – Ben Johnson

20: City – James Roy *

21: Real World – Natsuo Kirino

22: Breakfast at Tiffany's – Truman Capote

23: Beijing Doll – Chun Sue

24: An Ocean Apart, a World Away – Lensey Namioka

25: Please Ignore Vera Dietz – A. S. King

26: Ties That Bind, Ties That Break – Lensey Namioka

27: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer – Patrick Suskind

28: To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

29: Holier Than Thou – Laura Buzo *

30: What My Mother Doesn't Know – Sonya Sones

31: The Dinner – Herman Koch

32: What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know – Sonya Sones

33: Reconstructing Amelia – Kimberley McCreight

I started off the year well enough reading a lot and consistently in the first few months, but somehow stopped reading towards the second half of the year. I read Natsuo Kirino’s Out back in January, and to date it remains my favourite book of the year. Nothing else I read this year had quite the same impact. It was honestly near-perfectly executed, although the ending was a little lacking. But I could forgive that because the entire storyline, interacting plots and characters were generally amazing. Unfortunately, I found Kirino’s Real World was really weak in comparison but I’ll continue looking out for her other books next year.

University English this year was on film adaptations and Renaissance drama, so I read a fair bit of both, although I haven’t included all the plays I read here. Renaissance language is a bit of a struggle to  read. As for film adaptations, I actually liked both the film versions of The Well (The Well 1997) and The Turn of the Screw (The Innocents 1961) more than the books.

What else… I finally read the infamous Lolita and I quite enjoyed it. The writing was really good, and the main characters were fascinating. Of a similar vein, Suskind’s Perfume was just as fascinating in that sick kind of way.

Australian authors-wise, I finally got around to The Book Thief, but despite its mainstream popularity, I personally didn’t find it that great. The concept itself is fantastic, but the characters and execution let me down. But having previously read Zusak’s other works, I do think he’s a great writer, and it’s admirable how well he can change his voice from decisively male young adult (eg. Fighting Ruben Wolfe) to the more objective third person in Book Thief.

I also really enjoyed Dubosarsky’s The Red Shoe. No wonder she holds a legendary status in Aussie lit. I think that the style and depth of themes in The Red Shoe is the same kind I want to achieve in my own writing- that despite the intended younger audience, the heaviness and darkness is still portrayed and subtly present. This, along with V.M Jones’ Juggling with Mandarins, is exactly the kind of youth fiction I love and want to create.

I finally read To Kill a Mocking Bird, and yeah, like the rest of the literary world thinks, it’s pretty great. It doesn’t leave a massive personal impact on me, but I just can’t fault it in any way.

I absolutely adored Breakfast at Tiffany’s though. Definitely my favourite for the year after Out. Holly was such a fantastic character, probably now one of my favourites. The novella was so short, the narrator was so harassed, Holly was so near invincible and it was all pretty fantastic.

Anyway, this year I kept starting books and not finishing them fast enough so I had a constant borrowing-and-returning-the-same-library-book-multiple-times thing going. Why does everyone keep requesting the same books that I’m in the middle of reading? Why is my taste in books so good, right?

All right, so next year I’ll aim to read more than 33 books!

Hope everyone has a happy new year!  :)