Reading 2014

I read a lot in 2014. Some books I loved, some books I hated; there were only two I did not finish.

I finished 70 books, if this list I keep is to be believed, and we'll believe it, sure, because it's in black and white and black and white is comforting, it reassures us that all is well and fine and okay, except when it doesn't, like in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, which is probably the best set of books I read this year.

This rabbit clearly escaped Area X...

I bought them in paper, after hearing how gorgeous they were; FSG did a really smashing job with the whole paper set (and now has a hardcover that contains all three). Now that I've finished Acceptance, I want to read book one all over again because I feel like there are things I missed.

I read a lot of books this year that will inform my own writing; books about circuses and haunted houses, books about living landscapes and the women who travel through them. I read poetry and biographies, and classics I still haven't finished (The Divine Comedy, you are gorgeous, but why so long!).

I discovered new-to-me authors, and read one of those books that everyone has said I needed to read forever plus one day -- those books, I have to come to in my own time, for lo I am stubborn and busy cramming other books into my eyes.

I remembered what it was to enjoy reading again -- a challenge when one is both a writer and an editor. You forget how to sink into a story and just enjoy it without breaking it apart and studying its bones. Oh, that probably still comes later -- especially with the VanderMeer, but to find the JOY again...this is what 2014 was somehow about.

Reading became, again, a refuge.