Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2014

Only read the first VanderMeer, which I enjoyed but not enough to stick with the trilogy. Probably prefer him as a curator.

Really wanna read that Marlon James.

The Wake. A spectacular linguistic achievement, a gripping descent into the void, and some of the better analysis of English exceptionalism I've read. But most of all, the sentences are just beautiful

Wolf In White van and Annihilation in the same year? Of fucking course.

Giving my vote to Wolf though I deeply enjoyed both of these books. (The only two from this list I’ve read.)

Voting for ilxors is allowed now? ;) (I've only read Universal Harvester, which is really good)

> Britt-Marie Was Here

seen the film, does that count? (no, no it doesn't)

otherwise only Station 11 here, i think.

Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle
Dept. Of Speculation by Jenny Offill

only two i’ve read. both great

12 and a half! I'm gonna rank them.

Outline by Rachel Cusk - I love what she accomplished, all the different voices, the stories, the monologues masquerading as conversations and the way you could feel the different levels of engagement or tension between the narrator and her different conversational partners.
The Story Of The Lost Child by Elena Ferrante - as good as any of the others
Lila by Marilynne Robinson - feel that if I were to reread this it would be comfort reading despite the deprivation depicted
Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle - a neat and original debut
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - a cosy catastrophe
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor - an interesting mix of SF/folklore/reportage
Ancilliary Sword by Ann Leckie - little bit of a middle book problem with this one
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer - maybe trying a bit too hard for the weird fiction vibe
How To Be Both by Ali Smith - not bad but just didn't engage me
A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James - same
Dept. Of Speculation by Jenny Offill - some similarities in style with patricia lockwood's debut but the narrator here failed to win my sympathy
The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (unfinished) - annoyingly Mary Sue-esque
J by Howard Jacobson - one of those books that is so bad as to make you question your skills as a reader and wonder if you've completely misconstrued every word. But I don't think I did.

Outline or Story of the Lost Child. kind of impossible to choose.

i like Department of Speculation, but nothing stands a chance against the Ferrante or Outline. although i keep meaning to read the Marlon James and haven't yet.

oh damn i need to read outline i guess

i think that trilogy is great!

My feeling is that Outline is very good, Dept of Speculation is excellent, but A Brief History of Seven Killings is on a whole other level.

I've only read the Marlon James but voted for it anyway, it's really amazing though one of the more violent books I've ever read.

I thought I'd read the Tana French, but it turns out that isn't the one "influenced" by The Secret History (that's The Likeness).

This is a tough one for me. Very much my least favorite of the four Neapolitan novels though this still leaves it far above most novels. Annihilation was wonderfully alien and impenetrable which is something I like in an SF novel but I was somewhat retroactively soured on it by how much I disliked the next one. Dept of Speculation I sure did like when I read it but remember nothing about it which is maybe a bad sign -- was it, like, cut into short pieces some of which were aphorisms? Prep for the Next Life was gooey nonsense. Station Eleven was crowd-pleasing SF at it very best and I could imagine voting for it. But I might just not vote in this one on the grounds that Seven Killings is probably better than any of the ones I've read.

The only one I've read is "Wolf in White Van", but happy to vote for it.

this Tana French is not her best, although it has flashes of brilliance.

Oooh, I can join in again this year. I really liked Wolf in White Van and would have been happy to give it a vote, but... Tokyo Ueno Station is an absolutely brilliant book. A beautifully sad work, with lack of agency in life reflected in lack of agency in death.

I don't seem to have read anything here. Am reading Marlon James at the moment but only got a few personas in . So need to get back to it.

Still surprises me that I haven't read anything on a list from a given year. But must have read other things from then. Do read quite a bit.

I've been unable to get through The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, and have yet to start on Wolf in White Van. Of all the rest, I read Lila when it was released.

I'm actually not going w the Ferrante here at the quartet finish line---great fireworks and momentum increases, w perfect punchline for whole sequence---also Lila is great, a detour life in the Gilead cycle, w that migrant worker subculture, which started w colonizing of North American, probably, but I've never seen it in fiction before, not in pre-Grapes of Wrath/Great Depression times, w GD just another thing for these people---but Wolf In White Van is a genius move if anything is, that kind of magnetic focus and force, and maybe uniquely so in fiction that tries to deal w these thematic elements---JD will long be remembered/is known for this by even by those who don't know or care about The Mountain Goats, and it's as least as strong as any of his music(I say this as somebody who first got into the chain o' tapes in early 90s). A unique reading experience for me, unlike components of Neapolitan and Gilead sequences)(Will have to re-read Universal Harvester and looking fwd to Devil House)

But here's hoping for another tie, three-way split, even.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

went with JD even tho I've read a few on this list. i loved it while reading it, and then loaned it to a friend who never returned it. meanwhile, i have her copy of a different book, which is now worth some money. strange how those things work.

strong year. i'm reading the atticus lish right now and loving it. also enjoyed 'annihilation' (but couldn't make it through the second one in the series). voted for 'outline' though. maybe this is just me bc i feel like the reviews i've read didn't acknowledge its humour but i find her frequently hilarious

The only one I've read is "Wolf in White Van", but happy to vote for it.

― o. nate, Tuesday, December 7, 2021 11:03 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This book absolutely haunted me because of the evocation of childhood damage and early rpgs.

I saw this negative review of WiWV a few days ago: http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/17/17471.html

i still like it

This reminded me I need to read "Universal Harvester".

It keep me reading, thinking, but seemed more diffuse than WWIWV, although---a lot of things are---deserves rereading--and even if I still don't get it overall, there will still be a lot of pleasures along the way, incl. sensuous--- eventually, I started having the sensation of walking around the contents of a silo, purchase constantly, minutely shifting (more Arthur Russell than Mountain Goats)---and then dang if there isn't a silo in there---and much more--

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2015