Jan - J. Crace, Harvest
Feb - L. Hughes-Hallet, The Pike
March - N. MacGregor, A history of the world in 100 objects
April - D. Hendy, Life on Air
May - P.L. Fermor, Between the woods and the water*
June - B. Wilson, Consider the fork
July - A. Solomon, Far from the tree
August - M. Kundera, Life is Elsewhere
September - D. Brown, Bury my heart at wounded knee*
October - E. Waugh, Men at Arms*
November - R. Flanagan, The narrow road to the deep north
December - S.S. Tepper, The gate to Women's country
To be honest, it's been the worst reading year of my adult life. The monthly average is down to seven, and it's propped up with some, shall we say, lighter efforts. Fiction dominated, though actually less than the last two years (61%). Also worth noting was the strengths of the rereads. Three BOTMs were rereads, and I could easily have had a fourth in December. Anyway:
I read a lot of novels, but the list is majority (7:5) non-fiction. This should make fiction easier to award, and it's really a Booker duel. Harvest, which should have won 2013's prize, was better than the actual winner of the 2014 edition. For me, it remains as astounding evocation of the medieval rural world. A fitting swansong for Jim Crace. Idiot Booker judges.
Non-fiction is a lot harder. Almost all of the monthly non-fiction were astounding. I even cried at some of them (actually two of them, and one was about Radio 4), and choosing one of them is very hard. In the end though, it came down to another duel of two great enterprises, both asking us to re-imagine how we think about America (Bury my heart at Wounded Knee) or children (Far from the tree). Both were transformatively brilliant. Solomon edges it by being a) about children when I had a pregnant wife and b)being read for the first time.
