The Best 15 Books I Read in 2014 That You Might Have Missed but Shoudn't!

Five Fiction:

Whiteman by Tony D'Souza

• published 2006 
• PEN/Bingham nominee 
• Sue Kaufmann Prize winner 
• Florida Book Award winner

In an Ivory Coast village where Christians and Muslims are squaring off for war, against a backdrop of bloody conflict and vibrant African life, Jack Diaz—an American relief worker—and Mamadou, his village guardian, learn that hate knows no color and that true heroism waits where we least expect it.During lulls in the violence, Jack learns the cycles of Africa—of hunting in the rain forest, cultivating the yam, and navigating the nuances of the language; of witchcraft, storytelling, and chivalry. Despite the omnipresence of AIDS, he courts a stunning Peul girl, meets his neighbor’s wife in the darkened forest, and desperately pursues the village flirt. Still, Jack spends many nights alone in his hut, longing for love in a place where his skin color excludes him. Brimming with dangerous passions and the pressures of life in a time of war, Whiteman is a stunning debut and a tale of desire, isolation, humor, action, and fear. 

My Whiteman review on Goodreads

The Isle of Youth: Stories by Laura van den Berg

• published 2013 
• An NPR Best Book in 2013

Laura van den Berg’s gorgeous new book, The Isle of Youth, explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. From a newlywed caught in an inscrutable marriage, to private eyes working a baffling case in South Florida, to a teenager who assists her magician mother and steals from the audience, the characters in these bewitching stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless, and they will do what it takes to survive. Each tale is spun with elegant urgency, and the reader grows attached to the marginalized young women in these stories—women grappling with the choices they’ve made and searching for the clues to unlock their inner worlds. This is the work of a fearless writer whose stories feel both magical and mystical, earning her the title of “sorceress” from her readers. Be prepared to fall under her spell. 

My Isle of Youth review on Goodreads

Mary and O'Neil: A Novel in Stories by Justin Cronin

• published 2001 
• PEN/Hemingway Award winner

Mary and O'Neil frequently marveled at how, of all the lives they might have led, they had somehow found this one together. When they met at the Philadelphia high school where they'd come to teach, each had suffered a profound loss that had not healed. How likely was it that they could learn to trust, much less love, again? Justin Cronin's poignant debut traces the lives of Mary Olson and O'Neil Burke, two vulnerable young teachers who rediscover in each other a world alive with promise and hope. From the formative experiences of their early adulthood to marriage, parenthood, and beyond, this novel in stories illuminates the moments of grace that enable Mary and O'Neil to make peace with the deep emotional legacies that haunt them: the sudden, mysterious death of O'Neil's parents, Mary's long-ago decision to end a pregnancy, O'Neil's sister's battle with illness and a troubled marriage. Alive with magical nuance and unexpected encounters, Mary and O'Neil celebrates the uncommon in common lives, and the redemptive power of love. 

My Mary and O'Neil review on Goodreads

DeNiro's Game by Rawi Hage

• published 2006 
• International Impac Dublin Award winner 
• Giller Prize nominee

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. In Rawi Hage's unforgettable novel, winner of the 2008 IMPAC Prize, this famous quote by Camus becomes a touchstone for two young men caught in Lebanon's civil war. Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown to adulthood in war torn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime; or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Bassam chooses one path: obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to finance his departure. Meanwhile, George builds his power in the underworld of the city and embraces a life of military service, crime for profit, killing, and drugs. Told in the voice of Bassam, De Niro's Game is a beautiful, explosive portrait of a contemporary young man shaped by a lifelong experience of war. Rawi Hage's brilliant style mimics a world gone mad: so smooth and apparently sane that its razor-sharp edges surprise and cut deeply. A powerful meditation on life and death in a war zone, and what comes after. 

My DeNiro's Game review on Goodreads

419 by Will Ferguson

• published 2012 
• Giller Prize winner

A car tumbles down a snowy ravine. Accident or suicide? On the other side of the world, a young woman walks out of a sandstorm in sub-Saharan Africa. In the labyrinth of the Niger Delta, a young boy learns to survive by navigating through the gas flares and oil spills of a ruined landscape. In the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the Internet looking for victims. Lives intersect, worlds collide, a family falls apart. And it all begins with a single email: “Dear Sir, I am the son of an exiled Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help ...” 419 takes readers behind the scene of the world’s most insidious Internet scam. When Laura’s father gets caught up in one such swindle and pays with his life, she is forced to leave the comfort of North America to make a journey deep into the dangerous back streets and alleyways of the Lagos underworld to confront her father’s killer. What she finds there will change her life forever... A startlingly original tale of heartbreak and suspense. 

My 419 review on Goodreads

Five Non-Fiction

Making Sense of the Bible:Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today by Adam Hamilton

• published 2014

Denominations from evangelical to mainline continue to experience deep divisions over universal social issues. The underlying debate isn’t about a particular social issue, but instead it is about how we understand the nature of scripture and how we should interpret it. The world’s bestselling, most-read, and most-loved book is also one of the most confusing. In Making Sense of the Bible, Adam Hamilton, one of the country’s leading pastors and Christian authors, addresses the hot-button issues that plague the church and cultural debate, and answers many of the questions frequently asked by Christians and non-Christians alike. Did God really command Moses to put gay people to death? Did Jesus really teach that everyone who is not a Christian will be assigned to hell? Why would Paul command women to “keep silent in the church?” Were Adam and Eve real people? Is the book of Revelation really about the end times? Who decided which books made it into the scriptures and why? Is the Bible ever wrong? In approachable and inviting language, Hamilton addresses these often misunderstood biblical themes leading readers to a deeper appreciation of the Bible so that we might hear God speak through it and find its words to be life-changing and life-giving. 

My Making Sense of the Bible review on Goodreads

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas

• published 2014

The True American tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at other gas stations, aren't so lucky, dying at once. The True American traces the making of these two men, Stroman and Bhuiyan, and of their fateful encounter. It follows them as they rebuild shattered lives one striving on Death Row to become a better man, the other to heal and pull himself up from the lowest rung on the ladder of an unfamiliar country. Ten years after the shooting, an Islamic pilgrimage seeds in Bhuiyan a strange idea: if he is ever to be whole, he must reenter Stroman's life. He longs to confront Stroman and speak to him face to face about the attack that changed their lives. Bhuiyan publicly forgives Stroman, in the name of his religion and its notion of mercy. Then he wages a legal and public-relations campaign, against the State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry, to have his attacker spared from the death penalty. Ranging from Texas's juvenile justice system to the swirling crowd of pilgrims at the Hajj in Mecca; from a biker bar to an immigrant mosque in Dallas; from young military cadets in Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel; from a wealthy household of chicken importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the sober residences of Brownwood, Texas, The True American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions. Ultimately it tells a story about our love-hate relationship with immigrants, about the encounter of Islam and the West, about how or whether we choose what we become.

 My True American review on Goodreads

Hidden Like Anne Frank: 14 True Stories of Survival by Marcel Prins and Peter Henk Steenhuis

• published 2014

Fourteen unforgettable true stories of children hidden away during World War II. Jaap Sitters was only eight years old when his mother cut the yellow stars off his clothes and sent him, alone, on a fifteen-mile walk to hide with relatives. It was a terrifying night, one he would never forget. Before the end of the war, Jaap would hide in secret rooms and behind walls. He would suffer from hunger, sickness, and the looming threat of Nazi raids. But he would live. This is just one of the incredible stories told in Hidden Like Anne Frank, a collection of eye-opening first-person accounts that share what it was like to go into hiding during World War II. Some children were only three or four years old when they were hidden; some were teenagers. Some hid with neighbors or family, while many were with complete strangers. But all know the pain of losing their homes, their families, even their own names. They describe the secret network of brave people who kept them safe. And they share the coincidences and close escapes that made all the difference.  

My Hidden Like Anne Frank review on Goodreads

Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust by Loic Duavillier 

• published 2012

In this gentle, poetic young graphic novel, Dounia, a grandmother, tells her granddaughter the story even her son has never heard: how, as a young Jewish girl in Paris, she was hidden away from the Nazis by a series of neighbors and friends who risked their lives to keep her alive when her parents had been taken to concentration camps. Hidden ends on a tender note, with Dounia and her mother rediscovering each other as World War II ends . . . and a young girl in present-day France becoming closer to her grandmother, who can finally, after all those years, tell her story. With words by Loïc Dauvillier and art by Marc Lizano and Greg Salsedo, this picture book-style comic for young readers is a touching read. 

My Hidden review on Goodreads

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

• published 2012

• Pulitzer Prize winner

• Edgar Award nominee

• Dayton Literary Peace Prize nominee

• Chautauqua Prize nominee

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life. In 1949, Florida’s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as “the Groveland Boys.” And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the “Florida Terror” at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall’s NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next. Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI’s un-redacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund files, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.” 

 My Devil in the Grove review on Goodreads

Five Poetry

Satellite Beach by Susan Lilley

• published 2012

My Satellite Beach review on Goodreads

Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott

• published 2010

• Costa Book Award winner

The Art of the Lathe by B. H. Fairchild

• published 1998

• Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner

Incarnadine: Poems by Mary Szybist

• published 2013

• National Book Award winner

A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry by Czeslaw Milosz

• published 1996

The "I" poem

I dreamt about you again last night

I think you like that

I should know – it’s always only about sex

I always feel out of my element

I think I am

I picture your house

            Never shall I forget chocolate chips.

I didn’t want you to know

I am the perfectionist

I need fuel to take flight

I could have moved there.

I think I’d be happy there

I picture your house

            Never shall I forget undercooked drumsticks.

I hate words on the walls

I have one letter

I don’t even hear it

I have seen it

I will make things happen

I picture your house

            Never shall I forget long golden fingernails.

I’ll wait by the back stage door

Schizophrenic Poetry #5

It was blue.

It was empty.

It was fake.

It was old.

It was people.

It is sad.

Let it be.

Counting on Lunch

One thing that drives me crazy is

a restaurant with too many options.
Give me three choices, and I'm content. 
We're here for lunch and I can't decide between 
the five house-made, locally sourced chef’s creations
or those 6 always guaranteed-to-make-me-fat appetizers.
Decisions aren't my specialty -- I worry twenty-four seven
I'll make the wrong choice, but I hated what I ate here last time. 
The waiter's come back--that's visit number nine (not that I'm counting)
even though it seems we were seated ten minutes ago—and he's back again
to suggest: "Eleven Bread?" I repeat. He slowly shakes his head, "It's unleavened."
Lunch before twelve is too early me.

Morning Mirror Monologue

Nine o'clock on a Saturday morning. The dogs are asleep. My son is asleep. The whole world wants to sleep on a Saturday morning. Lavender. Paintings. Blue Willow China. Footsteps that shake the floor boards and make me want to close the door so I won't be disturbed. The silent soft snores of my senile dog. Cars on the highway miles away. Nighttime necessities when the state rebuilds a bridge by your house (or things the real estate agent won’t tell you.) Non-matching lamps brought home from a potter in Oregon, one lamp at a time. How many pillows does it take to house a band? Barbecue does not like wind. I am hungry, hungry, hungry. I have two hours to wait until brunch. Who are these people who do not wake up hungry, and why am I always waiting on their stomachs to come alive? Chipped nail polish. The high school picture of an old friend of my sister's discovered in a yellowed copy of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Aqua net--makes me think of Samantha, although I am sure she never used such a pedestrian spray. Even though he did not have a fever, they did a blood test for tuberculosis and put him on an antibiotic. He was coughing up blood when he phoned home to talk to his mom. The leaves make plaid shadow patterns on the asphalt in the summertime. Right about now I start longing for fall. The children are young. They are scared. They are hungry. They are harmless. What has happened in the hearts of our neighbors that they can look a child in the face and tell them to go away hungry and scared?

How can we possibly look at ourselves in the mirror?