Bring On The Hyperbolic Superlatives! My Top Books of 2014

Enjoying a book in my study

It's almost the end of another year and so we are besieged by Best-Of lists. I eagerly anticipate the book lists to see who agrees with me and whether or not I'm still hip. While there was some agreement, the books I read this year didn't make many lists and, thus, I fear my literary hipness is on the wane. It makes sense. I've been out of the "biz" now for almost five years and though I try to stay up to date, it's obvious I'm missing a lot of titles. At first, I was saddened by this and then I realized it just makes for more books for Reed to read and that is hardly a bad thing. 

As for my own list, I read about thirty-five books this year with another dozen that went unfinished. Below are my favorites:

Non-fiction

Mad World by Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein

Elephant Company by Vicki Croke

Carsick by John Waters
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

• I want to thank Majewski & Bernstein for making me feel like a 16 year old new waver again. Where is my eyeliner? 
• Croke introduced me to a remarkable man and an equally great tusker. 
• John Waters delighted and repulsed me, as is his wont. It's what he does, after all. 
• Shteyngart made me cry with laughter while breaking my heart. 

Fiction

The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by A. J. Jansma

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Chop Chop by Simon Wroe

Perfect by Rachel Joyce

2 AM at the Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino

& Sons by David Gilbert
The Guts by Roddy Doyle

• Outstanding debut authors in Jansma, Sloan and Wroe. More please, gentlemen, and soon. 
• As for sophomore efforts, Bertino knocked me out with her main character and Joyce continues to provide us with fiction so luxurious, her books should cost more. 
• Gilbert threw me for such a loop, I still can't even begin to write about it as I'm just not equipped. 
• Even as the most established writer on this list, Doyle continues to amaze me and if I must pick one, my book of the year is The Guts. 

Thanks to the booksellers and librarians. Thanks to the authors and the publishers. Thanks to my friends in the biz who indulge me and keep me in books. Thanks to the reviewers and listmakers and, as always, thank you for reading what I write about what I read. See you back here in 2015.

The Guts by Roddy Doyle

So we've come full circle. Roddy Doyle began his esteemed career with The Commitments, his novel which focused on Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr. as he forms a soul band in Dublin. In it, we get to know Jimmy and his large family, especially his father, Jimmy Sr., as well as a marvelous cast of characters that make up the ragtag group. It was a strong start and was the first of four books set in the fictional Dublin suburb of Barrytown. By the fourth book, Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha, Doyle would win The Booker Prize. 

The Guts picks up with Jimmy twenty-seven years later (though it should be noted that we got to look in on him in the 2007 short story, The Deportees). Today, Jimmy is 47, happily married with his own four kids, and still working in the Irish music biz albeit in a pronounced niche market (Celtic Punk and one-off Irish punk rock re-releases). He has also been diagnosed with bowel cancer. 

Few authors are successful when revisiting characters from earlier works but as we saw a few years back with Paula Spencer, a sequel to The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, Doyle is more than able to reignite the proper spark and he does so here with Jimmy. It's like finding your old pal with whom you've lost touch, doing well all these years later. Except for the bowel cancer, of course. 

As Jimmy is treated and tries to keep it all together, we see some faces from the past in the book: Commitments co-founder and guitarist Outspan Foster, who is also suffering from cancer though his diagnosis is far more grim; Imelda Quirk, the former Commitments backup singer, still as beautiful as ever, and Jimmy's estranged brother, Derek, who left for England years ago and cut off communication with the Rabbitte clan. Happily, Jimmy meets his Da, Jimmy Sr., for pints on a regular basis and we get to see he's doing well in retirement. 

For me, this book succeeds for so many reasons. Aside from being a huge fan of Doyle's work, I'm the same age as Jimmy and a number of the issues that Doyle addresses in the book have become all too familiar to me. People I know are getting sick and I'm at the age when I'm attending more funerals and fewer weddings. One scene in particular, about having fewer and fewer male friends in middle age, caused me to double over in actual sobs. Few writers, even my very favorites, have the ability to affect me so. Too, Jimmy and I are turning into our fathers, anathema to us in our youth but a comfort now. 

It isn't all a lively romp with a bit of mortality thrown in to counterbalance the levity. Jimmy makes at least one terrible decision that made me angry with him but Doyle manages to make Jimmy all the more human. And as always, the dialogue crackles with life--so profane, so real so funny.

I can't say if we'll see Jimmy again in print though I'd love to check in with him when he and I are pushing sixty. By then, I'd like to think we'll have a learned a few things about what's most important and what matters least. I hope we have friends, we have love in our lives, we have our health, and we are content. Perhaps we can even get the band back together. 

Two Pints by Roddy Doyle

On our trip to England, we found a splendid indie bookstore in Bath, Mr. B's Emporium of Reading Delights (www.mrbsemporium.com). If you visit Bath, which you should since it's a lovely town, make certain you visit Mr. B's. It is a great example of what an indie can be: well-stocked, well-staffed, a quirky charm and the feeling of home. 

I'll have what he's havin'.

While I could have purchased a ton of books there, because it was early in our vacation and I didn't want to add to the considerable load we were schlepping already, I fear I left with only a single volume and a slim one at that (Sorry Mr. B.). It was here I purchased Roddy Doyle's Two Pints. 

Regular Reed-ers know I am a longtime fan of Mr. Doyle and have gushed over his works through the years (that's not to say I won't give him what for either. See what I thought of his finale to the Henry Smart trilogy here: http://goo.gl/JjoEK1). Fortunately, his latest is a gem. 

Two Pints, a collection of short pieces that Doyle posted on his Facebook page from 2010-11, allows us to eavesdrop on two middle-aged Irish men discussing matters large and small over a pint. It could be wife and kids and grandkids. It might be football and local Irish matters. It is certainly about politics, the economy, and death. No matter the subject, it is rare that I don't laugh at their musings or commiserate or find their perspectives dead on the money.  These aren't dopes, drunks, or fools. Just average guys with life experience, a healthy dose of skepticism, and common sense (mostly). There is also a marvelous running gag where one the lads keeps purchasing more and more "exotic" pets for his grandson, Damien. Think hyenas rather than ferrets.

From the very beginning of his career, one of Doyle's great strengths has been his gift for dialogue which has always been smart, sharp, funny, very realistic and often quite profane (Irish flautist James Galway visited the first bookstore I worked in. He read me a short passage from The Van, rife with f-bombs and said with obvious approval, "See that? Not feckin'. Fuckin'! That's how the Irish speak."). Two Pints is all dialogue and it allows Doyle to utilize his strongest suit. 

Doyle continues to post these pieces on Facebook. One from last week discussing the death of Seamus Heaney was very touching. His next novel, The Guts, in which we get to catch up with The Commitments' manager, Jimmy Rabbitte, will be out in the US early in 2014 and I'm desperate to get my hands on an advance copy. Two Pints will have to tide me over until then.