The Best Books of 2014

2014 was an average year numbers wise with a total of 72 books reviewed. As always I tried to keep my reading as varied as possible with a few surprises (both for you and me) to keep things interesting. Looking back on the highlights I think that I had a pretty good year. I didn’t hit some of my targets (or aspirations – sometimes by a long way) but I’ll revisit those this year and give it another go. Anyway – in the usual Fiction/Non-Fiction breakdown the best books of 2014 where:

Fiction

No Dominion by Charlie Huston
The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory
Blood of Honour by James Holland
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham
The Peshawar Lancers by S M Stirling
Distant Thunders by Taylor Anderson
Half the Blood of Brooklyn by Charlie Huston
The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane
Designated Targets by John Birmingham

That I think was a very good mix of SF, Vampires, Historical and even what I would call a mainstream novel making it into the ranking. Charlie Huston continues to knock it out of the park for me and John Birmingham is definitely my Fiction Author of the Year – twice blowing me away with his amazing Alt-History WW2 novels.

Non-Fiction

The Gun - The Story of the AK-47 by C J Chivers
The Birth of Classical Europe by Simon Price and Peter Thonemann
1913 by Florian Illes
A War like no Other by Victor Davies Hanson
The History of the First World War by Basil H Liddell Hart
On the Spartacus Road by Peter Stothard
What Matters in Jane Austen? By John Mullan
Coronel and The Falklands by Geoffrey Bennett
Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik
Americans in Paris by Charles Glass
Concretopia by John Grindrod
The Domesticated Brain by Bruce Hood
Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein
1848 by Mike Rapport
Eleven Days in August by Matthew Cobb

As is often the case these days my non-fiction reading is history and especially military history heavy and that’s reflected here. But it is nice to see a small smattering of science, philosophy and Lit Crit creeping in too. Much more of all of that in 2015. I think I have some real treats in store. I’m going to continue with my 10 book themes in fiction (coming up next is 10 novels by women authors) and I’m also enjoying my non-fiction ‘blitz’ idea of reading 3 books on a small subject in quick succession rather than wandering from subject to subject at every turn and change of the wind. I’m one book in to my blitz on Economics but that’s going to be parked for a while whilst I concentrate on non-fiction by women authors over the next few months. 2015 should also bring an increase in political reading – from The Left – which should hopefully be interesting and will be a much needed deepening of my knowledge in that area. Needless to say I have some good things planned for the 12 months ahead. Oh, and not forgetting my continued exploration of WW1 and specifically the origins of that great calamity.