Best Books – 2014
Best Books of 2014
Other Years: 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019
The following are the best books of 2014, as determined by book review trade magazines, national newspapers, and popular arts and culture publications. The Top 20 listed below was compiled by tallying the number of Best Books of the Year lists from major outlets. The parentheses following each book indicate the total number of lists on which the book was included.
Top 20
1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (37)
2. Lila by Marilynne Robinson (34)
3. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (33)
4. The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison (29)
5. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (28)
5. Redeployment by Phil Klay (28)
7. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (27)
8. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (26)
9. Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay (25)
9. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (25)
11. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (21)
12. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (21)
13. The Martian by Andy Weir (19)
13. On Immunity: An Innoculation by Eula Biss (19)
15. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi (18)
15. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (18)
15. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (18)
18. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (17)
18. Euphoria by Lily King (17)
18. How to Be Both by Ali Smith (17)
18. The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis (17)
Other Books on ten or more lists:
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart (16), Nora Webster by Colm Toibin (16), 10:04 by Ben Lerner (16), Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (15), The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber (14), In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides (14), Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford (14), My Struggle: Book 3 – Boyhood Island by Karl Ove Knausgaard (14), Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (13), Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (13), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (13), Yes, Please by Amy Poehler (12), All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (12), Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (12), Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson (12), Some Luck by Jane Smiley (12), Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr (12), An Untamed State by Roxane Gay (12), Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle (12), Bark: Stories by Lorrie Moore (11), Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn (11), The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez (11), The Children Act by Ian McEwan (11), Stone Mattress: Stories by Margaret Atwood (11), The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs (11), Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright (11), The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel (10), The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt (10), Family Life by Akhil Sharma (10), The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson (10), Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce (10), Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned” by Lena Dunham (10), To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris (10), An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (10)
