2014 in reading

I continue to maintain my spreadsheet of books read, and I've gotta say that 2014 was a fantastic year for reading books, even if I only read two books that were actually published in 2014:

• The Blood of Olympus ends the latest Percy Jackson series.  It's a perfectly enjoyable read, but feels like a step down from the quality of structure Riordan achieved in The Son of Neptune.  Still, my family will be back next year for the first book in his Norse gods series.
• In the Red is Elena Mauli Shapiro's second novel (full disclosure: the author is a friend), and the story is completely unrelated to her debut novel 13, Rue Thérèse.  I liked In the Red, because I greatly appreciate the brutal honesty of Elena's prose, but both liked and enjoyed 13, Rue Thérèse.  

Books I wish I'd known about before:

• Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and Privilege of the Sword.  The latter was on my reading list only because it was a finalist for the 2007 Nebula Award (I'll hold off on saying it was robbed until I read Seeker), but it's even better if you've read Swordspoint, an excellent and extremely underappreciated novel when it was published in 1987, as an appetizer.
• The Awakening. I suppose it's been on the shelf since I moved in with my spouse, but I never really looked at it before.  The Wikipedia article calls Wharton and James contemporaries, but Kate Chopin is dead before The House of Mirth is published, and something about James' writing has always driven me nuts; I can't read him. So The Awakening is huge to me.  

Books that were better than I expected:

• The Rise of Silas Lapham suffers from some dull moments and a dreadfully poor Impediment To Happiness, but also has some very well-written and funny passages.  For a novel published in 1885 by an author I'd never heard of, it was a pleasant surprise.
• The Quiet American is a Vietnam war novel.  At first, I thought, "Yawn, we've seen it before."  But... it's set in the early 50's, before the United States is fully engaged, so it's a very different sort of story.  Well worth the brief time it took to read.  (Then as an antidote, the hilarious Our Man in Havana; while reading it, I imagined Alec Guinness in the lead role of a film version, and to my delight, such a thing exists!)
• Among Others, for reasons explained in the linked-to blog post.
• But the biggest surprise of all was Moonraker. I hadn't read any of Fleming's books before this year, so my mind's concept of Moonraker is that awful 1979 Roger Moore movie.  The book, though!  My, my, my.  I may have to read the rest of the Bond series.

Other highlights:

• The Fault in Our Stars may actually have been my favorite book this year.  By stars in my "rating system" it is, but with 20/20 rosy memories, I may be more fond of Kushner.
• There were several other books on my reading list with a star.  I'm too lazy to call them all out here, go look for yourself (scroll to the bottom).