Every year, I make it a goal to read 100 books. Some years, I get pretty close (77 is my best); some years (like this year), I don’t even make it to 20. I’ve yet to actually hit 100, but I always feel that it’s a good goal to strive towards, and every year, I always think, “This is the one!” I know last year was a little crazy with a lot of big life changes, so hopefully, this year presents itself with a little more stability, which means a bit more reading time, and maybe, just maybe, this is the year.
But that won’t be known until 2016. Instead, let’s have a look at what I did manage to read this year. Italics indicate a book I’ve read before this year, while bold text indicated that books I particularly enjoyed and highly recommend others to pick up, too. There is no particular order to the books listed below:
01. “Breed” by Chase Novak
02. “Star Wars: The Han Solo Trilogy Volume One: The Paradise Snare” by A.C. Crispin
03. “The Sharing Knife: Volume Three: Passage” by Lois McMaster Bujold
04. “Seeds of Time” by Kay Kenyon
05. “The Alchemist’s Daughter” by Katharine McMahon
06. “Sorcery & Cecelia, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot” by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
07. “The Midwife’s Apprentice” by Karen Cushman*
08. “The Jewel of the Thames: A Portia Adams Adventure” by Angela Misri
09. “Vignettes from the Late Ming: A Hsiao-p’in Anthology” translated and annotated by Yang Ye
10. “The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila” by herself
11. “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson
12. “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford
13. “The Books of Lies” by James Moloney
14. “What the Buddha Taught” by Walpola Rahula
15. “Music from the Dead” by Bebe Faas Rice*
16. “The Further Chronicles of Conan” by Robert Jordan*
17. “The Way: Volumes of the Vemreaux Book One” by Mary Twomey
18. “Mommy, May I?” by A.K. Alexander
* Technically, I didn’t finish these books in 2014, but there were fewer than 30 pages in each by January 1st, so I say they still count!
The real stand-out book was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson; I’m looking forward to reading more of her this year. The book I was the most disappointed with was Breed by Chase Novak, which I had been excited about at the beginning of the year, but it was such a steaming pile of awful. Such a let down! I find it interesting that I’ve been working on a lot of horror this year, and it turns out that the best and worst books are in the same genre.
Have you read any of the books on my list, too? What did you think of them? Have any recommendations to help me fill this shelf back up again? The first ones on the list for January are Fiend by Peter Stenson, The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned by Anne Rice, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Tell-Tale Corpse by Harold Schechter, The Fear Street Saga by R.L. Stine, Skylights by Luther M. Siler, and Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Hon Halliday.
Happy reading!
L.S. Engler 
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