Our Year in Reading 2014

[caption id="attachment_1723" align="alignleft" width="190"] A long, mesmerizing read about a really dysfunctional society.[/caption] This was the year of long books for me and my spouse. Dan read Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov. I read The Goldfinch and The Tale of Genji. Needless to say -- but I'll say it anyway -- those books not originally written in English, we read in translation. In fact, most of Dan's reading for the year was work in translation. I actually attempted to read Genji in a modern Japanese version, an attempt that lasted two hours and one paragraph. This year my family did a new thing, which was reading a summer book that all four of us agreed to read. We selected One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was, needless to say -- but I'll say it anyway -- an inspired choice, and a fitting tribute to the author, who died in April. Another new thing: I'm giving Goodreads a try. ...