Last year, I curated my 2013 best of the best books to read from the top fave recommendations from people I trust along with a few of my own favorites. Last year, I wanted an extensive list with many options.
This year’s list is more targeted and selective. The books within fall into two categories:
My 2013 favorites. These are the books I couldn’t put down, that wouldn’t leave my mind, that changed the way I see things or the way I lived my life. Quite a few, as you’ll see, are non-fiction and focus on the ways big companies manage the marketplace.
Books I plan to read soon populate the second category. These have piqued my curiosity for any number of reasons. I’ve done my best to also include the links and resources that lead me to each book. Oh and a couple of them written by friends, which I find particularly cool.
Without further ado, I give you my reading list for 2014.
1. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
This book includes some quotable gems such as “It had the fingerprints of big meat all over it” and “It sent waves of excitement through the cheese industry.”
Michael Moss does a fantastically well researched and balanced job of uncovering how the processed food industry has systematically changed the way Americans eat and not for the better. It’s easy to say we make our choices, and the consumer is to blame. This book shows how a mixture of highly sophisticated marketing, research and even compliance on the part of the US government have allowed these large industries to overwhelm the public with unhealthy yet irresistible foods.
Another bonus of reading this book? It sparked an idea of how I can finish a short story I began quite a few years ago. The story is all about cheese, and I will post it in the Fiction section as soon as it’s completed.
Following on the theme of eating habits and how we make food choices, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan also pops up everywhere. I’ve read In Defense of Food, which in many ways seems a pretty common sense way of looking at food and nutrition. This precursor book, though, has been on my list for a while. This is my year to read it.
2. The Family Traveler’s Handbook by Mara Gorman
“I spent my junior year of college in Paris, and since then have collected other travel experiences like lovely beads on a necklace: Venice, Bath, Santorini, Mumbai, and a long roster of cities in North America. There is virtually no place that does not appeal to me.”
So we learn about how Mara’s love affair with travel began and why she wanted to travel with her own family, starting from early in the life of her first child. Thus, Mara’s traveling advice for families is hard won through real, joyful experience, sometimes trial and error.
The Family Traveler’s Handbook will help you prepare for everything from a short road trip to visit family to year long travel abroad.
p.s. Mara is one of the authors in this list whom I know. We met this past June at TBEX in Toronto. Her book is as authentic and knowledgeable as she. You can read more about her travel on her blog The Mother of all Trips.
3. The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg
The Power of Habit begins by breaking down the nature of how we form and adhere to habits then shows how we can break or change habits by tweaking our habit cycles. That part is interesting and certainly helps the self, but where this book particularly fascinates is when it begins to discuss how major corporations collect data on our habits so they can market more efficiently and sell more.
One particularly striking example is how Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before father did.
The Power of Habit follows the traditions and tone of Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakanomics team in terms of thought process, presentation of scientific fact and even uses many of the same examples.
Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings reviews a simpler book titled Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don’t and How to Make Any Change Stick by Dean Jeremy. I’m curious to read that one as well.
4. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Last year this book was on my want to read list. Now it’s on my list of favorite books ever. I just loved it.
I grew up Orthodox Jewish, and as part of such, I learned a lot of Holocaust history and how it impacted the European Jewish community. I am, thus, always fascinated to read about World War II from a different perspective.
More than that, The Book Thief doesn’t disappoint in ways most fiction unfortunately does. It’s tough to write a book that makes me believe. When I finish a work of fiction, I want to feel a completeness to the story. I must have a clear, honest message. I need loose ends tied. I want to be shown the world in a way I hadn’t seen it before. I know. A tall order.
The Book Thief did all this for me. I plan to reread in 2014.
5. Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are by Sebastian Seung
A connectome is a comprehensive map of the human brain used to decipher how the brain works, how structure relates to function and why we are who and what we are. Sebastien Seung popularized the term in his 2010 TED Global talk on the subject.
6. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
I admit, I didn’t love Eat, Pray, Love. I even mention it in my last list of books as one that I read because I had nothing else to read. So why am I so curious to read this new book?
Two reasons.
One. It’s a botanical book. I,too, have a love of plants, knowing their latin names and how to use them medicinally. It’s always been a dream of mine to live in Cinque Terra, study the plants there and write about it.
Two. Her second book redefines her as an author.
As she explains in The Huffington Post:
Okay, don’t travel the world. Do the opposite.” We’d just moved to Frenchtown and I thought I’d write about staying put. Learn where I was in intimate detail. And as I started to write a proposal, I came upon a book that was exactly that idea.
That she makes an effort to do that which she hadn’t done before intrigues me. All writers should continually challenge themselves, write different parts of the world and explore. For this reason alone, I’m more than willing to give her a second chance.
7. Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi
I know very little about this book beyond its description.
Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku’s death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before.
Otherwise, all I hear is rave reviews. It’s a must read, beautiful written,
I like to include at least one book in my reading that I pick up knowing very little about the background. This is the one.
8. Give and Take by Adam Grant
I first read about Adam Grant’s take on doing business in The New York Times article “Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead.”
As you may have already noticed, I have little patience for marketing as a method of manipulation. Most of my life, I told myself I could never start my own business, and indeed even turned down opportunities, because I thought the take-based, who-cares-about-the-consumer-unless-they’re-buying business model was my only option.
This book — along with Peter Shankman’s Nice Companies Finish First — turns the old paradigm on its head to say, it’s ok to give. It’s ok to think about what others need, and in fact, putting others first can actually help you succeed.
I like that. I want to know more.
>9. The Book of Ash by John McCaffrey
John and I earned our MA in creative writing together at CCNY. He has a sharp, wry sense of humor, and I loved everything I read of his in class. So when I saw he published a book that melds dystopian vision — oft-compared to George Orwell’s 1984 — and self-helpy goodness, I downloaded the Kindle version immediately.
10. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
In a past life, I edited the Life section of Matador Network. That’s when I met Candice Walsh. Candice created for herself a 52-book challenge for 2013 in which she designed to read one book a week for the entire year.
She did it.
As I read through her list, this one particular book kept appearing as favorite, most likely to make her cry, most-recommended, most likely to read again in 2014. So here it is on my list as well.
Other books she read that I add to my list? Independent People by Halldor Laxness.
