Lit Addicted Brit: The Top Ten Books of 2014

How has Christmas been and gone?! I adore Christmas and all of its sparkly, gift-giving fabulousness and the last few days have been a run of family, friends, too much food, plenty of prosecco and, perhaps most importantly, no work. I hope you all had the most wonderful of wonderful Christmas times and received enough books to sink a ship.

There'll be a Christmas goodies post over the next few days but for now I'm feeling ponderous so I'm rolling out my Top Ten Books of 2014! Although I actually have read more new releases this year than I normally read, this will still just be a list of the books that I've read this year. And they won't be in any particular order because if I try to rank them, I'll be here all night.

There's no bad time to read this book - it might actually be the perfect antidote to all of the turkey dozes and hangovers that seem prevalent at this time of year. I expected to like this but I don't think I expected to love it. Shows how wrong I can be!

I ran a really well-supported half marathon in September and it was such an uplifting and exhilarating event. This book keyed me up and kept me at my training programme even when it was cold/wet/I ached. It even made me want to run a marathon just once, just for the experience. (Hopefully by the time I'm 30 because that seems like an appropriately arbitrary milestone. I'm not sure if it'll be 2015 because I know that the first quarter will be insanely busy at work but maybe by August 2016). If you want to achieve anything, this is the book for you.

This book is the epitome of heart-warming. It manages to be warm and comforting while being painfully sad by weaving in anecdotes from the society members' experience of the Second World War. I listened to the Books on Tape audio version and it was perfection. Every single one of the actors sounded completely right and I felt genuinely sad when I'd finished it.

I, along with the rest of the world, adore Rainbow Rowell. She does bitter-sweet like no author I can think of and her books just make me want to stop the world and read. This one captures everything that is first love and had me sobbing all over the pages. It scored extra points for not having a completely predictable ending. I have Fangirl to read and Landline still to acquire and read and I'm sure that both of them will live up to my lofty expectations.

I may be cheating by lumping three books into one but I can't distinguish from them so cheat I shall. I love everything about this series. I love that it has romance threads that I care about it. That it has a main character who doesn't always do what you expect. That it has a tangent of a storyline that had me rooting for a runt of a wyvern and a blood-thirsty witch. It has everything that you could possibly want from a YA fantasy series and if you haven't already read it, you're crazy. I am unbelievably glad that it isn't just a trilogy.

This was my first five star rating of the year. It's quieter than a lot of World War I novels but is just as impactive. More so, actually. I read it way back in January and it remains one of the best books of the year so I guess that says enough.

I started reading this as part of the RIP read-along but by that time I was so far behind on posts and so busy at work that I never got round to praising it properly. It's a short book but it's clever and the writing is stellar. It's probably the best haunted house novel that I've read. The fact that the horrendous adaptation featuring Catherine Zeta Jones exists is a travesty.

I had an excellent run in January, it would seem! I loved the idea of getting to try again and again but it's the execution that makes this a great book. It also manages to look at both World War I and World War II without being clumsy or heavy-handed.

I'm going to try to squeeze a review of this in over the next week or so but in the meantime - this book was the most surprising of the year for me. I kind of expected a coming of age type historical fiction story but The Miniaturist was a lot darker. It might not be for everybody and it isn't perfect but it's distinctive and great if you want something different (and gloomy) to kick off 2015.

I've read more classics this year than in previous years but this one was my favourite, edging out The Count of Monte Cristo. Lucy Snowe is among the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. I enjoyed it at the time but I don't think I thought it would make my top books for 2014 but the more I've reflected on it, the more I've realised how brilliant it is. It's not quite Jane Eyre but it's bloody good.