We Just Can't Resist One More Best Book List for 2014

Each year the editor's at Booklist pick their top choices from the hundreds of books they review that year . . . not an easy feat! Here are their "Top of the List" for 2014:

Non-Fiction

Fiction

Audio

The Human Age by Diane Ackerman: (Non-Fiction)

Explores how human beings have become the dominant force shaping Earth's future by subduing three-quarters of the planet's surface, tinkering with nature, and altering the climate.

"Without denying that the Human Age has triggered global warming and a terrifying mass extinction, Ackerman banks on our ability to address looming crises with creativity and determination in this precisely illuminating, witty, and resplendently expressive guide to the framework for a more positively human and humane future."  - reviewed by Donna Seaman, Booklist, July 2014.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: (Fiction)

A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast.

"A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr’s magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed. . . . Doerr masterfully and knowledgeably re-creates the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers." - reviewed by Brad Hooper, Booklist, April 15, 2014.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin; read by Meryl Streep (Audio)

A provocative imagining of the later years of the mother of Jesus finds her living a solitary existence in Ephesus years after her son's crucifixion and struggling with guilt, anger, and feelings that her son is not the son of God and that his sacrifice was not for a worthy cause.

"Tóibín’s tale of one woman’s almost unfathomable sorrow is masterfully told with a grasp of lyrical, affecting language seemingly intended for the audio format. . . . The choice of Streep for the narration is brilliant, as she brings her much-acclaimed talents to the challenge of what is, for all purposes, a three-hour one-woman show." - reviewed by Brian Odom, Booklist, March 1, 2014.