What did you read in 2014?

Also my first Colette, Four Short Novels:

Haphazard months, needy periods of waiting. Does all this, then, happen in a woman's life because of certain definite infractions and disobediences, through individual omissions, the breach of a companionship with one man, the choice of another, and then the fact of being chosen by yet a third? The long sequence of household cares, of toil with the needle, of turned skirts---"My dear, I swear it's better than right-side out!"---of ingenuities which one pretends are little triumphs, are not, then, the result of pure hazard, but of a hostile, almost fatalistic power? She thought without gratitude of old Becker's gratuitous alms-giving. She called to mind those little festivities of the flesh, swiftly conducted and swiftly forgotten, exasperated moments from which a broken masculine voice seemed to rise up to Julie's ears. 'It's not their real voice,' thought Julie, 'but the voice of an instant.'
..."Julie, you're not feeling ill, are you?"
She shook her head and smiled patiently. 'No,' she answered within herself. 'I'm just waiting for the moment when you are no longer there...You read through me into another man, and you treat him as an enemy. One would really think that Herbert has no secrets for you. You hate him and understand him. When I think of Esquivant you ask me if I'm feeling ill. What good advice you give me from the height of your twenty-eight years! An honest little counsellor, one of those plebeian marvels that chance sometimes places at the elbows of queens. But the bitches of queens go to bed with the marvel and turn him into a trumpery duke, an embittered lover and a misunderstood statesman. With you as my advisor I'd never do "anything silly," as you so nicely put it.'
She emptied her glass of brandy at a gulp, though it was a very old brandy, and worth serious attention, a smooth and civilized brandy.
"Alley-oop!" said Julie, putting her glass down.
"Bravo!" said Coco Vatard.
'If he only knew what he was applauding! Nothing silly any more---that's tantamount to saying I'll never be any use to anyone anymore---not even to myself. He'll keep me from ruing myself, or from being taken in. People can always ruin themselves, even when they've got nothing.'

original 2014 post cont.:
Ornamental Cabbage, thanks so much for encouraging me to read this collection of short novels by Colette! So many scary speed bumps for the simple male mind---I want to trot around Paris with Julie de Carneilhan 4ever, and sometimes feel that I have, with her American frienemies (can't really keep up, of course, but)

I read more books for pleasure in 2014 than I've read in any other year of my adult life (but it's still a fairly short list):

Caitlín Kiernan - The Red Tree
Jeff VanderMeer - City of Saints and Madmen
Nina Kirika Hoffman - A Fistful of Sky
Tanith Lee - The Book of the Damned
Edwin Abbott Abbott - Flatland
M. John Harrison - Viriconium Nights
M. John Harrison - A Storm of Wings
M. John Harrison - The Pastel City
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson - The Lottery and Other Stories
C. J. Cherryh - Cyteen
Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Alan Garner - The Stone Book Quartet
Clifford Simak - Way Station
Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass
Diana Wynne Jones - Hexwood
John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids
Patricia McKillip - The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Robin McKinley - The Blue Sword
Mervyn Peake - Gormenghast
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan
Jack Vance - The Dying Earth
Hope Mirrlees- Lud-in-the-Mist

books I didn't finish in 2014:

Mervyn Peake - Titus Alone (was immediately disappointed by the change in tone/style, but I plan to start it again soon — maybe I'll appreciate it more when the first two Gormenghast books aren't so fresh on my mind)
Isak Dinesen - Seven Gothic Tales (I like her flowery faux-Victorian prose, but I can only tolerate a little at a time)
Joy Chant - Red Moon and Black Mountain (an early Narnia/LotR clone. I gave up shortly after the epic battle between the good white eagles and the evil black eagles)
Ray Bradbury - Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (a lot of this is second-rate Bradbury, isn't it? I think I'm better off reading some more of his original collections or getting this)

I've also developed the habit of starting a series without finishing it. I didn't finish Vance's Dying Earth, Harrison's Viriconium, McKinkley's Damar, Peake's Gormenghast, VanDermeer's Ambergris, and Lee's Paradys. hopefully I can catch up on a few of them this year.

books I wish I didn't finish in 2014:

Nina Kirika Hoffman - A Fistful of Sky (blecch)