Requirements for this list: great prose and good storytelling for both fiction and non-fiction, and — when the last page is turned ­— something within us should be changed: an opinion, an understanding, a geographic point of view, a cultural appreciation, or if it’s really good, a revelation. These listed books — presented in no particular order — leap over one or all of these criteria. We don’t worry about when they were published, only that either Kathleen or the Cowboy read the book in 2014. We offer thanks (with a little wide-eyed envy, at least on Kathleen’s part, the Cowboy never gets jealous) to these sixteen writers.

Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in RussiaEmmanuel Carrère, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Truth is stranger than fiction. Through the lens of a single life story, an alternative everyman perspective on Russian history and culture, and a piercing glimpse into the country’s proud, contrarian, artistic soul.

Back to Back 
Julia Franck, Grove Press
Sister and brother Ella and Thomas are innocent, young and happy children when post-World War II’s newly borne East Germany begins its descent into isolation, paranoia and institutionalized cronyism. Even as a translation from the German, a nearly perfect and wrenching book. Not to be missed.The Other Alexander
Margarita Liberaki, Noonday
A thrift store special, Clark purchased this book, published in 1959, solely because of the blurb on the front cover from Albert Camus: “I am deeply moved by this book. It is true poetry.” Turns out, a war with one’s self is indeed mesmerizing and poetic. Thank you, Monsieur Camus, for the tip.

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Woman’s Prison 
Piper Kerman, Spiegel & Grau/Random House
Talk about a lesson-learned. Even with its uneven writing and unpredictable layering of anecdotes, this book still manages to sneak up on you. The prose is average, and that’s okay, because that’s not where the power rests. Kerman shines a light where it is so needed: the cumulative generational effect on women and children — and ultimately on society — of the misguided war-on-drugs. Take note: the book is deeper than the cool Netflix series, and the real Piper is an impressive advocate.

Redeployment
Phil Klay, Penguin
Go straight to hell in Iraq. This author has a spare writing style that amplifies a heart-wrenching honesty about the emotional and physical cost of this Kafkaesque war. All the connected stories work, but the chaplain’s perspective resonated particularly with Kathleen.

Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates
David Cordingly, Random House 
Delivering a 30-gun broadside of information, this is a fast voyage through a fascinating period of history. Sadly, there is no Captain Jack Sparrow. Rogues and brutes, all of them, but Clark did see glimmers of an anarchistic political philosophy. Slightly redemptive, but only slightly. Yarrrr.

Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918
Louis Barthas, Yale University Press
This self-described French pacifist, socialist and barrel-maker painstakingly chronicled his experiences in the trenches of World War I. Recently translated into English, it provides an invaluable first-person perspective on the grotesque brutality, disregard for life and collective stupidity of trench warfare. Warning: Don’t read before or after Redeployment. Contained in these pages is just too much disappointment in the human species.

The Silence of Animals: On Progress and other Modern Myths
John Gray, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Gray keeps us humble, reminding readers that disappointment — even that which is caused by the horrors of war — is just another hubristic way for humans to assert evolutionary culmination. Nope, we are not. We are animals. Facing up to that is the essence of existentialism. Accept life as it is. Expect nothing, except, likely, disappointment.

The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt, Little Brown/Hachette
A clever story with art as a central theme and intricate descriptions, this book is as wonderfully thick, meandering and ponderous as a 19^th century Russian novel (but one of the lighter-weight ones, in the Dr. Zhivago category). Kathleen’s faith in the reading world was lit anew with its best-seller popularity.

Shadow People
Erin Cole
In a town filled with rumors, cheaters, drug dealers and alien-abduction survivors, it is difficult to know what is real and what is not. This gem of a horror story grips from start to finish. The details are exquisite; especially the early appearance of portentous vulture feet. Unique.

Ignorance: How it Drives Science
Stuart Firestein, Oxford University Press
Honesty in a science book is rare. Scientist-writers tend toward pomposity or density, and typically mythologize the scientific process. In this book, we are reminded in exquisite and provocative prose that scientists are human, and their hypotheses, tactics and output, thus, are as well. Serendipity does indeed strike the prepared mind. A fabulous book.

The People in the Trees
Hanya Yanagihara, Anchor/Random House
The academy meets the jungle with an unusual level of detail, enhanced by its loose connection to real events of the era. Page-turning with accurate scientific descriptions, but not for the fainthearted. Kathleen is still pondering if the author played a cruel trick on his readers in the final chapter.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy, the master
As he lay dying, Ivan treasures unbearable physical pain, soul-wrenching regret and volcanic marital rage, given the light-extinguishing alternative. Tolstoy was apparently going through a spiritual crisis when he wrote this novella, and it shows. Writing as personal penance.

Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert
William Langewiesche, Vintage/Random House
Ride along on this epic journey across a desert as large as the continental United States. Deceptively plain, poetic prose as if conscious of — or at least appropriately influenced by — the desert itself.

Goat Mountain
David Vann, HarperCollins
A dark, crackling story about a boy, his father and his grandfather who go deer hunting in the mountains of California in the late 70s. The book plumbs the depths of violent urges, and the dynamics between generations of males in a lyrical, moving style. It also managed to be a startling mirror of Clark’s rural upbringing.

Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe
Jim Davies, Palgrave Macmillan Trade
Why does the brain sit up and pay attention? Premised on evolutionary psychology — shorthand for “fascinating, but impossible to verify” — this book posits some answers. Did you know lonely people find rooms coldest and that riding an escalator up makes you more generous than going down?

Related: Want more good stuff? Check out our Best of 2013 list.deeo.ru