We know, we know, another end-of-year list, but in some ways this could be the most useful one you'll read this month. Why? Because in early January, most of us cobble together a list of things we want to accomplish in the coming year, and what better way to inspire yourself to write a book, start a gospel group, or establish a new branch of science than to dive into the lives of the accomplished few who did? Below are nine picks of the most extraordinary biographies from 2014. Not all of these biographies can or should be used as strict guidelines for living (after all, vice often complements the virtue of ambition) but they do brighten our understanding of the astounding mark some leave on the foot trails of human culture.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

In this excellent book, biographer and academic Hermione Lee takes on the life of Penelope Fitzgerald, Britain’s quietest, most unassuming literary genius. Fitzgerald didn’t publish her first book, a biography of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, until she was fifty-eight, but she made up for lost time by winning the Man Booker Prize, the Golden PEN Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award before her death at eighty-three.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs

Jeff Hobbs investigates the life of his college roommate at Yale, a young black man from the streets of Newark who, although a brilliant science student, chose a life of drugs and crime over his Ivy League education. A gut-wrenching meditation on race, class, and the struggle humans endure to unify their oft-conflicted selves.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

A biography of a comic book character? In the hands of The New Yorker writer Jill Lepore, this book is so much more than the story of a two-dimensional super-heroine. Lepore uncovers the story of William Moulton Marston, the architect of Wonder Woman (and also inventor of the lie detector test), and shows how the brewing ideals of feminism shaped Marton’s iconic creation.

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Long-time drama critic for The New Yorker John Lahr dives into the colorful yet tortured psyche of Tennessee Williams, doubtlessly one of America’s greatest playwrights. From an upbringing so gothic it rivals Capote’s to a tight friendship with theatrical genius Elia Kazan, from a string of hits that instantly entered the canon of literature to a handful of surrealist bombs, Williams’s life is the kind biography was made for, and Lahr rises to the challenge.

Becoming Freud by Adam Phillips

The father of psychoanalysis has been the focus of his fair share of biographies, but none have focused on Freud’s formative years the way Adam Phillips’s Becoming Freud does. Part of Yale University’s Jewish Lives series, this book not only describes the development of the psychoanalyst and the discipline he founded, but also examines how his Judaism and immigrant status affected both.

Becoming Richard Pryor by Scott Saul

Like Freud, Pryor has long been an attractive subject for biographers, but UC Berkeley Professor Scott Saul has gone deeper than any previous biographical attempts. To achieve this, Saul interviewed family members and combed through unpublished journals and court transcripts. The result is a book, in the words of Mihael Chabon, that "makes Pryor, and the worlds he inhabited, come alive, with thrilling intensity."

Updike by Adam Begley

Like his sometimes-rival Cheever, Updike was a writer named John who liked to pick at the pretty exterior of American suburbia and see what he could find. The results of his excavations were some of the most vivid works of American literature to date, albeit ones marred somewhat by Updike’s obvious discomfort with the fairer sex. Journalist Begley is a compassionate biographer, but doesn’t avoid discussion of Updike’s stormy personal life.

Philip Larkin by James Booth

The rare poet to experience fame in his lifetime, Larkin was the author of such playful verses as "This Be the Verse" and "Love Again" who suffered a severe blow to his posthumous reputation when his published letters revealed some less-than-politically correct views about nearly everything. Noted Larkin scholar James Booth, who worked with the poet for seventeen years at the University of Hull in England, does an admirable job of painting a more nuanced portrait of the man once known as "England’s other Poet Laureate."

I’ll Take You There by Greg Kot

Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot charts the rise of the Staples Singers, a down-to-earth family gospel group who hosted soul food dinners in their home, influenced the Rolling Stones and John Fogerty, and counted Martin Luther King among their fans.