Books Read 2010

I definitely read more in 2010 than I have in recent years, but that is by number of books, not by page number. I haven't added them up this year. The few books in italics were re-reads. Below each section I'll indicate my favorites of the year!

Fiction - General and Literary
Allen, Sarah A. - The Girl Who Chased the Moon (269 pgs)
Atwood, Margaret - Oryx and Crake (376 pgs)
Atwood, Margaret - The Year of the Flood (434 pgs)
Baker, Nicholson - Room Temperature (116 pgs)
Bloom, Amy - Away (240 pgs)
Bloom, Amy - Love Invents Us (205 pgs)
Bolaño, Robert - 2666 (898 pgs)
Bolaño, Robert - Monsieur Pain (134 pgs)
Bratenberg, Gerd - Egalia's Daughters (269 pgs)
Byatt, A.S. - The Children's Book (675 pgs)
Bynum, Sarah - Ms. Hempel Chronicles (193 pgs)
Calvino, Italo - If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (260 pgs)
Carey, Peter - Parrot & Olivier in America (380 pgs)
Catton, Eleanor - The Rehearsal (312 pgs)
Clifford, M. - The Book (302 pgs)
Coetzee, J. M. - Diary of a Bad Year (229 pgs)
DeLeeuw, Brian - In This Way I Was Saved (294 pgs)
DeLillo, Don - Point Omega (117 pgs)
DeLillo, Don - White Noise (310 pgs)
Donoghue, Emma - Room (321 pgs)
Egan, Jennifer - A Visit from the Good Squad (274 pgs)
Ferris, Joshua - Then We Came to the End (385 pgs)
Forster, E.M. - Howard's End (352 pgs)
Franzen, Jonathan - Freedom (562 pgs)
Galgut, Damon - In a Strange Room (180 pgs)
Galloway, Steven - The Cellist of Sarajevo (235 pgs)
Giordano, Paolo - The Solitude of Prime Numbers (288 pgs)
Greene, Graham - Our Man in Havana (242 pgs)
Hegarty, Ciara - The Road to the Sea (304 pgs)
Hely, Steve - How I Became a Famous Novelist (322 pgs)
Highsmith, Patricia - The Talented Mr. Ripley (295 pgs)
Hoffman, Alice - The Story Sisters (325 pgs)
Hornby, Nick - Juliet, Naked (406 pgs)
Isherwood, Christopher - A Single Man (186 pgs)
Jacobson, Howard - The Finkler Question (307 pgs)
Jeter, John - The Plunder Room (295 pgs)
Kafka, Franz - Metamorphosis (76 pgs)
Kerouac, Jack - On the Road (307 pgs)
Keyes, Daniel - Flowers for Algernon (274 pgs)
Kostova, Elizabeth - The Swan Thieves (565 pgs)
Krauss, Nicole - Great House
Langer, Adam - The Thieves of Manhattan (259 pgs)
Larsson, Stieg - The Girl Who Played With Fire (503 pgs)
Larsson, Stieg - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (563 pgs)
Le Carre', John - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (379 pgs)
Mackie, Emily - And This Is True (346 pgs)
Mahajan, Karan - Family Planning (264 pgs)
Mawer, Simon - The Glass Room (405 pgs)
McEwan, Ian - The Comfort of Strangers (153 pgs)
McEwan, Ian - Solar (304 pgs)
Mendelsohn, Jane - American Music (237 pgs)
Mitchell, David - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (479 pgs)
Mohamed, Nadifa - Black Mamba Boy (280 pgs)
Niven, Jennifer - Velva Jean Learns to Drive (404 pgs)
Petterson, Per - Out Stealing Horses (258 pgs)
Rachman, Tom - The Imperfectionists (272 pgs)
Russo, Richard - That Old Cape Magic (261 pgs)
Sackville, Amy - The Still Point (307 pgs)
Seth, Vikram - An Equal Music (484 pgs)
Shaw, Ali - The Girl with Glass Feet (287 pgs)
Shteyngart, Gary - Super Sad True Love Story (334 pgs)
Stewart, Leah - Husband and Wife (344 pgs)
Stockett, Kathryn - The Help (451 pgs)
Stuart, Julia - The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise (304 pgs)

Best of fiction: Phew, great year. The Krauss, Kerouac, Petterson, Rachman, Seth, and Mitchell were all great. So was the Stockett, and the Atwood were even better the second time through.


Fiction - Science Fiction and Fantasy
Abbot, Edwin A. - Flatland (239 pgs)
Abercrombie, Joe - The Blade Itself (529 pgs)
Bacigalupi, Paolo - The Windup Girl (359 pgs)
Bradley, Darin - Noise (222 pgs)
Doctorow, Cory - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (208 pgs)
Gibson, William - Zero History (404 pgs)
Heinlein, Robert - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (383 pgs)
LeGuin, Ursula - The Left Hand of Darkness (286 pgs)
LeGuin, Ursula - The Dispossessed (387 pgs)
Mieville, China - The City and the City (312 pgs)
Priest, Cherie - Boneshaker (416 pgs)
Sawyer, Robert - WWW:Wake (356 pgs)
Swirsky, Rachel - A Memory of Wind (no pgs)
Swirksy, Rachel - Eros, Philia, Agape (no pgs)
Tepper, Sheri S. - A Plague of Angels (560 pgs)
Tregillis, Ian - Bitter Seeds (352 pgs)
Valente, Catherynne M. - Palimpsest (367 pgs)
Valente, Catherynne M. - The Grass-Cutting Sword (129 pgs)
Valente, Catherynne M. - Yume No Hon (149 pgs)
Valente, Catherynne M. - The Orphan's Tales, vol. 1: In the Night Garden (483 pgs)
Wilson, Robert C. - Julian Comstock (413 pgs)
Yu, Charles - How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (239 pgs)

Best of science-fiction and fantasy: This is the year I fell in love with Catherynne Valente, and Palimpsest was probably my favorite book all year.

Fiction - YA
Bacigalupi, Paolo - Ship Breaker (323 pgs)
Collins, Suzanne - The Hunger Games (374 pgs)
Collins, Suzanne - Catching Fire (391 pgs)
Collins, Suzanne - Mockingjay (400 pgs)
Erskine, Kathryn - Mockingbird (235 pgs)
Myers, Walter Dean - Lockdown (256 pgs)
Williams-Garcia, Rita - One Crazy Summer (218 pgs)


Fiction - Graphic Novels
Doxiadis, Apostolos Logicomix (352 pgs)
Kindt, Matt - Revolver

Nonfiction including travel writing and memoirs

Apple, Sam - Schlepping through the Alps (288 pgs)
Carr, Nicholas - The Shallows (276 pgs)
Dunn, Jancee - Why is my Mother Getting a Tattoo? (208 pgs)
Feldman, Jessica, ed. - What Should I Read Next? (282 pgs)
Katz, Vincent - Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (328 pgs)
Harris, Mary E. - The Arts at Black Mountain College (315 pgs)
Horowitz, Joseph - Artists in Exile (458 pgs)
Janzen, Rhoda - Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (221 pgs)
Johnson, Marilyn - This Book Is Overdue! (272 pgs)
Mahoney, Rosemary - Down the Nile (304 pgs)
Medina, John - Brain Rules (299 pgs)
Reardon, Joan - As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto (432 pgs)
Riotte, Louise - Carrots Love Tomatoes (224 pgs)
Shonagon, Sei - The Pillow Book (268 pgs)
Watkins, Glenn - The Gesualdo Hex (384 pgs)
Williams, Jonathan - A Palpable Elysium: portraits of genius and solitude (175 pgs)
Wilson, Edward - The Future of Life (229 pgs)

Best of non-fiction: The Nicholas Carr was just excellent, as were the letters of Julia Child.

Poetry
Bird, Caroline - Watering Can (82 pgs)
Budy, Andrea (ed) - When She Named Fire (409 pgs)
D.A., Adebe - Ex Nihilo (72 pgs)
Fenton, Elyse - Clamor (77 pgs)
Graber, Kathleen - The eternal city (74 pgs)
Hayes, Terrance - Lighthead (95 pgs)
Kilalea, Katharine - One Eye'd Leigh (53 pgs)
Loy, Mina - The Lost Lunar Baedeker (236 pgs)
Malech, Dora - Shore ordered ocean (93 pgs)
Masters, Edgar Lee - Spoon River Anthology (248 pgs)
Morse, Drew (ed) - The 2007 Rhysling Anthology (131 pgs)
O'Sullivan, Leanne - Cailleach: the Hag of Beara (82 pgs)
Parisi, Joseph - 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women (282 pgs)
Pastan, Linda - Queen of a Rainy Country (77 pgs)
Pastan, Linda - PM/AM (112 pgs)
Pushkin, Alexander - Selected Lyric Poetry (204 pgs)
Ryan, Kay - The Best of It (270 pgs)
Sandburg, Carl - The Complete Poems (797 pgs)
Strand, Mark - Selected Poems (152 pgs)
Valente, Catherynne M. - Apocrypha (121 pgs)
Valente, Catherynne M. - Oracles (82 pgs)
Youn, Monica - Ignatz (69 pgs)

Best of poetry: Adebe and Valente. This reminds me that I want to go back and read more of Mina Loy.


Short Stories
Barth, John - Lost in the Funhouse (201 pgs)
Baxter, Charles - A Relative Stranger (223 pgs)
Bloom, Amy - A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (163 pgs)
Bloom, Amy - Where the God of Love Hangs Out (201 pgs)
De Lint, Charles - Muse and Reverie (350 pgs)
Diaz, Junot - Drown (208 pgs)
Donaghue, Emma - Touchy Subjects (278 pgs)
Eisenberg, Deborah - Twilight of the Superheroes (225 pgs)
Fowler, Karen Joy - What I Didn't See: Stories (208 pgs)
Franco, James - Palo Alto (197 pgs)
Homes, A. M. - The Safety of Objects (173 pgs)
Johnson, Denis - Jesus' Son (133 pgs)
Lahiri, Jhumpa - Unaccustomed Earth (333 pgs)
Meloy, Maile - Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It (219 pgs)
Munro, Alice - Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories (323 pgs)
Munro, Alice - Too Much Happiness (304 pgs)
Orringer, Julie - How to Breathe Underwater (226 pgs)
Tolstoy, Leo - Tolstoy's Short Fiction (510 pgs)

Best of short stories: Denis Johnson, Maile Meloy, and Amy Bloom.