Skip to main content

Book Lists

It's that time of year when book bloggers, reviewers, and readers of any public forum gather their top ten books of 2010. An odd time to do it, you might think, as there are still a few weeks of reading left to the year. But people are buying books now, you see, for the season of giving is at hand. And if you don't know what to give the literati in your midst, these lists should provide some sort of guide.

I am not making a list because I have hardly read anything but the fast-growing ZOVA catalog this year. Preceding my panel at Steamcon with Lisa Mantchev, I read her debut novel Eyes Like Stars, and along with everyone else on the planet finished up the Hunger Games trilogy with Mockingjay - for which, unlike with the first two, I did not provide a blog review.

In the absence of my own rigor, here are some lists from the more attentive world:

The New York Times Best 10 of 2010.

Amazon's list of the best from January to June.

and Amazon's list of best Comics & Graphic Novels.

Felix Gilman on Omnivoracious lists his top ten read in 2010. How we love him.

The Millions has been asking readers for their own lists of bests from 2010.

Indie booksellers share their favorites with NPR.

Laura Miller lists her bests at the Salon.

There are many more where these came from, but I think I'm much more interested in the lists people have for 2011. Not to rush the coming of a new year, but it is just around the corner, and 'twill be the season for unattainable resolutions. Anyone know what they'll be reading next year?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can someone please explain why my Quicktime isn't working? Anyone with prophetic awareness of my little Atlas, none so old but recently behaving so?
8 comments
Read more
because you were all wondering what I'm writing my dissertation on, here's a brief synopsis of my 'research context': When James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry in 1760, he went to great lengths to make the Fragments appear to be authentic remains of an ancient, heroic oral tradition. His reasons for this were largely political, and as such, influenced the content of the epics themselves. As an attempt to establish a particularly Scottish identity, the poems were quite effective. However, to do so required both a simplification and a manipulation of traditional mythology. Stripped of anagogical significance, the Ossian epics more or less represented an Enlightenment version of history, tradition, and mythic heritage. The stories themselves were changed by their very purpose and in turn changed the manner of representing myth in future narratives. Moreover, the emphasis on the Ossian epics as authentic tales from the past, as ‘fragments,’ served...
6 comments
Read more
Rounding out my year of dwelling in the Athens of the North, as Edinburgh was called during the Enlightenment, I have experienced the shortest night of my memory. Around eleven o'clock last night, I closed the curtains to a sky streaked with the dark blue of a finally setting sun. I fully intended to drop off to sleep immediately after, but as I usually do, found myself still putting around after two in the morning. Between the curtains, which I had not closed as well as I should have, I noticed something unusual. There was unnaturally natural light streaming through. I opened them wide only to find the sky streaked with the same blue they had been filled with but three hours before. Had there been any night at all? If so, I had closed my curtains to it, only to find morning rising just as sleep found me - morning in the middle of the night. Long live Scotland.
5 comments
Read more