Books of 2010

Remember how much fun it was counting down all the books I had read in 2009? Wait…why are all the crickets chirping? That was fun, wasn’t it? WASN’T IT?! Okay, let’s try this again: remember how this is my blog? Offfff course you do! So let’s see how much fun I had reading in 2010, when I knocked out an impressive 65 books. (That term you’re looking for? Is geek chic, by the way.)

1. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
   I had a really hard time getting into this book. But I stuck with it and by the end, I still didn’t like it as much as I wanted to like it (if you know what I mean), but I really wanted to find out what happened to the characters. No matter what you think of the story, making you care about characters takes a certain amount of talent.  My original review is here. Overall: 3 ½ of 5 stars
2. The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery
   My original mini-review: “I don’t know if I can squeeze a mini-review from this book. I feel like it deserves a full review, but I’m not quite sure I have the words yet. I really loved the book, the characters, the plotline, the abstract discussions, the artfulness of the book – and still, not being versed at all in philosophy, I knew that I was only catching about one-fourth of what was offered. DON’T let that deter you from reading this book! Sure, a lot of the first half of the book seemed pretentious and philosophical meandering for meandering’s sake, but without it I don’t know that the characters would have seem as fleshed out or as dear to me when their storylines take off in the second half of the book. It seems a bit contradictory that stuffy, intellectual observations of a frumpy concierge and a precocious tween could “flesh” them out when hardly a dozen lines of dialogue are spent between them, but it really helps you know the characters when their paths cross and the plot explodes. Yes, explodes. Not a word you come across in philosophy texts very often. Um…I think.” 4 of 5 stars.
3. The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde
   A re-read of a favorite read from last year so I could catch up with the series. 5 of 5 stars
4. The Gunslinger – Stephen King
   Speaking of re-reads, I must be closing in on my 20th read…it’s been almost as many years since I first read it! 5 of 5 stars
5. The West Wing Scripts – Aaron Sorkin
   I read every single blessed script of the entire series so I could make a quote jar for my sister. And if you don’t think that counts as a novel (22 episodes per season, on average, over 7 seasons…) 5 of 5 stars
6. The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
   I seem to enjoy non-fiction in which the author writes – agonizes, really – obsessively over a singular event. In Magical Thinking that event was the sudden death of her husband and the ripples that kept coming again and again and again. It’s funny: I remember thinking after I put the book down that it was one I’d turn to again when the time came, and I remember identifying with Didion’s mad, driven desire to know, to absolutely know what had happened – even though it was plainly impossible (even to her) to do so…but even with such strong memories, I remember very little of this book aside from its emotional impact. 3 of 5 stars.
7. Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next #2) - Jasper Fforde
   Another re-read from last year’s series. 5 of 5 stars
8. The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next #3) – Jasper Fforde, and
9. Something Rotten (Thursday Next #4) – Jasper Fforde
   It’s hard to single out the Thursday Next books any more – I think of them as one delightful series, one you must, must read this year if you haven’t already. Truly one of the most innovative plot constructs you’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Books for book lovers – what could be more wonderful than that? One warning – these are not for mindless reads; you WILL be required to think! 5 of 5 stars.
10. The Witch of Portobello – Paulo Coelho
    As I said in my review here, I thought Witch would be a story-story, one with a timeline and a plot, one that you fall into and embrace as it enfolds you. Witch wasn’t like that at all. Witch was more of the other kind of story; one that is more springboard than story, one that makes you think and keeps throwing you out of the story instead of pulling you in as you ponder deep questions and try to figure out how life works exactly. As much as I enjoy the philosophical-type story, I wasn’t prepared and never quite shook my assumptions. 2 of 5 stars.
11. Homecoming – Cynthia Voigt
    One of my favorite series of all times. This is technically a YA novel, but one I will never get tired of reading. It’s on several reading lists for many grades – and for good reason. 5 of 5 stars
12. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards
    I had heard the book bandied about a place or two. My mom (or sister?) had read it recently and thought it was okay. So I gave it a whirl and have to agree – it was okay. Not wonderful. Surely not charming. But okay. The prose didn’t catch me and the plot was merely interesting enough to get me through it. Mediocre all the way. 2 ¾ of 5 stars.
13. There are a few books in here – 1…
14. 2…
15. 3…
16. 4… of them in fact – which were re-reads that we’re not going to speak of. Unmentionables. Ahem. Moving right along…
17. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
    Seriously, one of the best books I’ve read all year. Take Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, and mix him with Dwight from The Office and maybe throw in a smattering of 12-year-old boy. Voila! My new favorite protagonist and a very compulsive read. My mini-review can be found here. 5 of 5 stars.
18. Under the Dome – Stephen King
    Know what I love? When your anticipation for a particular book is far, far exceeded by how good the story actually is. That was Dome for me. It was classic King. Great plot, sympathetic and complicated characters, a good old-fashioned Maine town to abuse as the story’s setting…you name it, it’s here. As soon as I can pry it away from my sister, I’m re-reading – probably more than once. How many 1,000+ page stories can you say that about? 5 of 5 stars.
19. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
    This was one of the classics I knew I should have read and yet absolutely didn’t want to read. I knew it was science-fictiony, but I was thinking more along the lines of Douglas Adams’ sci-fi, not Orwellian alternate social universe type sci-fi. So I liked Brave New World a lot more than I thought I would, even if it wasn’t really all that much. 2 ¾ of 5 stars.
20. Deaf Sentence – David Lodge
    Oh, how much I wanted to like this book: a professor of language is growing increasingly deaf as he nears retirement age. So he decides to try an affair with a student. I honestly couldn’t tell you what happened after that because I was so bored I couldn’t understand any of the words floating past my eyes. 1 of 5 stars (and that’s for effort).
21. Songs for the Missing – Stewart O’Nan
    Songs wasn’t everything I thought it could be. It had the storyline of a teenage child suddenly missing, but none of the haunting, lyrical language of loss and pain like Enright’s The Gathering. I never stopped to look at the clock while I was reading (win!), but never minded putting the book down when my lunch hour was over, either (boo!). 3 of 5 stars.
22. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
    I read quite a few classics this year. As far as classics go, this one was okay. I had a heck of a time following the timeline, but other than that, it was…fine. Nothing spectacular, but not nearly as bad as some of the other classics I read (cough:CalloftheWild:cough). 2 of 5 stars
23. Quite a Year for Plums – Bailey White
    Oh, I hated this book. I read it, but only because one word kept following the word before it. It was entirely too southern to catch my interest at all. Not a single vignette did it for me. 1 of 5 stars
24. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
    If I had known how good this book was, I wouldn’t have been so down on Russian Lit all these years. Anna was a fabulously complicated character and the novel covers so many modern themes, employing along the way so many current literary techniques. Love. Faith. Fidelity to oneself and to a marriage. Treason. Freedom. Society pressures… It’s not wonder Anna is considered by many the greatest novel ever written. Not the lightest read, certainly, but one of the richest. 4 of 5 stars.
25. The Gathering – Anne Enright
    I consumed this book. It wasn’t the cheeriest read: a beloved brother dies – possibly by his own hand – and the family travels across England and Ireland to sit shiva (metaphorically, since, um, they’re Catholic) in the house their large brood grew up in. Meanwhile, the protagonist’s marriage is falling apart. Her reminiscing about her childhood, her current state of affairs, and whether everything has finally unhinged her, kept me gulping page after page. It didn’t hurt that Enright’s prose was so lyrical, so pitch perfect, so brilliantly stated that I could weep for her characters and mourn with them without wanting to kill myself. Pretty important balance when one is reading for entertainment, after all! 5 of 5 stars.
26. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
    I got a lot of slack from my friends for not being the biggest fan of Vanity Fair. To me, it was too overly (yet conveniently) dramatic, too Dickensian without the lovable Dickensian characters. It’s more like Barbies invaded a Dickens’ script. In any case, I hung on to the end because the plot was the sort that kept your interest, even if it did make you snort out loud at the convenience of it all. 2 of 5 stars.
27. Another unmentionable re-read… Hey, when times get tough, sometimes I read a trashy novel or two! (And sometimes they’re not even from the YA section…)
28. The Flying Troutmans – Miriam Toews
    I finished Miriam Toews’s truly excellent The Flying Troutmans in one sitting. Okay, actually, technically I finished it in three sittings, but it really wasn’t my fault. The first time I decided to save it for my upcoming plane ride, and the second time I stopped it was because we landed. Finally, I was able to inhale the rest of the brilliant, dark comedy. One of the best books I read this year. The rest of my review is here. 5 of 5 stars.
29. Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
    During my sister Rhi’s visit, we went on a mad shopping spree at Half-Price Books and each got 10-20 books or so (for less than $50 combined, FTW!). Cold Mountain was one of the books Rhi picked up because she adored the movie. Indeed, the movie won all sorts of awards, despite featuring two of my least favorite actresses (Nicole Kidman and Renee Zelwegger). So I gave it a whirl. Bad, bad idea. The book was horrible! I don’t know why everyone is claiming it’s the new Odyssey – okay, well, sure I can see the conceit in the plot, but without all of the acclaim and prowess. I highly doubt Cold Mountain will be around hundreds or thousands of years from now. (And if it is, I hope it’s very dusty and unused.) Sure, there were moments of redemption. But the plot was so slow it killed me. The description was uplifting at times, but mostly suffocated me. I wanted the book to inspire me! To move me! It did neither. 1 of 5 stars.
30. The Drawing of the Three – Stephen King, and
31. The Wasteland – Stephen King
    Books 2 and 3 from the Dark Tower series I was re-reading.
32. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1) – Rick Riordan
    My sister Kim was raving on and on about this series and how much she adored it. Once that happens, it means I’m going to have to read it, whether I want to or not. Happily, she mentioned that the series involved a bunch of Greek mythology (if you couldn’t tell from the title) and so I was intrigued. I may or may not have been geek chic enough to have studied quite a bit of mythology as a kid – I can neither confirm nor deny that rumor. What I can confirm is that Percy #1 was a pretty good book, if not all I thought it would be. The idea is pretty good, but I found Riordan’s writing much more suited for YA-dom than adult fiction, unlike some other books and series that have caught on in mainstream audiences. I would still recommend it because I think the problem is more with me than with Mr. Riordan’s lovely YA series. 3 of 5 stars.
33. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
    If you are A Reader and you have not read this book yet, go; read it. Now. It is the most wonderfully complicated and literary book I read all year. There wasn’t an ounce of fluff in it, everything was dripping with meaning and resonance, and basically make me happy the art of storytelling had been invented. Friends have dithered and told me they wouldn’t read it because they didn’t enjoy The Bean Trees or some other of Kingsolver’s novels. Don’t be that person. Poisonwood is so unique to Kingsolver’s body of work (or at least of the several I’ve read) that you can not deny yourself this breathtaking opus magnum because of any preconceived notions. Poisonwood will blow them all away in epic fashion. 5 of 5 stars and an extra wow.
34. Wizard and Glass – Stephen King
    Book 4 of the Dark Tower re-read…
35. The Almost Moon – Alice Sebold
    Sebold’s The Lovely Bones was one of my 10 best reads of 2009. Her memoir, Lucky, while not as good as her fiction, was still a compelling read. Imagine my disappointment when I couldn’t get into Almost Moon. At all. It certainly sounded appealing: a grown daughter, tired of dealing with her ailing mother’s manipulations for one more day of her miserable life does her in on an impulse. I mean, c’mon – who wouldn’t want to read that?! If Sebold had stuck to that storyline instead of dragging in an estranged ex-husband to help with covering up (or straightening out?) the crime, and wacky relationship with her best friend’s son, then maybe I could have stomached the book a bit longer. 1 of 5 stars.
36. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #2) – Rick Riordan
    The second in the Percy Jackson series. Not as charming as the first story, but still good for a young teen you might be trying to lure into reading. 3 of 5 stars
37. Smart Girl’s Guide to Her Parents’ Divorce
    Can I just say how much I adore this series? What a cool way to help tweens through some tough issues – and from an unbiased source, no less. A more expanded review is here. 3 of 5 stars
    
    
38. The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
    I had heard this book bandied about in a bunch of different places and I was looking for a book to read. So when a friend said she had been given a copy by a friend, I staked a claim and breezed through it. It was a nice story, southern (but in a sweet, charming, beekeeper kinda way), but not so much as to turn this yankee off the story. It was very filled with very strong female characters trying to find themselves; not too literary, not too fluffy – more of what I think to myself as legitimate chick lit (as opposed to that crappy love triangle beach read genre). If you see it lying around and have a day to kill, you could find worse books. On the other hand, if I’m being honest, there are much better ones, too. 3 of 5 stars
39. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
    Such a lovely, lovely movie. And a boring, boring book. I had such high hopes, Kazuo. I’m sure the fault is all mine. 1 of 5 stars
40. MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors – Richard Hooker
    This book had been on my To Read list for quite a long time. I finally broke down and bought it for my trip back home, thinking it would keep me entertained on the plane. I mean, who could fail to be amused by the antics of one Hawkeye Pierce? An excellent plan! Except the book was not anything like the TV series. It wasn’t even like the movie all that much. It was a good enough book, and enough sort of like a ghost of the show, to keep me engaged even though it wasn’t as lively or darkly comedic as I had hoped. 3 of 5 stars
41. The Song is You – Arthur Phillips
    This book, on the other hand, was wonderful enough to completely captivate my attention while I was on vacation. I had started the book at home – a library book – and couldn’t get it out of my head while I was away. So I went out and bought a copy so I could find out what happened next right that very moment. It is that good, people. Really, one of the best voiced novels, most unusual storylines, most perfectly scored and brilliantly ended novels I’ve read. It’s the story of an up-and-coming indie rocker from Ireland who catches the fancy of a recently divorced commercial producer in NYC. The two begin an interesting attachment – her leaving him coded messages in songs she sings in clubs, and him responding on fan forums and via coasters he sketches in the bars she plays at. It’s a book of longing, of trying to connect with music, with each other, with anything at all in the world around us. There’s just something about it I can’t quite grasp in words…and I promise you’ll be wondering at that same mysterious and captivating, addictive quality as you devour the pages like I did. 5 of 5 stars
42. The Weight of Silence – Heather Gundenkauf
    Any book I read after Song was doomed. Silence was okay, really. A girl affected by selective mutism and her best friend, a “normal” 6-year-old, are found missing from their homes early one morning. The story is not quite mystery, not quite character study, but a quasi-engaging mix of the two. It held my attention, but without that same spunk, that same “it” factor that Song had. 3 of 5 stars
43. Awake – Elizabeth Graver
    Since my divorce, I’ve found I’m intrigued by stories about women longing for, striving for, or demanding their freedoms. Ones whose characters create new identities for themselves. So I thought I’d enjoy Awake, a story about a married woman who takes her family to a camp for children who are severely allergic to light, only to find it is she who has kept herself in the (metaphorical) dark by putting herself last to meet her son’s needs. I acknowledge there are no easy answers, but the novel came off as slimy, selfish, and trashily (is so a word) unintelligent and cliché. The plot held promise, but the character felt flat. Perhaps if Graver could have made me care a bit more about any of her characters, I would have cared more about what happened to them. 2 of 5 stars
44. The Liar’s Club – Mary Karr
    A memoir about a girl’s coming of age as part of a poor, abusive family on the Texas Gulf Coast. I kept waiting for the story to pick up, for something climatic to happen, but the story just kept grinding out at the same barely-there pace. I felt bad for the girl, but wondered why, exactly, I was supposed to care about her and her life. Why was her life special enough to be pinned down in a memoir? I guess that’s why you’re not supposed to just pick books up off the display stand and decide to buy them. Reviews exist for a reason, people! 1 ½ of 5 stars
45. Incendiary – Chris Cleave
    Just when I think that my superpower must be picking out crappy books, I go and find one that knocks my socks off. Incendiary was mind-blowingly different and the kind of book I hated to put down. It’s story? A letter written from a woman to Osama Bin Laden after an Al Qaeda attack takes out a London soccer stadium, millions of people, and her entire family. She becomes a little unhinged after all that and happens to stumble sideways into a spot of revenge – maybe – but through it all is this letter. This was the sort of book that made me go out and buy every other book Mr. Cleave has written – even the out of print ones. 5 of 5 stars
46. Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby
    Hey – two awesome books in a row! I love when I’m on a roll like that. At first, Juliet, Naked was just “that other music book” with the ipod earbuds on the cover art. It was vastly different from Song Is You, and at first I thought there was no way it could compete. Indeed, it was different. Homier. Cozier. A much easier read. I didn’t have to think, I could just enjoy – and yet, I was never bored or felt like my intelligence was insulted. Hornby has a very pop rock-esque writing style that catches in your head and you’re humming the chorus and hoping it’ll be on the radio before you realize it’s even happened. The story wasn’t anything I had expected – not nearly as tawdry as the title led me to believe, for one. Indeed, it was less about someone dancing around a stripper pole and more about a grown man – a cultures professor, no less – and his fangirl obsession with an 80’s rocker icon who has gone underground, never to be heard from again. That is, until he releases an acoustic version (ah, there’s Juliet, Naked) of the album that made him famous. The novel made such an impression on me that when I didn’t receive it for Christmas, I went ahead and ordered it from Amazon.com so I could re-read it. I’m even putting it ahead of some of the other new books I received. What more can I say about such a book? 5 of 5 stars
47. Here I Am, Lord – Stan Morikowa
    This was actually an autobiography written by a friend of a friend’s father. Pretty cool, eh? It was trippy, reading the intimate details of the life of someone you sorta almost quasi-knew. 3 of 5 stars
48. A Widow’s Walk: A Memoir of 9/11 – Marian Fontana
    I read Firemom’s review of Fontana’s memoir and was captivated. I started it just after 9/11 and was pulled in. The book is massive, but you don’t feel the weight of its length pulling you down. The weighty subject matter is a different story altogether, but it’s September 11 – if you’re not wanting to be pulled down as I way to participate in everyone’s grief – singular and as a nation – then why, exactly, are you reading it? It was a first-rate account told from such a unique perspective. My hat’s off to Ms. Fontana for all that she accomplished and all she endured – and always will – without her Dave. 4 of 5 stars
49. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
    I can imagine what a scandal this novel was when it came out. The scandal has diminished to the point of non-existence, but the story was still enough to keep me interested. Wasn’t the best of the classics, but wasn’t the worst, either. 3 of 5 stars
50. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
    Is it just me, or do all these classics start to read like the same story? I liked this one. It seemed modern enough, and the characters were fun. It won’t make my Top 10 Classics list, but I can’t say I won’t read it ever again. 3 of 5 stars
51. Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp – Stephanie Klein
    This story could have been so much more than it was. I enjoyed it. I dutifully read my portions every night. But I didn’t exactly ever rush to read the next chapter, either. There wasn’t as much oomph or pizzazz. I’m hardly looking for something more confessional, but c’mon! It was Fat Camp! Put a little emotion into it! Think of how you go there and why and all the ripples throughout your life! Editorialize instead of journaling and timestamping the moment! 2 of 5 stars
52. About a Boy – Nick Hornby
    There is something about Nick Hornby. Even when I’m not that crazy about his books, they are really, really addictive. Like boxed macaroni and cheese or soup that isn’t homemade: it’s pretty good, and you know there’s better stuff out there, but sometimes that’s just what you want. My review is here. 3 of 5 stars
53. The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly
    Kim sold me on this one when she likened it to Stephen King’s The Talisman. I love stories that are about traveling. Not vacationing – not that kind of traveling. Travelin’. Survival stories. Fairytale kinda travelin’. And indeed Lost Things is a lot like every twisted fairy tale you’ve ever heard – but grounded in reality so much that they could be real…and about ten times more messed up. There’s no way, no conceivable way, you will be able to put this book down once you start reading. Not even when it gets dark out and you know you shouldn’t let this be the last thing you read before bedtime. You just won’t be able to help yourself. 5 of 5 stars
54. Julie and Julia – Julie Powell
    Like most of the rest of Americans, I heard about the movie before I discovered it was a book. A book based on a blog, actually. And since I really suck at finding time to watch movies, I hunted down the book. I traipsed upstairs to the non-fiction section of the library and everything! (My life is hard, yo.) I…liked it. Mostly. Well, really, I would have been happier if there was more in the story about Julia. Because Julie kinda bugged at times. She became much more bearable when she was talking about her blog. And the calamities of cooking. But she tended to fall off the track when she whined about her boyfriends or delved into her family affairs. Still, it was worth the whirl…and kinda made me want to cook everything in sight, just to see if I could do it, too. 3 of 5 stars
55. The Call of the Wild – Jack London
    Could a classic be any more disappointing? I thought it would be like Island of the Blue Dolphins, but set in the woods. Nope. Errnt. Wrong. So sorry, play again. See? So horrible I can’t even come up with anything clever to say. 1 of 5 stars
56. The Solitude of Prime Numbers – Paolo Giordano
    This one, ah, this story… I picked it up at the library based on the cover art and title alone. It was about math and prime numbers and hey won’t my sister Kim be proud of me! And solitude – I know all about solitude. And the cover art showed two peas outside a peapod. Which is neither math nor solitary (hello, two peas – in a pod!), so I was intrigued. The story, which was translated from an Italian bestseller, it turns out, was remarkable. Two lonely people surrounded by family, and one by so-called friends, who feel connected only to each other. I felt hypnotized the entire time. Don’t you love stumbling over something worthwhile, purely by accident? 4 of 5 stars
57. Horns – Joe Hill
    I still haven’t learned. And I probably never will. Last night I finished Joe Hill’s latest novel, the very fabulous Horns. Now, before you add it to your To Read list, you should know a few things: Joe Hill is actually Joe Hill King, eldest son of Stephen King; Horns is tres classic horror story; I was in the mood for a good book I could relax into and without (too much) thinking. That being said, I. loved. this. book. Read why in my mini-review here. 4 of 5 stars
58. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) – JK Rowling
    This is one of those books, those series, that I will re-read until I die. And never love it even a drop less than when I first read it. Happy sigh. 5 of 5 stars
59. Into the Storm – Reed Timmer
    Almost as hysterical as (fondly) mocking Reed on TV in StormChasers is mocking him in his book about stormchasing. It will never be confused with a great literary attempt, but it was worth the few hours I spent happily turning pages. 3 of 5 stars
60. The Turn of the Screw – Henry Fielding
    You guys! Why didn’t you tell me this was as wonderfully spooky and delightful as it obviously is?! I would have read it ages ago! Turn of the Screw reminded me very much as a literary version of the movie The Others…only, you know, enjoyable and not smeared with the downside of having to watch Nicole Kidman. Now one of my favorite classics. 4 of 5 stars
61. The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #3) – Rick Riordan
    The third (and my least favorite so far) of the Percy Jackson series. I hope the next book picks up, or it will be hard to make myself keep reading. Not that I wouldn’t recommend them to a teen who enjoys adventures or fantasy…it’s just a little below what I want to read right now. 2 of 5 stars
62. Mercy – Toni Morrison
    I had hoped Mercy would be another Beloved. Instead, it felt more like Toni Morrison was just trying to write like Toni Morrison, like she the book was a caricature of her book. It was too modern for me. Too…out there. Then again, I had to read Beloved five times before I liked it. 1 of 5 stars
63. Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
    Another classic I read just to say that I did. Sure there were lovely themes to discuss – beauty versus art versus morality – but who wants to talk about those? Oh, I kid. Mostly. 1 of 5 stars
64. Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death Into Order – Joan Wickersham
    I thought this book would be entirely too depressing – especially since I had started reading it the week that my colleague killed himself. Wickersham, however, pulled off the impossible – she talks about an incredibly sad and hugely personal matter without making it depressing or sensational in the least. Instead what I found was an invaluable character piece not only about her father, but about ourselves, a psychological analysis of what it means to enter into – or try to leave – a relationship with anyone. I even recommended it to a friend of mine not because he knew our colleague, too, but because he is struggling with his ex-wife’s decision to leave him. This book is an invaluable tool, not just a recollection of a beloved father. 4 of 5 stars
65. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
    Oh, this book still cracks me up. My review is here.

Top 10 Books of 2010
1.    The Poisonwood Bible
2.    The Flying Troutmans
3. The Song is You
4. Juliet, Naked
5.  Incendiary
6.  The Book of Lost Things
7.  Under the Dome
8.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
9.  The Gathering
10. I am only most of the way through it, but just go ahead and insert Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It freakin’ rocks, people.

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Tags: 2010, Books, literature, reading