Sunday, January 2, 2011

2010 Review and Top Ten

In 2010 I reviewed a total of 48 books and read about 60. (I didn't review most of the juvenile fiction that I read aloud to my kids or read for classes that I teach.) This is just about exactly the same as the previous several years.

This was a good reading year with many memorable books. Narrowing my favorites down to a Top 10 list is always difficult, but here we go:

Top 10 Books Read in 2010


* My favorite book of the year, as I explained in this post, was Girl in Translation. But all of the books above were worthy contenders, and several others nearly made the list.

* As always, most of the books I read in 2010 were fiction; however, I do love nonfiction, particularly memoirs, and read seven:

I absolutely loved Beautiful Boy, Long Way Gone, and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. I'm planning to read more nonfiction in 2011.

• I added 42 book to my Ever-Growing TBR list, and I marked off just 24. That means that over half of the books I read in 2010 did not come from my TBR list, so it continues to grow faster than I can conquer it. But that's OK. I learned about books from posts on The Sunday Salon, Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books, the Book Review Carnival, from various internet sources, and especially from other book bloggers.

• I also read lots of juvenile fiction, both to my own kids and as part of literature classes that I teach. I can't remember all of these, but some are: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; Maniac Magee; Crazy Lady; Tangerine; Sounder; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; When My Name Was Keoko ; The Winged Watchman; Cheaper by the Dozen.

• Below is the total list of books read, minus the juvenile fiction. Each link leads to a review. My star-ranking system is as follows: 5 stars--must read; 4 stars--highly recommended; 3 stars--enjoyable; 2 stars--ick; 1 star--no, no, no.

6 comments:

Vasilly said...

Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Asher Lev are two of my favorite books. It sounds like you had a great reading year. I hope 2011 is just as great. Happy New Year.

Literary Feline said...

Still Alice was such a good book--heartwrenching. I do want to read The Help, Olive Kitteridge and Girl in Translation one of these days. They've been in my TBR collection for awhile now.

Here's to a great year in books!

Marce said...

Happy New Year, happy to have found you, I am a new follower.

Still Alice is an all time favourite, her newest is releasing this month I believe.

My goal is to try Memoirs this year, so I will try a few from yur recommendation. Long way Gone is already on my Wishlist.

My fav of 2010 if interested

http://teawithmarce.blogspot.com/2010/12/tea-time-with-marce-2010-list-of.html

Anna said...

Glad to see The Help made your list, as I've pulled it off the shelf to read this year. Happy new year!

Anonymous said...

You've got a great list there! I also love reading memoirs. I would also like to read "Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down"
Happy reading!

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

What a great reading year for you! I just passed Absolutely True Diary on to my little brother--he's 14 and I figured he probably hears much worse at school than he'll read in the book (though I didn't feel that way at first).

Happy 2011 to you! Hope it's a great year.