There are many ways to measure a year, but the reader is likely to measure it in books. There was the novel that felt as fresh and full of promise as the new year in January, the memoir read on the bus to and from work through the grey days of March, the creased paperback fished from a pocket in the park in May, the stacks of books thumbed through and sandy-paged, passed around at the beach in August, the old favorite read by light coming in the window in October, and the many books in between. And when we each look back at our own years in reading, we are almost sure to find that ours was exactly like no other reader’s.
The end of another year brings the usual frothy and arbitrary accounting of the “best” this and the “most” that. But might it also be an opportunity to look back, reflect, and share? We hope so, and so, for a seventh year, The Millions has reached out to some of our favorite writers, thinkers, and readers to name, from all the books they read this year, the one(s) that meant the most to them, regardless of publication date. Grouped together, these ruminations, cheers, squibs, and essays will be a chronicle of reading and good books from every era. We hope you find in them seeds that will help make your year in reading in 2011 a fruitful one.
As we have in prior years, the names of our 2010 “Year in Reading” contributors will be unveiled one at a time throughout the month as we post their contributions. You can bookmark this post and follow the series from here, or load up the main page for more new Year in Reading posts appearing at the top every day, or you can subscribe to our RSS feed and follow along in your favorite feed reader.
- Stephen Dodson, coauthor of Uglier Than a Monkey’s Armpit, proprietor of Languagehat.
- Fiona Maazel, author of Last Last Chance.
- John Banville, author of The Sea, The Infinities, and many other books.
- Al Jaffee, legendary Mad Magazine writer and cartoonist.
- Lionel Shriver, author of So Much for That and several other books.
- Emma Rathbone, author of The Patterns of Paper Monsters.
- Joshua Cohen, author of Witz.
- Jonathan Dee, author of The Privileges and several other books.
- Jennifer Gilmore, author of Something Red.
- Stephen Elliott, editor of The Rumpus and author of The Adderall Diaries.
- Dan Kois, author of Facing Future.
- Bill Morris, Millions staff writer and author of Motor City.
- Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised, proprietor of The Elegant Variation.
- Emma Donoghue, author of Room and several other books.
- Margaret Atwood, author of Year of the Flood and many other books.
- Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius and several other books.
- Hamilton Leithauser, of The Walkmen.
- Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood and other books.
- Anthony Doerr, author of Memory Wall and other books.
- Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies.
- Tom Rachman, author of The Imperfectionists.
- Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and several other books.
- Philip Lopate, author of Notes on Sontag and several other books.
- Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask and other books.
- Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge.
- Joseph McElroy, author of Women and Men and several other books.
- Alexander Theroux, author of Laura Warholic and several other books.
- Laura van den Berg, author of What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us.
- Emily St. John Mandel, Millions staff writer and author of Last Night In Montreal and The Singer’s Gun.
- John Williams, founding editor of The Second Pass.
- Edan Lepucki, Millions staff writer, author of If You’re Not Yet Like Me.
- Ed Champion, proprietor of edrants.com and The Bat Segundo Show.
- Maud Newton, proprietor of maudnewton.com.
- Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review.
- Tom McCarthy, author of C and Remainder.
- Keith Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men and founding editor of n+1.
- Rosecrans Baldwin, author of You Lost Me There and co-founder of The Morning News.
- Paul Harding, author of Tinkers.
- Sigrid Nunez, author of Salvation City and several other books.
- Matt Weiland, editor of The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup and State by State.
- Allegra Goodman, author of The Cookbook Collector and several other books.
- Adam Levin, author of The Instructions and several other books.
- Michael Cunningham, author of By Nightfall, The Hours and several other books.
- Sam Anderson, book critic, New York magazine.
- Richard Nash, of Cursor and Red Lemonade.
- Seth Mnookin, author of Hard News and The Panic Virus.
- Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age.
- Marisa Silver, author of The God of War and other books.
- David Gutowski, of Largehearted Boy.
- Emily Colette Wilkinson, Millions staff writer.
- Jenny Davidson, author of Invisible Things and other books.
- Scott Esposito, proprietor of Conversational Reading and editor of The Quarterly Conversation.
- Carolyn Kellogg, LA Times staff writer.
- Anne K. Yoder of The Millions.
- Marjorie Kehe, book editor at the Christian Science Monitor.
- Neal Pollack, author of Stretch: The Unlikely Making Of A Yoga Dude and other books.
- Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
- Allen Barra writes for the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Beast.
- Dorothea Lasky, author of Black Life and AWE.
- Avi Steinberg, author of Running the Books, The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian.
- Stephanie Deutsch, critic and historian.
- Lydia Kiesling, Millions staff writer.
- Lorraine Adams, author of The Room and the Chair.
- Rachel Syme, NPR.com books editor.
- Garth Risk Hallberg, Millions staff writer and author of A Field Guide to the North American Family.
…Wrapping Up a Year in Reading
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles
The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews
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at 4:07 pm on December 1, 2010
The Help by Kathryn Stockett is one of the most delightful & interesting books I read this year.
at 5:29 pm on December 1, 2010
The Room, A reliable Wife, Await Your Reply, Little Bee, The Zookeeper’s Wife all tie for first in the best reads of the year.
at 9:55 pm on December 1, 2010
Is it the best I read in 2010 or books published in 2010? Well, here’s the best of what I read–minimum 3 stars out of 4 with a few 4 stars–and I still have a full month to go (Cynthia Ozick is up next, and then….The Finkler Question, Tsolkas’ The Slap (thanks to review here), To the End of the Land, Unbroken, Sunset Park. The Room and more all await me!)
The Humans Who Went Extinct-Clive Finlayson (does it have to be fiction?)
Great House
ditto The Zookeeper’s Wife (read it and then listened to audio a few months later)
Almost Dead – Assaf Gavron
Shadow Tag – Erdrich
The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff – Joseph Epstein
97 Orchard Street – Jane Zeigelman
Origins-Anne Murphy Paul
The Last Dog on the Hill – Steve Duno
Girl in Trranslation – Jean Kwok
A Pigeon and a Boy – Meir Shalev
The Man in the Wooden Hat – Jane Gardam
Heroic Measures – Jill Cement (may have found this here, not sure)
Blooms of Darkness- Appelfeld
The Film Club (found this here for sure)
A Gesture Life and The Surrendered – Chang Rae Lee
Ghost Map – Steven Johnson
read 140+ books and my best list has 18 titles. I must be doing something wrong. 13 percent makes me think I am wasting a lot of time on mediocrity, but I really do try to search out wonderful books.
at 12:44 am on December 2, 2010
Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
Out Stealing Horses – Per Petterson
at 9:57 am on December 2, 2010
The Good Soldiers – Finkel
Europeana – Ourednik
Hangover Square – Hamilton
Annihilation – Szewc
Hard Rain Falling – Carpenter
Beside the Sea – Olmi
Old School – Wolff
Speak, Memory – Nabokov
In A Strange Room – Galgut
Her Privates We – Manning
at 8:29 pm on December 2, 2010
The Member of the Wedding – McCullers
This Book Will Save Your Life – A.M. Homes
Solar – McEwan
at 12:44 am on December 3, 2010
The Pickup – Nadine Gordimer (x2)
Great House – Nicole Krauss
The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway (x2)
The Frozen Ship – Sarah Moss
Gotz and Meyer – David Abilari
Falling Free – Barry Targan
The Housekeeper and the Professor – Yoko Ogawa
Triangle – Katherine Weber
Proust was a Neuroscientist – Lehrer
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell
Desertion – Abdulrajak Gurnah
Friendly Fire – A.B. Yehoshua
The 25th Hour – David Benioff (x2)
all the Wyoming stories of Annie Proulx
Great War in Modern Memory – (x2 decades later)
at 9:15 pm on December 3, 2010
[...] are many ways to measure a year, but the reader is likely to measure it in books.” His site, TheMillions, is filled with posts about the year’s [...]
at 12:59 am on December 6, 2010
[...] “best of” lists are not your thing, The Millions does a wonderful series — The Year in Reading — in which writers and editors discuss, of all the books they read in 2010, the one(s) that [...]
at 6:58 am on December 7, 2010
[...] entries in The Millions’s Year in Reading series have begun to appear on the site. Contributors revealed [...]
at 4:50 pm on December 8, 2010
5 STARS:
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen
Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Bad Childhood, Good Life by Dr. Laura Schlessinger
4 STARS:
Open House by Elizabeth Berg
The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy
Rain Gods by James Lee Burke
Summer Crossing by Truman Capote
South of Broad by Pat Conroy
God-Shaped Hole by Tiffanie DeBartolo
Berniece Bobs Her Hair by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Barefoot by Elin Hildebrand
Stationary Bike by Stephen King
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Fat Girl: A True Story by Judith Moore
The Last Mile Home by Di Morrissey
Red’s Hot Honky Tonk Bar by Pamela Morsi
Songs Without Words by Ann Packer
Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos
In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms by Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Shack by William P. Young
at 9:55 am on December 9, 2010
[...] Year in Reading 2010 The Millions annual Year in Reading feature features contributions from John Banville, Emma Donoghue and Margaret Atwood. For a seventh [...]
at 1:21 pm on December 9, 2010
The most delicious first-time read for me this year was Mary Anne Shaffer’s ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’. It’s several years old already but, like I said, a first for me. Loved it.
at 10:47 am on December 10, 2010
[...] The Millions 2010 edition of A Year in Reading is up, and it’s a doozy. If you’re unfamiliar, A Year in Reading asks notable contributors to list the books, articles and essays that meant the most to them over the course of the year, regardless of when the material was written. This year’s contributor panel includes the likes of Al Jafee (from Mad Magazine fame), Margaret Atwood and Paul Murray. If you’re looking to stock your 2011 reading list, look no further. [...]
at 5:09 am on December 11, 2010
[...] אתר The Millions, מסכם שנת קריאה עם עשרות המלצות של סופרים על הכותרים הכי טובים שקראו [...]
at 12:01 pm on December 11, 2010
[...] The Millions : A Year in Reading 2010 The Millions is kicking off their annual Year in Reading series. The contributor's list looks good: [...]
at 9:04 am on December 13, 2010
[...] The Year in Reading: The Millions has been asking famous folks to offer up their top reads of the year. Check out this amazing archive of all the posts so far. [...]
at 9:59 am on December 14, 2010
[...] para que nos manden sus lecturas de 2010. Desde que la revista The Millions lanzara su serie “A Year in Reading”, saber qué es lo que los otros leen se ha convertido en una experiencia sorprendente, una [...]
at 10:07 am on December 14, 2010
My favorite read this year is Iris Murdoch’s “The Sea, The Sea.” Honorable mention goes to “True Grit,” “A High Wind in Jamaica,” by Richard Hughes (NYRB Classics); Jennifer Egan’s “Look at Me,” (as recommended by Emily St. John Mandel); and “Panopticon” by David Bajo, Unbridled Books.
at 11:04 am on December 14, 2010
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
at 8:59 pm on December 15, 2010
[...] La Millones: Un año en la lectura 2010. Explore posts in the same categories: [...]
at 11:46 am on December 16, 2010
[...] 2010 was also the year that I first encountered the work of Flann O’Brien and Muriel Spark. I suspect that, a year from now, their names will feature prominently on my “favorite non-2011 reads of 2011″ list. In the case of Ms. Spark, I would also highly recommend Maud Newton’s take on her Memento Mori over at The Millions’ essential A Year in Reading. [...]
at 12:04 pm on December 17, 2010
[...] magazine The Millions; this year, he asked me to contribute one of the site’s “Year in Reading” [...]
at 12:37 pm on December 19, 2010
[...] of the year’ list is always a treat. But what I’ve been really fascinated with is the “Year in Reading” lists at The Millions, one of my favorite culture/lit/arts magazine sites. Sure, the New Yorker does this [...]
at 9:53 am on December 21, 2010
My favorite novel of the year is The Lovers by Vendela Vida.
at 6:00 pm on December 21, 2010
Nonfiction:
The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński
Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins
Broadsides from Other Orders: A Book of Bugs by Sue Hubbell
Almost Nonfiction:
Everything by W.G. Sebald
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
Fiction:
Recollections of Things to Come by Elena Garro
The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Sun City by Tove Jansson
The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda
Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi
Pan by Knut Hamsun
Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist
at 2:15 pm on December 28, 2010
…At the close of each year for the past several years, the blog TheMillions has published the lists of books read by a wide variety of people whom they invite to share their year’s readings. In that spirit, here are the books I read this year (and I don’t pretend that these are by any means high-brow but, for the most part, they are good entertainment)…
at 1:08 pm on December 31, 2010
Merle’s Door and The Zookeeper’s Wife are two completely different genres and styles of writing but both remain in my consciousness, ringing true, true, true.
at 9:33 pm on December 31, 2010
[...] Neal Pollack at The Millions: A Year in Reading. “I can’t write about my year in reading without mentioning the work of Alan Furst. Any page of his World War II era espionage novels top any moment of The Winds Of War that I consumed as a kid. I think I read seven Furst books in 2010.” I must check out Furst. Other A Year in Reading posts at The Millions. [...]
at 9:38 am on January 15, 2011
[...] livros da lista “100 Notable Books of 2010“. As ligações encontram-se aqui. O blog apresentou, também, algumas retrospectivas do ano que passou, como fez nos anos anteriores. No blog da revista New Yorker, vários colaboradores [...]
at 9:25 pm on January 18, 2011
[...] through The Millions’ Year In Reading feature, I noticed two authors had chosen his 1967 novel A Sport and a Pastime to highlight. Julie [...]
at 4:29 am on January 22, 2011
[...] I’ve found that “The Millions” here have actually done a piece on “A Year in Reading 2010” They look a lot more serious than my wee rambling [...]
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