Wrapping Up a Year in Reading 2010

December 23, 2010 | 2 books mentioned 10 2 min read

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The holidays are here, and so we can bring to a close another entertaining Year in Reading. We at The Millions would like to thank all of those who participated in the series for their generosity in sharing their private acts of reading with a reading public thirsty to hear about them.

We hope this series captures, here in this sometimes impersonal medium, a glimpse into the personal reading lives of some writers and thinkers we all admire. Based on the generous feedback we receive (thank you; it means a lot), it seems clear that you find value in these glimpses. We have also experienced a very sincere form of flattery as we’ve noted that in the seven years since we first began our series, the likes of The New Yorker Book Bench, The Guardian, and now Bookforum and The Atlantic have embarked on series similar to our own.

Before we wrap this thing up for good, a few highlights: We loved Sam Anderson’s ingenious Year in Marginalia, Ed Champion’s championing of no fewer than 13 underappreciated books, and we also enjoyed the opportunity to take a peek into the reading lives of some of our literary heroes, including John Banville, Margaret Atwood, Aimee Bender, and Sam Lipsyte.

Other favorite moments included everyone still loving Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Hamilton Leithauser extending The Millions’ obsession with Stoner for another year, Rosecrans Baldwin on a short, upsetting, foxy novel called Why Did I Ever, Laura van den Berg on “two deliciously strange novels,” and Stephen Elliott wishing his 2010 had been like his 2009, or 2008, or 2007, and so on…

If you enjoyed reading our series as much as we enjoyed putting it together (and indeed if you’ve enjoyed The Millions all year), we ask that you please consider supporting this project of ours (there are five cheap (even free!) and easy ways to do so on our Support page) and help us prove that smart cultural coverage is viable online!

And so, as we enjoy the last few days of 2010, we invite all of you to take part — if you haven’t already in the comments of the series intro or on Twitter, or even if you have — in A Year in Reading by finishing this sentence in the comments or on your own blog: “The best book I read all year was…”

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.