BOOKS I READ IN 2010

• The Finkler Question (Jacobson) –> still currently reading, and not thrilled so far
• Mary Ann in Autumn (Maupin)
• I Remember Nothing (Ephron)
• Sacred Games (Chandra)* –> still currently reading
• Sacred Hunger (Unsworth)*
• Skippy Dies (Murray) –
• Homesick (Nevo)*
• Remainder (McCarthy) –
• Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Bloom)*
• The Slap (Tsiolkas) –
• You Lost Me There (Baldwin) –
• The Passage (Cronin) –
• Freedom (Franzen)*
• Mockingjay (Collins)*
• Catching Fire (Collins)*
• The Hunger Games (Collins)*
• A Mind to Murder (James)
• Daniel Deronda (Elliot)*
• The Thieves of Manhattan (Langer)
• Cover Her Face (James)
• Faithful Place (French)*
• The Imperfectionists (Rachman)
• The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)*
• Affinity (Waters)
• Beyond Black (Mantel)*
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Mitchell)*
• A Visit from the Goon Squad (Egan)*
• Little Bee (Cleave)*
• Gob’s Grief (Adrian) –
• The Good Thief (Tinti)*
• The Gathering (Enright)*
• The Possessed (Batuman)*
• A Story of a Marriage (Greer)*
• The Little Stranger (Waters)*
• Heir to the Glimmering World (Ozick) –
• Sum: forty tales from the afterlives (Eagleman)*
• A Fortunate Age (Rakoff)
• Book of Clouds (Aridjis)
• The Keep (Egan)
• Wives and Daughters (Gaskell)
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Larsson)*
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (Larsson)*
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Larsson)*
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Tower) –
• Shades of Grey (Fforde)
• The Intuitionist (Whitehead)*
• A Place of Greater Safety (Mantel)*
• Shadow of the Wind (Zafon)
• Lush Life (Price) –
• Lit (Karr) –

* denotes a book I recommend.

– denotes a book I didn’t finish.

MOST MEMORABLE

• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Mitchell)*
• A Visit from the Goon Squad (Egan)*
• Little Bee (Cleave)*
• Sacred Hunger (Unsworth)*
• The Millenium trilogy

Runner up: The Franzen, which I have defended at great length already.

MOST DISAPPOINTING

• Skippy Dies (Murray) – A young boys’ boarding school story that tries to be funny and flops.
• Remainder (McCarthy) – Intriguing premise; bizarre follow-through. It’s also very hard to care about a main character who barely cares about himself.
• The Slap (Tsiolkas) – The story seemed so promising! And I’ve read very little about Australia since The Thornbirds in high school. This, however, is a shallow, angry, misanthropic look at suburban life there that is better left untouched.
• Lit (Karr) – Nowhere near as good as her first memoir, Liar’s Club. As an adult, Karr seemed less sympathetic and more self-absorbed.
• The Imperfectionists (Rachman) — not because it was bad but because I expected so much and was underwhelmed with the results. Same as with the Wells Tower and Adam Langer.

MOST SURPRISING, PLEASANTLY:

• The Possessed (Batuman)*
• Homesick (Nevo)*
• Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Bloom)*
• The Intuitionist (Whitehead)*
• The Hunger Games trilogy

BOOKS I READ WITH THE WORDS “SACRED,” “HUNGER,” AND/OR “GAMES” IN THE TITLES

• Sacred Hunger
• Sacred Games
• Hunger Games

They were all good, too! Maybe there’s some juju there in those words.

You can also tell from this list that I’ve gotten a lot better at putting down sub-par books. Once upon a time, I found that to be much more difficult, and I would read through to the end anything I had started just to be a good girl. Now I’m a total rebel. Take that, patriarchy!