Nothing but the Start

Looking for some book recommendations?

I’ve asked people whom I know to be avid readers for the title of ONE book which they read in 2011 that made an impression on them – ie gave them a new perspective, was enjoyable to get lost in, or difficult to slog through yet difficult to forget. It could be a classic novel, science fiction, biography, business, self help, you name it – and, while some of the same titles popped up again and again, the results are various.

Many people tried to sneak in a second favorite – or two or three. (It didn’t work, I can count – even in Spanish!) Luckily for some (myself included), runners-up were the number one choice of others. One book does deserve special mention though, being included in so many people’s second breath: Jennifer Eagan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.

I may never own a kindle. I may never walk down the street reading a novel from a thin slice of a tablet (really, I have seen people do this.) I may always board planes with a carry-on that is heavier than my checked baggage because it is filled with books and actual hold-in-your-hand magazines.

That’s what makes me love the list below. It’s a bit like walking into a room with floor to ceiling bookcases just to stare at the bindings.

May this list give you reading inspiration for the New Year!

Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea
David Benioff, City of Thieves
Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Trilogy
John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
Robert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia
Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance
Jennifer Haigh, Faith
John Irving, The Cider House Rules
John Irving, The World According to Garp
Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
Shaun Johnson, The Native Commissioner
Brad Kessler, Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese
Barbara Kingsolver, Lacuna
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
JD Salinger, Nine Stories
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, De Kooning: An American Master
Rabindranath Tagore, The Hungry Stones and Other Stories
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
John Updike, Rabbit, Run
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

For more, check out the Best Books Read in 2010 list.

The end of the year is all about lists – “Top 100 Albums of the Year,” for example, or “Top Ten Must-Have Gadgets of 2010.”

And so, I  add to the noise with my own list of Best Books Read in 2010.  Rather informally, I’ve asked the people around me what book was their favorite  this year – it didn’t have to be the “best” book or even one recently published, just something they were glad to have picked up along the way.

Here’s the list, random and inspiring (and perhaps mis-categorized) as it is:

Nonfiction

• “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen
• “War” by Sebastian Junger
• “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith” by Jon Krakauer
• “SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer

Historical Fiction

• “Texaco: A Novel” by Patrick Chamoiseau
• “A Star Called Henry” by Roddy Doyle
• “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
• “The Best of Everything” by Rona Jafee

Dystopian

• “The Dispossessed” by Ursula Leguin

Biography, Memoir

• “What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng” by Dave Eggers
• “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation” by John Carlin
• “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia” by Elizabeth Gilbert
• “Mornings with Mailer: A Recollection of Friendship” by Dwayne Raymond
• “Corvus: A Life with Birds” by Esther Woolfson

Classics

• “The Type-Writer Girl” by Grant Allen
• “The World According to Garp” by John Irving
• “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde

Novels, Recently Published

• “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen
• “Saving CeeCee Honeycutt” by Beth Hoffman
• “Girl in Translation” by Jean Kwok
• “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson
• “The Imperfectionists” by Tom Rachman
• “American Wife” by Curtis Sittenfeld

Novels, Somewhat Recently Published

• “The Outlander” by Gil Adamson
• “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kirin Desai
• “Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” by Jamie Ford
• “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein
• “I Am the Messenger” by Marcus Zusak