Books I read in 2010

March 07, 2011

I read 21 books in 2010, considerably fewer than in 2009. For bibliophiles and the casual snoop, here they are, in reverse of the order in which they were read. Those I recommend are emboldened.

• The Pursuit Of Love — Nancy Mitford [a favorite]
• House Of Sugar — Rebecca Kraatz [beautiful]
• A Gate At The Stairs — Lorrie Moore [disappointing] *
• White Teeth — Zadie Smith *
• Dictionary Of The Khazars (female version) — Milorad Pavić [epic and beautiful]
• Authority And American Usage — David Foster Wallace [okay so this is just a long essay]
• White Noise — Don DeLillo *
• Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov [yes.]
• The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet — David Mitchell *
• A Novel Bookstore (Au Bon Roman) — Laurence Cossé [just short of greatness]
• What Is The What — Dave Eggers
• The Day Of The Locust — Nathaniel West
• The Professor And The Madman — Simon Winchester [OED history]
• Motherless Brooklyn — Jonathan Lethem
• French Illuminated Manuscripts — H.C. Schulz
• Then We Came To The End — Joshua Ferris [contains office humor I barely understand]
• Old School — Tobias Wolff [poor schoolboy in rich private boarding school, you get it]
• Patty Reed's Doll — Rachel K. Laurgaard [Mom read this aloud as we drove through Donner Pass in the Prius]
• The Pelican Brief — John Grisham [one of few books in the hotel room at Port Aransas]
• Hidden Treasures — Nora Roberts [see above. Make no mistake, I greatly enjoyed these]
• Printers As Men Of The World — Evelyn Harter

* = read on my Kindle