The Next Best Book Club discussion

A little over half of what I read is crime fiction. My top 5 reads in 2010 were:

To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
Still Life, Louise Penny
Blood Hollow, William Kent Krueger
The Help, Kathryn Stockett
The Scent of Rain and Lightning, Nancy Pickard

What about you? What were your favorites?

Graceland by Chris Abani
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Tragedy of King Richard III by William Shakespeare
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee

My favorites this year were not all from this year, but I didn't read them until this year.

My favorites were:

Under the Banner of Heaven-Jon Krakauer
I Capture the Castle-Dodie Smith
The Red Tent-Anita Diamant
Horns-Joe Hill
To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee
Little Women-Louisa May Alcott
Hate List-Jennifer Brown
The Distant Hours-Kate Morton

Alisha wrote: "My favorites were:

Under the Banner of Heaven-Jon Krakauer
I Capture the Castle-Dodie Smith
The Red Tent-Anita Diamant
Horns-Joe Hill
[bo..."

I have been wanting to read [book:Under the Banner of Heaven|10847] for awhile now. I'm happy to know it was that good!

Some of my favorites read in 2010 were...

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford
Under Heaven - Guy Gavriel Kay
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms - Gail Tsukiyama (All her books were really good)

My top ten fiction reads from 2010 are:

Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
Annabel by Kathleen Winter
The Sea by John Banville
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (which was a reread and moved up from 4 to 5 stars!)
The Lovers by Vendela Vida
Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani
Away by Amy Bloom
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison

I wish I could read Under Heaven for the first time again. It was an amazing read. One of Kay's best.

Catie wrote: "That's good news for me Lisa - I've got the new Maggie O'Farrell and Under Heaven both waiting for me."

I think my best book of the year was The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt.

Other good books I read in 2010 include:
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (re-read)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (re-read)
1984 by George Orwell (re-read)
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Cassandra Rising edited by Alice Laurence
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Under the Banner of Heaven was EXCELLENT. Jon Krakauer has written some amazing books. check out Into the Wild and Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt Everest Disaster

Black and Bulletproof
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Bulletpro...

It Ain't Just The Size
http://www.amazon.com/Aint-Just-Size-...

Catie wrote: "My favorites from last year (although most were not published last year) were:



The Color Purple
Never Let Me Go
Fahrenheit 451
[book:The Likeness|1914..."

I loved The Color Purple.

Some great books in 2010, here are my Top 5...

The Bell Jar
Jane Eyre
Hunger Games
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Society

My favorite reads of 2010 were:

Shanghai Girls
Forrest Gump
The Good Earth
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Help
The Color Purple
The Palace of Illusions

:)

mine would include:

The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier
The Hunger Games. (the series( - Suzanne Collins
Tairen Souls series (King of Sword and Sky) - CL Wilson
Night - Elie Wiesel
Magic series ( Magic's Pawn, Promise, Price) - Mercedes Lackey
Bloody Jack series - LA Meyer
Dead in the Family - Charlaine Harris
Spider's Bite series - Jennifer Estep
Gone - Michael Grant
Masques, and Wolfsbane - Patricia Briggs

Probably the best thing I finished in 2010 was the complete Harry Potter series and I absolutely loved every book! Better late than never, I guess. :)

- Louis de Bernieres's Captain Corelli's Mandolin
- Winifred Watson's Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
- Ildefonso Falcones’s Cathedral of the Sea
- Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker
- Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
- C.S. Harris' St. Cyr mysteries =)
- Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated
- Tracey Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring

My favorites of 2010:

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
My Hollywood by Mona Simpson
The Irresistible Henry House: A Novel by Lisa Grunwald

All fiction. I didn't read a lot of great nonfiction last year, so I'm trying to make up for that in '11.

So right about Freedom. Great writer.

I know it's a little late in the year to post, but I always like talking about good books so here are my top 10 favorite books from this year (in no particular order):
10)The Oath
9)The Scarlet Pimpernel
8)The Grapes of Wrath
7)Skin
6)The Time Traveler's Wife
5)Rebecca
4)The Phantom of the Opera
3)The Hobbit
2)Prayers for Sale
1)The Lotus Eaters

The best books I read in 2010 were:

Abarat
The 19th Wife
An Abundance of Katherines
Days of Magic, Nights of War
Here, There Be Dragons
Home to Holly Springs
The Hunger Games
Magyk
Mistress of the Art of Death
Mr. Darcy's Diary
A Northern Light
Outlander
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
The Ruins of Gorlan
The Sign of Four

My favourites from 2010 are
Just Kids - non-fiction
The Poison Throne - YA
The Crowded Shadows - YA
The Rebel Prince - YA
Freedom - fiction
Room - fiction
When You Reach Me - YA

The year 2011 is looking good too!