Best Books Read in 2010

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