Midyear roundup: best reads of 2010, thus far
Here are my favorites reads so far for 2010. As in the past. I’ve included books that were published prior to this year but that I’ve read since this year began. I’ve linked to relevant posts in this space.
An asterisk denotes a title I found especially outstanding – a probable candidate for “best of the best,” at the close of the year.
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Fiction
*Unfinished Desires – Gail Godwin
*A Week in December – Sebastian Faulks
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffenegger
The Man in the Wooden Hat – Jane Gardam
*Family Happiness – Leo Tolstoy
What Is Left the Daughter – Howard Norman
Mystery / Thriller
The Price of Malice – Archer Mayor
Wycliffe and the Tangled Web – W.J. Burley
*The Monster in the Box – Ruth Rendell
The Crossing Places – Elly Griffiths
The Serpent Pool – Martin Edwards
*A Sea of Troubles – Donna Leon
The Brutal Telling – Louise Penny
*The Dark Mirror – Barry Maitland
*The Girl Who Played with Fire – Stieg Larsson
*The Lost Art of Gratitude – Alexander McCall Smith
*The Poacher’s Son – Paul Doiron
The Corpse in the Koryo – James Church
*A Stranger in the Family – Robert Barnard
*The Ninth Step – Gabriel Cohen
*The Silver Bear – Derek Haas
Nine Dragons – Michael Connelly
Nonfiction
The Art of Time in Fiction – Joan Silber
*Parallel Lives – Phyllis Rose
*The Poisoner’s Handbook – Deborah Blum
*Lives Like Loaded Guns – Lyndall Gordon
Contested Will – James Shapiro
The Metaphysical Club – Louis Menand
*A Midwife’s Tale – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Sargent’s Daughters – Erica Hirschler
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Author Gallery
Lyndall Gordon
Phyllis Rose
Alexander McCall Smith and Jill Scott, who plays Mma Ramotswe in the TV version of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. If you have not watched these films...well, drop everything and do so at once! (They are owned by the Howard County Library.)
Louise Penny
Donna Leon, a great novelist in any genre
Ruth Rendell - like Donna Leon, a writer of depth, irony, and subtlety
Craig Johnson, who, when not wielding a pen, seems equally at home wielding a chainsaw!
Archer Mayor
Gail Godwin, whose writing has given me much pleasure over the years
Richard S. Tedlow - a fine writer and a wonderful brother (to Yours Truly) as well
Jane Gardam
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, by his constant portraitist Ilya Repin (1901)
Books to the Ceiling 
Weekend Bites: Sex and the City/Emily Gould, Les Mis, Julie Klausner on HBO, Gary Shteyngart Continues Talking, and More « Vol. 1 Brooklyn said,
August 1, 2010 at 4:24 pm
[…] Books to the Ceiling give us their midyear roundup. […]
Kay W said,
August 18, 2010 at 5:20 pm
I like most of the books on your personal list, but my own list would feature The Postmistress by Sarah Blake and Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. And the nonfiction list would have to start with The Big Short (although that may have been published in 2009). Have you read any of these yet? I know, your pile reaches the ceiling already!
Roberta Rood said,
August 19, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Kay,
First – thanks as always for reading & commenting on “Books ot the Ceiling.” I haven’t read the three titles you’ve mentioned but am interested in them – especially Remarkable Creatures.
And boy, are you ever right about my “to read” pile!
Kay said,
August 24, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I think you’ll like Remarkable Creatures for several reasons, including the fact that the central relationship is not a romantic one but an unlikely bond between an educated middle-class spinster and an unschooled working class girl who has an uncanny knack for finding the rarest fossils. Then there is fact (which I hadn’t previously grasped) that the discovery of fossils was terribly threatening to religious conservatives of that period who believed that the world was created in one fell swoop exactly 4004 years before the birth of Christ. Fossils were strong evidence of evolution and change, and these two women found themselves in the thick of the controversy. I loved it!
Roberta Rood said,
August 24, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Thanks, Kay; I look forward to reading it! (BTW – We missed you at lunch yesterday.)