2010 books

Just as a prompt to my own memory, I'm going to list the books I've read in 2010, in more-or-less chronological order. It's been a very good year. Some real winners in there, and even most of the non-winners were quite good (unlike 2009 which was, for the most part, a disappointment)

*=Recommended

X=Stay away

• The Brothers Karamazov: Dostoevsky
• Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe
• X Snuff: Chuck Palahniuk (audiobook)
• * The White Tiger: Aravind Adiga (my review here)
• Ethan Frome: Edith Wharton (my review here)
• * An Enemy of the People: Henrik Ibsen (my review here)
• Hedda Gabler: Henrik Ibsen
• * Fear of Flying: Erica Jong (I'd read it maybe 20 something years ago...it's so much more meaningful now :-)
• The Wild Duck: Henrik Ibsen
• X Lovers' Vows: Elizabeth Inchbald (my review here)
• * Good Omens: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (audiobook) (Probably the most fun read I had this year -- my review here)
• X The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: David Wroblewski (audiobook)
• Herland: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• For the Win: Cory Doctorow (I'd put this as a * if you're willing to put up with a lot of discussion about computer gaming -- excellent intro for teens to a lot of economic concepts -- Annapurna loved it; very thought provoking)
• Unaccustomed Earth: Jhumpa Lahiri (audiobook)
• Up in Honey's Room: Elmore Leonard (audiobook)
• The Graveyard Book: Neil Gaiman (audiobook)
• * Remarkable Creatures: Tracy Chevalier (audiobook) (my review here)
• X High Plains Tango: Robert James Waller (audiobook) (I'm a little hesitant to put an X -- there was a lot I liked in this one, but...where was the editor???)
• The Odyssey: Homer, via Butler (with Annapurna)
• Delivered from Distraction: Edward Hallowell and John Ratey (I'd put this as a *, but it's really for the ADD/ADHD crowd)
• The Lady and the Unicorn: Tracy Chevalier (audiobook)
• The Mission Song: John LeCarre (audiobook)
• Disobedience: Jane Hamilton (audiobook)
• Helen: Euripides, via E.P. Coleridge
• X A Way With Words IV: Understanding Poetry: Michael Drout (audiobook) - Very focused on the syntactic, and organized purely chronologically...very shopping list feel to it.
• Babbitt: Sinclair Lewis (audiobook)
• Tropic of Capricorn: Henry Miller (audiobook) (Not sure I can really claim to have read this one...the prose is lovely, but it's only marginally easier to follow than Quentin's portion of The Sound and the Fury -- I confess my mind wandered more than a little.)
• Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen (for only about the 3rd time...it's my second least favorite Austen)
• Ghosts: Henrik Ibsen
• The History of Tom Jones, a foundling: Henry Fielding (I'd put this as a * if you're willing to put up with 18th Century-speak)
• A Mercy: Toni Morrison (audiobook) (This one could probably stand another round of reading, to really say I've read it. It's got a fairly complex structure. And it's a little hard to follow on audio for two reasons: first, the narrative keeps shifting points of view, without much of a cue; second, it is read by Morrison, herself, with a lovely poetic voice, but with phrase breaks that made it hard for me to parse.
• How to Read and Understand Poetry (audiobook): Willard Spiegelman, via The Teaching Company (I liked this one much better than the one by Michael Drout, though I'm still stumped)
• About 6 zillion OMB memoranda and NIST Special Publications from the 800 series...especially 800-53 (Many are quite good, really -- highly recommended if you're in the IT Security business, or even just IT.)

Started:

• Neuromancer: William Gibson -- just haven't been able to get into this one...it's been recommended to me several times...I'll keep trying
• Nuclear Jellyfish: Tim Dorsey (audiobook) -- too many in jokes about Lynyrd Skynrd and Florida for me to follow...just wasn't compelling enough for me.
• Transmission: Hari Kunzru (whose "The Impressionist" I loved) -- nothing wrong with this one...just it's on paper, and my life does not permit much paper reading
• Malgudi Days: R.K. Narayan -- I absolutely loved the parts I read...just it's on paper
• Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Mary Wollstonecraft -- I'm sure it was controversial and exciting in its time, but it harped a bit too much on the moral and chastity advantages of educating women to get me really worked up enough to plow through it.

And with Sidharta:

• * Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH: Robert C. O'Brien
• * lots and lots and lots of Calvin and Hobbes: Bill Watterson
• The Lightning Thief: Rick Riordan
• The Titan's Curse: Rick Riordan
• The Battle of the Labyrinth: Rick Riordan
• The Last Olympian: Rick Riordan
• lots of Asterix
• Assorted "educational" books on UFO's and cryptids
• Assorted Amar Chitra Katha comics on various characters from the Ramayana and Mahabharata
• Part of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (he read most of it himself -- Thank You, Rick Riordan, for waking him up to the joys of reading!)

And with Annapurna (who has very little time for stories these days) parts of:

• The Wee Free Men: Terry Pratchett
• Grimm's Fairy Tales
• Frankenstein: Mary Shelley