nomadreader

2010 was a wonderful year of reading. I wanted to be a deliberate reader, and looking back on the books I read this year, I'm quite pleased with the quality of them. I stuck to literary fiction for the most part. I tried to read from the award lists, and I discovered many of these books on the award lists. Without further ado, here are my favorite books of 2010 (when I made my list, there happened to be ten!)  All the books I read in 2010 were eligible regardless of when the books were published. (Clicking on the links will take you to my full, original review. Clicking on the book cover will take you to it's page on Amazon.) 10. Trespass  by Rose Tremain (longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize) I will remember 2010 as the year I finally read Rose Tremain. This hauntingly beautiful novel has stayed with me. Favorite passage: "Even here, where life went along more slowly than in England, she could sense the restless agitation people felt to make real and tangible to the...

The backstory: The Sentimentalists, the first novel from Johanna Skibsrud, won the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, which recognizes excellence in Canadian fiction. The basics: In some ways, The Sentimentalists is a war novel. In other ways, it's a daughter's ode to her father. Ultimately, my inability to share basic plot details of a short novel is a testament to how much power Skibsrud packs into those 224 pages. My thoughts:  I read The Sentimentalists in one sitting, which is remarkable enough alone for me, but this single sitting is made more remarkable because I started it on a Sunday night at 11 p.m. when I got home from an exhausting night waiting tables and had to be at work at 9 a.m. Monday morning. I lost sleep for this one, and it was so worth it.  Skibsrud's writing grabbed me from the earliest pages:  "My father was a great reader and a great rememberer of things, though he never remembered anything in the right order, or entirely, and always ...