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: I was coveting   Trespass even before the Booker longlist was announced, but I was thrilled to hear it made the list because I'm reading it sooner than I probably would have otherwise. The basics: I really like the introductory blurb in the book: "Set among the hills and gorges of the Cevennes, the dark and beautiful heartland of southern France, Trespass  is a thrilling novel about disputed territory, sibling love and devastating revenge." My thoughts:  I feel foolish because Trespass  is the first Rose Tremain novel I've read, and I absolutely adored her prose: "Disdain--born out of a specialist knowledge, or what he thought of as a secret knowledge --was a habit perfected over forty years, and was now one of the few pleasures left to him." (p. 11) I didn't know too much about this novel going into it, and the initial chapters all introduced different characters. I tend to really enjoy novels with seemingly unconnected characters...