Most book reviewers, whether in newspapers or on websites, tend to pick their top ten out of books that were published during the previous twelve months. This makes sense for professionals, but not for a private reviewer such as myself. I read whatever book strikes my fancy, from whatever decade. From my own count, I read 54 books in 2011. Of these, 23 were fiction, which is the same percentage of fiction (42%) that I read last year. That follows the national trend of people preferring nonfiction to novels.
The following are the ten most enjoyable, fascinating, or thought-provoking books I read in 2011. Enjoy!
1.) The Borrowed Years by Richard M. Ketchum
2.) Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
3.) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
4.) The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst
5.) A Kidnapping in Milan by Steve Hendricks
6.) The Men Who Would Be King by Nicole LaPorte
7.) A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
8.) Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
9.) The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
10.) Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones
But there are many honorable mentions, including Eaters of the Dead (Michael Crichton), Farm Boys (Will Fellows), Life Itself (Roger Ebert), and The Unlikely Disciple (Kevin Roose). UFOs by Leslie Kean kept me thinking for weeks, and Zeitoun by Dave Eggers inspired a lot of outrage from me. Persepolis would rank up there in the top 10 if I chose to count graphic novels.
This year I look forward to reading just as many books, and am anticipating greatly The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Day of the Locust, The Hunger Games, and Undaunted Courage.
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2 comments:
I read your list and started going all "but wait. Didn't Kipling write The Man Who Would be King?!" Then I looked more closely at the title...
But now I'm all confused. Which one was under the tree at Christmas???
This may have been the first Christmas where I didn't get a book.
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