Books I Read in 2010

Well-told epic tale of an Indian woman and her family's struggles with life and the caste system in a changing society.

Pulitzer Prize winner. Insightful stories about the citizens of small-town coastal Maine, especially wonderful, big, old, mean, kind, hating, loving Olive.

Interesting read.

Super job. New York City in well-told stories that share a wide spectrum of intriguing characters and a day in 1974 when a tightrope artist walked a wire connecting the tops of World Trade Center Towers.

Excellent review and analysis of the history of our thinking about God and religion from ancient times to the early 21st century. Religion's task is to help us live well, even joyously, with realities for which there are no easy explanations and with problems we can't solve (e.g., mortality, pain, grief, despair, injustice and cruelty). Religion is a practical discipline that requires significant effort in a dedicated lifestyle - a "compassionate lifestyle that allows us to break out of the prism of selfhood."

Strong work. Character portraits and paintings of South African apartheid.

Powerful portrayal of slavery and indentured servitude in 17th century America.

Wow. Very good stuff. Superbly told tale of the women of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Fine collection. Especially like those by Victoria Lancelotta, Karl Taro Greenfield, Annie Proulx.

Almost, but not quite.

Yes! A real page turner. Publishing a newly discovered Gospel that contradicts the old can be profitable but disastrous.

Wow! Another McCann masterpiece. Gets right inside the beating heart and mind of Romani Gypsy Zoli and her culture.

Very well constructed first novel. Unique, attractive characters whose lives are critically impacted by an impossible war.

Amazing, weird, engrossing tale. What sacrifices and soul-searchings might be experienced by a handful of fascinating beings from another world who hunt and butcher us for profit as rare culinary delicacies? Somehow Faber pulls this one off beautifully. Have to wonder if he is vegan.

Very well told and put together mysterious story within a story or stories, connected in interesting and unexpected ways.

Eleven stories, told with sensitivity and humor, about women and men trying, failing and maybe sometimes succeeding to connect meaningfully to each other and their families.

A classic.

Fine piece of work. Outcast Jew, hijo de puta, Kaddish Poznan and wife Lillian deal with loss of their son, "disappeared" by Argentina's new government.

Wow! A masterpiece second novel by an awesome talent. Exciting page-turner centered around four young American radical terrorist fugitives in the 1970's. (Shades of Patty Hearst.) Irresistible character development exceeds expectations. Although the tragic heroine, Jenny, planted a bomb that blew up part of a building (as planned, no one was killed), you understand her and want her to somehow find peace and happiness. Powerful. Unforgettable.

Twelve stories. All good.

Three fine novellas.

Entirely superior work. Gripping. Tragic. Powerful. Insightful. Hopeful. Enlightening. Fulfilling. Awesome.

Classic. Casual, funny, imaginative, strong anti-war statement, based on the adventures of Billy Pilgrim who was a POW in Dresden, Germany, when U.S. and British bombers killed 135,000 people there.

Tale of the tragic fall of an early 20th century southern family plagued by greed, promiscuity, sickness and suicide. Faulkner uses some wonderful, challenging streams of consciousness starting with one from the disorganized mind of the very retarded Ben.

Fun read.

Classic tale (1913) of Paul Morel's difficult, conflicted relationships with his mother and his lovers.

Booker prize winning study of the mind and heart of Thomas Cromwell in the time of King Henry VIII.

Classic tale of connection and isolation in a small southern U.S. town in the 1930's.

Wonderful. In rotation, Hall introduces us to four appealing artists in four powerful, moving stories, connected in so many ways.

Darkly disturbing look at the last days of Comrade Rubashov, victim of the 1930's Moscow trials.

Classic, timeless masterpiece set in 1938 Mexico. Magnificent control of the language. Rich use of literary allusions. Powerful portrayal of the agonies of alcoholism. One cannot live without love.

Interesting biography of early twentieth century English tattoo artist.

Good, moving story, well told alternately by two interesting narrators: Little Bee, a teen-aged Nigerian asylum-seeker, whose life was saved in a tense scene by the other teller - editor of a London fashion magazine, the about-to-be widowed young mother of a four-year-old who believes he is Spiderman.

Bloody masterpiece. Very bloody. Kid joins traveling gang of ruthless, vicious scalp hunters in mid-nineteenth-century wild, wild western U.S. In the end, what horrible thing did the Judge do to the kid? No one will ever know for sure.

Fine piece of speculative fiction.

Classic masterpiece. The unforgettable story of Philip Carey.

Let the child be the leader. You be the helper.

Letter to Osama bin Laden from working class London gal describing her struggle to re-build her life after the sudden violent deaths of her husband and 4 year-old son in an Al Qaeda suicide bombing. Interesting twists: some sad, many hilarious.

Excellent. Young, New Orleans stockbroker searching for meaning, love.

Irresistible page turner. Intriguing, unique characters.

Classic tour de force. Joyce proves the master of multiple styles as we spend June 16, 1904, in Dublin, Ireland, getting up close and personal with Leopold Bloom.

Superior, gripping tearjerker.

Very good. Builds smoothly to gripping climax.

Second of the trilogy. Even better than the first. Gripping. Couldn't put it down.

Collection of poems and good stories. Good sense of humor.

Classic tale of selected misadventures of the young Holden Caulfield.

Trilogy finale. Another real page-turner.

Classic (1966) science fiction tale of how determined and resourceful Lunar patriots achieved independence from mother Earth in 2076. Tanstaafl!

Classic (1961) story of the Man from Mars, Valentine Michael Smith who was born on Mars of human parents, and brought back to earth to learn our ways and then teach us all a better way. Thou art God. Grok it, man.

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