critic’s picks – best books of 2010

Another year, another list of recommended books that’s longer than I’ll ever get to. I just rechecked last year and I have yet to read any of those, though I have purchased Chronic City (for the record I’ve read three from the previous year). As always since I read fiction, I kept the nod to fiction. What have I been reading? Stick around and I’ll let you know the best of my year.

• The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie – NYT
• 61 Hours by Lee Child – JM
• Wilson by Daniel Clowes – LG
• The Passage by Justin Cronin – LG
• Memory Wall: Stories by Anthony Doerr – Am
• Room by Emma Donoghue – NYT, KV
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – NYT, PW, LG
• Freedom by Jonathan Franzen – MK, NYT, Am, PW, LG, MC
• Faithful Place by Tana French – JM, LG
• Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon – LG
• To the End of the Land by David Grossman – Am
• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand – PW
• The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee – PW, KV
• Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes – Am, LG, KV
• The Lost Book of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason – MK
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell – MK, LG, MC
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray – Am, LG, KV
• The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell – Am
• The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer – KV
• One Day by David Nicholls – Am, KV
• Rich Boy by Sharon Pomerantz – KV
• The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman – JM, Am, KV
• So Much for That by Lionel Shriver – MC
• Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart – MK, MC
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson – JM, Am
• Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer – PW
• Selected Stories by William Trevor – NYT
• The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall – Am, PW, KV
• Savages by Don Winslow – JM
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu – LG

MK – Michiko Kakutani for NYT, JM – Janet Maslin for NYT, NYT – New York Times, Am – Amazon Lit, KV – Karen Valby for EW,  PW – Publisher’s Weekly, LG – Lev Grossman for Time, MC – Maureen Corrigan for NPR

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