Elliot's Reading : Top Ten Books of 2010

The Times today publishes its selections as the top 10 books of the year. Me, too. A few notes, first: Only a professional book critic or a team of readers (i.e., on a magazine staff) can possibly read enough new books during the year to come up with a plausible top ten, so my list will be of the ten best books I've read during 2010, some new, some classics or at least rediscovered. Also, I'm not considering for inclusion any books by friends or acquaintances, but I would like to give a shoutout to a few books by friends that I read this year, notably Jean McGarry's "Ocean State," Bruce DeSilva's "Rogue Island," Thomas Cobb's "Crazy Heart," and even, though it wasn't really my kind of book, Robert Goolrick's "A Reliable Wife," which my sister (and others) said they could just not put down.

Also, a special note to two works that the Times included and unquestionably belong on any ten-best list: though I haven't (yet) read Ann Beattie's "New Yorker Stories" or William Trevor's "Selected Stories," I've definitely read many, probably most, of the stories in magazines or earlier collections, so they get a mention, too: Clearly they are two of the best living English-language short-story writers, along with another whose book I have read and is included on my list of:

The Ten Best Books I Read in 2010
(listed alphabetically by title)

New Books

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen. Yes, it's been hyped to death. Yes, he's already been on Oprah and in the society pages of the NYT. Yes, we're maybe a little sick of him. Yes, his world view is very dour. But to all the envious sideline players waiting for Franzen to fall on his face, isn't it clear that Freedom is a really smart, compelling novel about credible people in contemporary America? His ambitions are high, he dares to model his work on Tolstoy no less, but this is a novel that perfectly accomplishes its aims and creates characters who are, as Forster puts it, "round." Worth anyone's reading.

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Another one who doesn't need my help - winner of the 2009 NBA, and now available in pb. Very ambitious, the kind of novel that often falls apart - multiple plot strands that intersect at various key points. But McCannn ties it all together beautifully. The model here is Mrs. Dalloway/Woolf. Again, I found the characters completely credible and the intricate plot very compelling. Note (small spoiler) that both Freedom and Great World involve fatal car accidents - a device that writers ought to retire.

Nemesis, by Philip Roth. A surprise pick, after the disaster earlier in the year of The Humbling, Roth comes back with this short novel that is clearly one of his best - returning to the native soil of Newark in the 1940s, which has provided him with so much great material. This novel is deep with meaning and allusions on many levels, not the least of which is the analogy between the polio epidemic and the barely-mentioned but ever-present Holocaust.

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro. The other great living short-story writer. Maybe not her best collection ever, but every Munro story has some greatness and every Munro collection has some great stories.

Classics

Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. Hadn't read it since high school and still have that cool old pb edition. It still stands up (the edition, too): funny, touching, an amazing narrative voice that has been the model and inspiration for a thousand mfa's. None can match it.

Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada. Postwar German novel, largely ignored, recently republished, very dark, scary, strange - as much for the life story of the troubled Fallada as for the novel itself. About German resistance, based on true events of a rather crazy man who opposed Hitler for nonheroic reasons. Great book, darkly provocative.

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. Unique. Both incredibly influential - literature can include anything and everything - and a case unto itself. Why would anyone ever read an abridged version? What they took out is what you'd want to read.

Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell. It's 50th anniversary, best known today through the movie version, which I haven't seen but it cannot do justice to the novel, with its startling narrative style of very short chapters, about 100 vignettes in the woman's life, which taken together make up an extraordinary life story of an ordinary woman and her travails.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy. Hardy was scorned and overlooked when I was in grad school, and of course he's not as great and perfect and thoughtful as some of his near-contemporaries, but on re-reading Tess I found it to be a very moving story with some amazing passages. Few novels ever will make you feel as deeply for the main character - you want to just jump into the book and rescue her.

War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy. Our world would not be the same without this novel. It's a monument, an avatar of greatness, showing all that the novel could do at its highest level - a book containing and conveying an entire world, specific, real, intelligent, thoughtful, beautiful. As has been said: reading Tolstoy is like reading life.