The 10 Best Books (I Read) in 2011

This year a lot of my reading involved classics, and many of those books I read by contemporaries were collections from a lifetime of work. 2011 was, for me anyway, a weak year for new fiction, particularly for new novels. Professional critics will have their ten-best lists of new fiction, but most readers don't or can't read enough new fiction to make any sensible judgment on the best new fiction of the year. Why should we? For me, it's important to return from time to time to the great books I've loved and to read for the first time some that I've overlooked. So my ten-best list for 2011 is really the 10 Best Books (I read) in 2011:

Selected Stories, by William Trevor. Retrospective story collections were definitely among the best books published in late 2010 or 2011, and this collection makes it clear that without a doubt Trevor is one of the greatest writers of our time.

The New Yorker Stories, by Ann Beattie. Another great collection that gives a terrific complete overview of Beattie's remarkable contribution over so many years to American short fiction.

Gryphon, by Charles Baxter. The third great story collection from the past year shows novelist and old friend Baxter's great skill and broad range in short fiction.

Collected Stories, by Eudora Welty. Among the books I read in 2011 from the library back shelves were two other great short-story collections. Reading Welty's entire short-story corpus, you see that she had a narrow range and narrow social scope, but incredible insight and perspicacity.

The Death of Ivan Ilych, and Other Stories, by Leo Tolstoy. Despite my slamming of The Kreutzer Sonata (which I think is unlikely to harm Tolstoy's reputation), this collection, in the Volkhansky-Pevear translation, has some extraordinary pieces, and it's a great way for those daunted by W&P or AK to begin to understand and enjoy Tolstoy.

Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. Moving on to the best novels I read this year, DQ has to top the list: two of the greatest characters in world literature, very funny, very thoughtful, sharply critical of society in its time and, by extension, in ours, easy to read though not to hold - wish I'd read it on a Kindle.

Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust. Wait, maybe this one should top the list? In the Lydia Davis translation, every page, every sentence, every phrase is full of insight and beauty. No doubt Proust is not for all tastes, but every writer from the past hundred years has learned from Proust and lives in his shadow.

Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald. A totally quirky novel that in the short time since its publication has become a classic and has influenced many young novelists and essayists. Many have tried, but none can write about time, place, history, and memory better than Sebald - his early death was a great loss to us all.

Comedy in a Minor Key, by Hans Keilson. I'll make this a plus-one by adding the other Keilson novel published in English in 2010/2011: Death of the Adversary. Two great and totally forgotten novels from the mid-20th century by the Dutch writer who died this year at 100! Both these novels, about Europe under the shadow of the Nazis, are strange and sad and give, hard as it is to believe, a completely fresh perspective on their tragic time.

In a future post: Some books that disappointed me during 2011.