A Year in Marginalia: Sam Anderson

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The writing I enjoy doing most, every year, is marginalia: spontaneous bursts of pure, private response to whatever book happens to be in front of me. It’s the most intimate, complete, and honest form of criticism possible — not the big wide-angle aerial shot you get from an official review essay, but a moment-by-moment record of what a book actually feels like to the actively reading brain. Here are some snapshots, month by month, of my marginalia from 2010. (Click each image for a larger view)

January
Point Omega by Don Delillo

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February
Reality Hunger by David Shields

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Bleak House by Charles Dickens

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March
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

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April
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

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May
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis

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June
Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson

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July
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

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August
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis

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September
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

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October
The Anthology of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois

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November
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

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Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

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December
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon

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More from a Year in Reading 2010

Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

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is the New York Times Magazine's Critic at Large. He is writing a book about Oklahoma City.