A Year in Reading 2010

There are many ways to measure a year, but the reader is likely to measure it in books. There was the novel that felt as fresh and full of promise as the new year in January, the memoir read on the bus to and from work through the grey days of March, the creased paperback fished from a pocket in the park in May, the stacks of books thumbed through and sandy-paged, passed around at the beach in August, the old favorite read by light coming in the window in October, and the many books in between. And when we each look back at our own years in reading, we are almost sure to find that ours was exactly like no other reader’s.

The end of another year brings the usual frothy and arbitrary accounting of the “best” this and the “most” that. But might it also be an opportunity to look back, reflect, and share? We hope so, and so, for a seventh year, The Millions has reached out to some of our favorite writers, thinkers, and readers to name, from all the books they read this year, the one(s) that meant the most to them, regardless of publication date. Grouped together, these ruminations, cheers, squibs, and essays will be a chronicle of reading and good books from every era. We hope you find in them seeds that will help make your year in reading in 2011 a fruitful one.

As we have in prior years, the names of our 2010 “Year in Reading” contributors will be unveiled one at a time throughout the month as we post their contributions. You can bookmark this post and follow the series from here, or load up the main page for more new Year in Reading posts appearing at the top every day, or you can subscribe to our RSS feed and follow along in your favorite feed reader.

• Stephen Dodson, coauthor of Uglier Than a Monkey’s Armpit, proprietor of Languagehat.
• Fiona Maazel, author of Last Last Chance.
• John Banville, author of The Sea, The Infinities, and many other books.
• Al Jaffee, legendary Mad Magazine writer and cartoonist.
• Lionel Shriver, author of So Much for That and several other books.
• Emma Rathbone, author of The Patterns of Paper Monsters.
• Joshua Cohen, author of Witz.
• Jonathan Dee, author of The Privileges and several other books.
• Jennifer Gilmore, author of Something Red.
• Stephen Elliott, editor of The Rumpus and author of The Adderall Diaries.
• Dan Kois, author of Facing Future.
• Bill Morris, Millions staff writer and author of Motor City.
• Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised, proprietor of The Elegant Variation.
• Emma Donoghue, author of Room and several other books.
• Margaret Atwood, author of Year of the Flood and many other books.
• Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius and several other books.
• Hamilton Leithauser, of The Walkmen.
• Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood and other books.
• Anthony Doerr, author of Memory Wall and other books.
• Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies.
• Tom Rachman, author of The Imperfectionists.
• Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and several other books.
• Philip Lopate, author of Notes on Sontag and several other books.
• Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask and other books.
• Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge.
• Joseph McElroy, author of Women and Men and several other books.
• Alexander Theroux, author of Laura Warholic and several other books.
• Laura van den Berg, author of What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us.
• Emily St. John Mandel, Millions staff writer and author of Last Night In Montreal and The Singer’s Gun.
• John Williams, founding editor of The Second Pass.
• Edan Lepucki, Millions staff writer, author of If You’re Not Yet Like Me.
• Ed Champion, proprietor of edrants.com and The Bat Segundo Show.
• Maud Newton, proprietor of maudnewton.com.
• Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review.
• Tom McCarthy, author of C and Remainder.
• Keith Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men and founding editor of n+1.
• Rosecrans Baldwin, author of You Lost Me There and co-founder of The Morning News.
• Paul Harding, author of Tinkers.
• Sigrid Nunez, author of Salvation City and several other books.
• Matt Weiland, editor of The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup and State by State.
• Allegra Goodman, author of The Cookbook Collector and several other books.
• Adam Levin, author of The Instructions and several other books.
• Michael Cunningham, author of By Nightfall, The Hours and several other books.
• Sam Anderson, book critic, New York magazine.
• Richard Nash, of Cursor and Red Lemonade.
• Seth Mnookin, author of Hard News and The Panic Virus.
• Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age.
• Marisa Silver, author of The God of War and other books.
• David Gutowski, of Largehearted Boy.
• Emily Colette Wilkinson, Millions staff writer.
• Jenny Davidson, author of Invisible Things and other books.
• Scott Esposito, proprietor of Conversational Reading and editor of The Quarterly Conversation.
• Carolyn Kellogg, LA Times staff writer.
• Anne K. Yoder of The Millions.
• Marjorie Kehe, book editor at the Christian Science Monitor.
• Neal Pollack, author of Stretch: The Unlikely Making Of A Yoga Dude and other books.
• Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
• Allen Barra writes for the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Beast.
• Dorothea Lasky, author of Black Life and AWE.
• Avi Steinberg, author of Running the Books, The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian.
• Stephanie Deutsch, critic and historian.
• Lydia Kiesling, Millions staff writer.
• Lorraine Adams, author of The Room and the Chair.
• Rachel Syme, NPR.com books editor.
• Garth Risk Hallberg, Millions staff writer and author of A Field Guide to the North American Family.

…Wrapping Up a Year in Reading

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

The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles

The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews

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