2010: Ruth's Year in Books

Best of the Year
Here are the five best books I read last year, with first lines (where I could find them online). Usually I just put these in alphabetical order by last name; this year, the best book is first and the other four are in alphabetical order.

• Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.

  My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.

• The Third Claw of God by Adam-Troy Castro.

  Later, much later, after I died, I tried to remember why.

• Rumors by Anna Godbersen.

  It has become almost regular for the lower classes of New York to catch glimpses of our native aristocracy in her city streets, tripping in for breakfast at Sherry's after one of their epic parties, or perhaps racing sleighs in Central Park, that great democratic meeting place.

• Aurelia by Anne Osterlund.

  The back of her gilt chair bit into her shoulder blades, and the heat generated by close bodies made the dab of face paint on her cheeks gleam.

• Cast In Silence by Michelle Sagara.

All of the Year

A couple of years ago, I decided that I would keep a list of all the books I read. It would be, I thought, interesting to see how much, and what, I actually read. So when I read a book, I wrote it down in my notebook. I liked the whole project so much that I've been doing it again each year.

What's here:

• Books I read in 2010.


• Authors of the books.


• Dates I read the books.


• Short notes about each book.


• Approximately how many times I've read the book.

What's not here:

• Magazine and newspaper articles.


• Web-published fiction I read.


• Short stories and individual chapters I read to remind myself of what the book was about.

This year, I read 31 books. For those of you playing along at home, that's 19 fewer than last year. 24 of those, or 77%, are books I read for the first time. 4 of those were written by a PoC author; 23 were written by a female author or coauthor. Of the 25 books for which I counted protagonists, 0 had a PoC protagonist; 20 had a female protagonist.

( The List )

Unrec: The Killing Room by Gerri Hill

Remember a couple of entries ago when I said I needed a lot of words to talk about how bad the book I last read was? It took somewhere around 1500 words, which you can read here (note: the post includes spoilers, but you don't really want to read the book anyway) at romoerotic.