# The SBHonline Community Daily > Books, Movies, and TV >  >  NY Times Best 10 Books

## andynap

The 10 Best Books of 2010

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times


FREEDOM
By Jonathan Franzen.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28. 

The author of The Corrections is back, not quite a decade later, with an even richer and deeper work  a vividly realized narrative set during the Bush years, when the creedal legacy of personal liberties assumed new and sometimes ominous proportions. Franzen captures this through the tribulations of a Midwestern family, the *Berglunds, whose successes, failures and appetite for self-invention reflect the larger story of millennial America. 

THE NEW YORKER STORIES
By Ann Beattie.
Scribner, $30. 

As these 48 stories published in The New Yorker from 1974 through 2006 demonstrate, Beattie, even as she chronicled and satirized her post-1960s generation, also became its defining voice. She punctures her characters pretensions and jadedness with an economy and effortless dialogue that writers have been trying to emulate for three decades, though few, if any, have matched her seamless combination of biting wit and mordant humor, precise irony and consummate cool. 

ROOM
By Emma Donoghue.
Little, Brown & Company, $24.99. 

Donoghue has created one of the pure triumphs of recent fiction: an ebullient child narrator, held captive with his mother in an 11-by-11-foot room, through whom we encounter the blurry, often complicated space between closeness and autonomy. In a narrative at once delicate and vigorous  rich in psychological, sociological and political meaning  Donoghue reveals how joy and terror often dwell side by side. 

SELECTED STORIES
By William Trevor.
Viking, $35. 

Gathering work from Trevors previous four collections, this volume shows why his deceptively spare fiction has haunted and moved readers for generations. Set mainly in Ireland and England, Trevors tales are eloquent even in their silences, documenting the way the present is consumed by the past, the way ancient patterns shape the future. Neither modernist nor antique, his stories are timeless. 

A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD
By Jennifer Egan.
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95. 

Time is the goon squad in this virtuosic rock n roll novel about a cynical record producer and the people who intersect his world. Ranging across some 40 years and inhabiting 13 different characters, each with his own story and perspective, Egan makes these disparate parts cohere into an artful whole, irradiated by a Proustian feel for loss, regret and the ravages of love. 

Nonfiction 

APOLLOS ANGELS: A History of Ballet
By Jennifer Homans.
Random House, $35. 

Here is the only truly definitive history of classical ballet. Spanning more than four centuries, from the French Renaissance to American and Soviet stages during the cold war, Homans shows how the art has been central to the social and cultural identity of nations. She meticulously reconstructs entire eras, describing the evolution of ballet technique while coaxing long-lost dances back to life. And she raises a crucial question: In the 21st century, can ballet survive? 

CLEOPATRA: A Life
By Stacy Schiff.
Little, Brown & Company, $29.99. 

With her signature blend of wit, intelligence and superb prose, Schiff strips away 2,000 years of prejudices and propaganda in her elegant reimagining of the Egyptian queen who, even in her own day, was mythologized and misrepresented. 

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES: A Biography of Cancer
By Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Scribner, $30. 

Mukherjees magisterial biography of the most dreaded of modern afflictions. He excavates the deep history of the war on cancer, weaving haunting tales of his own clinical experience with sharp sketches of the sometimes heroic, sometimes misguided scientists who have preceded him in the fight. 

FINISHING THE HAT: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, *Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes
By Stephen Sondheim.
Alfred A. Knopf, $39.95. 

The theaters pre-eminent living songwriter offers a master class in how to write a musical, covering some of the greatest shows, from West Side Story? to Sweeney Todd. Sondheims analysis of his and others lyrics is insightful and candid, and his anecdotes are telling and often very funny. 

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: The Epic Story of Americas Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson.
Random House, $30. 

Wilkerson, a former national correspondent for The Times, has written a masterly and engrossing account of the Great Migration, in which six million African-Americans abandoned the South between 1915 and 1970. The book centers on the journeys of three black migrants, each representing a different decade and a different destination

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## MIke R

can't say I would agree with much of that from a standpoint of personal tastes or sales in my shop

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## jim2

Wow.  Happy for the author of "Room".  A different and very accomplished novel which I don't think made the sales it deserved.  I also see that it was on NPR's best books of the year list.  Go read it.  It's good.

jim

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## andynap

I am plowing thru Freedom now. I have never seen a book with more words crammed into each page- run on sentences 10 lines long, stream of conscienceness, long chapters. It's an interesting read tho.

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## MIke R

> Wow.  Happy for the author of "Room".  A different and very accomplished novel which I don't think made the sales it deserved.  I also see that it was on NPR's best books of the year list.  Go read it.  It's good.
> 
> jim




best book of the year for my money

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## jim2

> I am plowing thru Freedom now. I have never seen a book with more words crammed into each page- run on sentences 10 lines long, stream of conscienceness, long chapters. It's an interesting read tho.




...and this from an attorney!!

jim

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## andynap

It's much worse Jim. I try and keep my appellate briefs and arguments to a minimum which all the judges like.

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## jim2

I'll admit "Freedom" is not a beach book.  I had to concentrate but I think you'll appreciate it when you, finally, finish it.  Hang in there!

jim

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## rivertrash

I tried to read "The Corrections" before picking up "Freedom" and just finally gave up.  Is "Freedom" similar in style to "The Corrections"?

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## jim2

To be honest, I don't remeber much about The Corrections.  I do remember not being as impressed with all the fuss over it.  I tried Freedom and thought it a "big read".  It takes time but to my mind it was worth it.  I grew to care about the family and really appreciated the author's talent.

As I was reading it Jim said something like"you're not making much progress with that".  As I said to him, "It ain't easy but I really like it"  To cut your losses maybe borrow a friend's copy or get in line at the library?

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## amyb

I thought it an excellent story and I came to care about the characters. Go for it.

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## rivertrash

Guess I'll give it a try, but it may be too serious for me right now.  Have been reading serious escape fiction -- David Baldacci's new 
Camel Club book, "Hell's Corner,"  James Lee Burke's "The Glass Rainbow," and Vince Flynn's latest Mitch Rapp installment, called "American Assassin."  None of them has been nominated for an award.

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## amyb

I read them too, Dick. The book I will be on the look out for on the beach is ROOM.

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## rivertrash

The reviews of "Room" I have read sound good, if a little disturbing.  I will probably pick it up next.

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## julianne

Haven't read all of these but of the ones I've finished, I give a nod to ROOM as my favorite of the year. You will never forget the characters in it. Emma Donoghue's powerful imagery makes you an observer in the room as if you are looking over Jack's shoulder.

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## amyb

ROOM is truly the book most recommended to me in 2010.

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## jim2

Hopefully all this end of the year hoopla about ROOM....best books list, praise on the SBHOnline website...will get it back on the Times best seller list.  It's certainly on my top ten list.

jim

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## amyb

Well, there you go! Julianne and Jim-sure to be a winner if it gets those votes.

EDIT-MIKER recommends this. "Go read it," he said.

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## MIke R

what am I - chopped liver???...LOL

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## amyb

See edited post above.

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## andynap

> what am I - chopped liver???..




Never ask a question like that-  }:|

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## MIke R

ah gee Amy..you re swell!!!...LOL

Andy...I often make a statement which purposely walks me into a trap...for entertainment purposes.....

how  about the "I'm speechless" comment upstairs?.....LOL....talk about a high slow pitch....LOL

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## andynap

That eddie is a real provoker-  :/

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