Today I want to share with you my list of 2010 Books Read. I am one of those silly people that keep a list of all the books they read. I have done so since 1998. I mainly do it because my memory is going and when someone asks me for a book recommendation or what I’ve read lately I usually have to consult the list!
Before I share the list though I want to make a disclaimer.
Just because I read the book doesn’t necessarily mean I recommend it. This year I have decided to keep a rating system along with the list of books I have read (one star, two star etc.) but for 2010 year you just get the list. So I highly recommend that you consult this great site – Rated Reads before you read the book to make sure it is something you want to read.
Using movie ratings, the books on this list range from G rated to PG13. We need to take personal responsibility for what we read and watch and we all have different standards so please be sure and check things out. Although the majority of what I read I would consider rated PG there may a few books that I have read that don’t meet with your personal standards so please be a responsible reader. I don’t want to offend anyone.
Honestly – I can’t say there was any one book I read in 2010 that really WOWED me. I liked a lot of them. I really enjoyed the Hunger Games series especially since I didn’t think I would and didn’t really want to read them. They were a pleasant surprise.
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts was a definite favorite. It is a memoir based on a writer who lived in a combination leper hospital/prison in the South.
I have given into pressure from my children and have promised to read the entire Harry Potter series. (I had only ever read the first one when it initially came out) I am enjoying them much more than I expected too!
I am often asked how I have so much time to read. 53 books this year. First, I am a fast reader. I tell my children that comes from reading a lot my whole life – the more you read, the faster you get. Second, I read a lot in the car. Actually, I listen to a lot of books on CD while I’m driving around on daily basis. It’s amazing how much you can get done. I listened to the entire C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia in the car and I am also reading Harry Potter that way!
As always, I love hearing what you have been reading. Please leave a comment and let me know. Did you have a favorite book for 2010?
So enjoy the list!
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins (Book Club Read)
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Trudy’s Promise- Marcia Preston
84 Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts – Neil White
Remember Me – Sophie Kinsella
Q’s Legacy – Helene Hanff
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street – Helene Hanff
My Abandonment – Peter Rock (Book Club read)
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Prayers for Sale – Sandra Dallas
Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt – Beth Hoffman
Noah’s Compass – Anne Tyler
Brava Valentine – Adrianna Trigianni
The Forgotten Garden –Kate Morton
Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky –Chris Greenhalgh
Cold Sassy Tree – Olive Ann Burns
Princess Bride – William Goldman (Book Club Read)
The Ladies Auxiliary – Tova Mirvis
The Same Kind of Different as Me – Ron Hall and Denver Moore
The Postmistress – Sarah Blake
The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
Prince Caspian – C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C.S. Lewis
The Silver Chair – C.S. Lewis
The Horse and His Boy – C.S. Lewis
The Magician’s Nephew – C.S. Lewis
The Last Battle – C.S. Lewis
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake – Aimee Bender
The Second Short Life of Bree Tanner – Stephanie Meyer
The Moonflower Vine – Jetta Carleton
Garden Spells – Sarah Addison Allen
Girl in Translation – Jean Kwok
Dairy Queen – Catherine Gilbert Murdock ( YA Fiction -Book Club Read)
The Last Time I Saw You – Elizabeth Berg
The Sugar Queen – Sarah Addison Allen
The Girl Who Chased the Moon – Sarah Addison Allen
Making Toast – Roger Rosenblatt
Olive’s Ocean – Kevin Henkes (YA fiction)
Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder – Rebecca Wells
The Wednesday Sisters – Meg Waite Clayton
Why now is the time to CRUSH IT! Cash in on your Passion – Gary Vaynerchuk
A Second Journey – Joan Anderson
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson
I Feel Bad About my Neck – Nora Ephron
The Elegance of the Hedgehog -Muriel Barbery
A Secret Kept – Tatiana de Rosnay
Mennonite in a little black dress: a memoir of going home – Rhoda Janzen
Making it All Work – David Allen
Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets – JK Rowling
Harry Potter Prisoner of Askaban – JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – JK Rowling
I read 84 Charing Cross as a child and it really captured my imagination. I loved it so much and still do!
Books I read last year which I’m sure you would enjoy:
The Help
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
The Kitchen House
Half Broke Horses (also Glass Castles by the same author)
Great list! I enjoyed seeing what you read. Some good ones. I really enjoyed The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Check out my review on Rated Reads. And thanks for mentioning my website! Glad you find it useful.
I am surprised you weren’t “wowed” by Cold Sassy Tree. It is one of my all time favorites, I wish I could read it again for the first time.
Amanda,
I love that book and have read it 3-4 times. I like to re-read it every couple of years so I guess I was thinking more in terms of books I had read for the first time.
Just finished Remember Me, loved it! And HP is one of my favorite series of all time. BTW, just checked out your daughters page. Darling, she reminds me of my daughter, I will have to show her after school!
Yay! I was hoping that you would do another book list this year. I took note of some of the ones you posted from last year and loved them. Thank you for sharing this!
My favorite book from this last year was The Help. I highly recommend you listen to it on CD because the readers are FANTASTIC! If you listened to Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt on CD, she is also one of the readers of The Help. It is so good, that when I am in Costco and I see someone looking at The Help, I usually go up and tell them to read it because it is such a good book. Enjoy!
We enjoy a lot of the same books. Two YA titles I’ve enjoyed recently are Matched by Ally Condie (if you enjoyed Hunger Games you would probably enjoy this). I also enjoyed I Now Pronounce You Someone Else by Erin McCahan. A fun clean romance about a smart girl making some tough choices. Realistic. If you enjoyed Pride & Prejudice, read Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind by Heidi Ashworth.
sorry i forgot, i read water for elephants which was a such a good read but it is like you said i think if it had a rating it might be rated R, circus folk are a little racy! a very G book is book of a thousand days, a YA book that was very cute. i was reading freedom but couldn’t get into it, i started these is my words instead! don’t get me started…
that is why i love goodreads.com, i can keep a list of what i read, a review and a rating as well as see what others like.
i loved garden spells, that was so cute.
my favorites this year were The Help, Glass Castles, Half Broke Horses, like dandelion dust and safe haven!
i love books!!!
I recently recopied my book list and * ratings into a pretty new journal. I also added “t” for travel and “s” for spiritual- two genres that I love to read. I started my little notebook in 1986 after graduating college. It if fun to go back and look at the years I had my girls…only 1 or 2 books for those years!
I also loved These is my words. It is so funny that you keep a list. I have been saying I need to do that too for the very same reasons. I’m new to your site, but love everything about it. I think we would be good friends if we ever crossed each others paths.
I love that you do this and I am going to do this now too!! A YA series that my whole family has really enjoyed is Peter and the Starcathers. There are 4 books that tell the story of Peter Pan from the very beginning. They are super fun reads!
Great list! I’ve read some and am adding some to my “to read” list. Here are my top ten from 2010: http://writingfishbowl.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-top-ten-favorite-books-of-2010.html And you can see my complete reading list for the year if you scroll down (but like you, I don’t necessarily recommend them all).
Love the Janet Evonovich series.
Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Time Travelers Wife
The Help
Love love love your blog. Thanks so very much for being here.
What a great idea! I have intended to keep a book list several times, but have never been able to keep it going–maybe this is my year!
Do you keep track of the books in a notebook or on the computer?
I keep my list on a word document on my computer.
I read many of the books on your list, but have a great many non-fiction books on mine, too. So far this year, I’ve read three novels: Left Neglected about woman who suffered brain damage from auto crash involving her attempt to use cell phone while driving and Still Alice about professional woman’s early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, both by Lisa Genova, a talented new author; and Picture of You by Carolyn Leavey.
(Not bad for eleven days, huh?) I can recommend all three page turners.
Leigh Anne, I’m a big reader too. I usually get at least one book read a week. My faves from last year were The Help and Prayers for Sale. I love Jennifer Chiaverini’s Elm Creek Quilters series and Laura Child’s Tea Shop Mysteries. I lead a women’s book club at our church, so I try to keep up on them. I love Meg Cabot for light reading and just got a Kindle, so I am excited about being able to take it everywhere! And, I made your toffee cookies last night and they were so yummy!
My taste is books is very eclectic. About the only genre I don’t read is Sci-Fi and for some reason I just never could get into that type of storyline.
I too had to start making a list of what I’ve read so that I can try to checkout something new. I somehow managed 64 book last year and if you’re interested you can check out what I’ve read here – http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1892957-suzanne?shelf=read
What a great list! You are a READER! One of my VERY favorites this year was Molokai by Alan Brennert – it was such a beautiful story and good from the very start. I highly recommend it!
Also, happy late birthday 🙂 Looks like you had a fun day!
LeighAnn, what is your favorite source for books on cd? Do you get them from a download website?
Most of them come from the library I order them online and just pick them up at the Bethany branch
I just finished “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and really liked it. I would rate it a PG, but a PG 13 in some parts
Hi Leigh Anne,
Always love your book list. I really enjoyed Russian Winter this year by Daphne Kalotay. About a Bolshoi ballerina after WWII>
I love that you keep a list of the books, I need to do that! I loved The Ladies Auxiliary, as I grew up Jewish, but am now LDS. The Help was good and I read the These is my Words series. Another one I enjoyed was Mennonite in a little Black Dress. I appreciate you so much!
My all time favorite book is on your list, “Cold Sassy Tree.” My favorite book of the year was “The Help.”
I have enjoyed THE #1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY books. They are set in Botswana, Africa. I love to listen to them on CD as you get to hear how they pronounce the names. Try them!!
Aspire by Kevin Hall, A Heart Like His by Virginia H Pearce, Mr Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange are all excellent reads!
As I recently recovered from surgery I listened to Anne of Green Gables it is delightful!
Holy Cow!!! These are all 2010 reads? You are amazing! I don’t know how you do it all 🙂 I love to read too. “These is my words” was one of my favorites this year.
I read a lot of Young Adult fiction to know what my kids are reading. I just finished the second Artemis Fowl book and we’re reading Eragon for our family book club. The best thing about YA is it’s generally appropriate. I did start reading Eat, Pray, Love. I’m hoping it doesn’t get too “grown up” for me to finish.
You and I read many of the same books in 2010! Like you, I really loved some, and others, not so much. What’s on your list for 2011 after Harry Potter (which is such an awesome series!)?
My first read for 2011 was Ape House (same author as Water for Elephants) The book was a big disappointment. I am now reading A Vintage Affair (about a girl who owns a vintage clothing shop and I am enjoying it) How about you?