2010年最值得一读的书(英文原版).doc

Best Books of 2010 Nov 08, 2010 ShareThis | | Reader Comments (7) page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 This year we took our annual slugfest to the pub underneath our new office and came up with a list of the years top 100 books that could be our best ever. It wasnt any easier with a drink in hand to pick, and agree upon, the best books of 2010, but we did it. And, as a magazine thats published continuously since 1872 and reviews over 7,000 books a year, we had a lot to consider. The women are back. strong. and were all over the globe. Before the full list hits in Mondays issue, heres a peek at our top 10. So who made the cut? Theres Franzen mining the American family for his canvas; Egan, the music industry; Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini, a hero from our greatest generation; Lee, the Korean War; Skloot, one African-American womans experience with medical research in the days of segregation; Wilkerson, the great African-American migration; Udall, a lonely Mormon polygamist; Spencer, a very American moral dilemma; Lewis, our financial crash of 2008; and, of course, Smith- rock and roll idol, whose literary gifts match her musical talent-delved into New York Citys in the 60s and 70s and her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Click PWs Best Childrens Books 2010 for our top childrens books of 2010.Photo by Matt Peyton/ Getty ImagesFirst, our top ten books of the year:A Visit from the Goon SquadJennifer Egan (Knopf)Egans a daunting stylist, and shes in blistering form for these interlocking narratives about the milieu surrounding an aging and waning music producer. Essentially, its a story about getting mugged by the passage of time, and along the way she interrogates how rebellion ages, influence corrupts, habits turn to addictions, and lifelong friendships fluctuate. You also might know this as the novel that has a chapter written in PowerPoint. Egan: unpredictable and, here, brilliant.FreedomJonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)Did you know Jonathan Franzen has a new novel? He does. Its called Freedom, and it follows a Minnesota family whose problems, squabbles, and poor decisions encapsulate the very essence of what it means to have lived through the first decade of the 21st century. Its a masterpiece.UnbrokenLaura Hillenbrand (Random)Readers of this soul-stirring narrative will never forget Louis Zamperini, who after a career as a runner served in WWII only to be captured and held prisoner by the Japanese; a more horrific internment would be difficult to imagine. Zamperinis physical and spiritual sufferings both during and after WWII and his coming out the other side become the story of a true American hero from that greatest generation.The SurrenderedChang-rae Lee (Riverhead)Grim, but so is Dostoyevski. Lee, who can craft a sentence, follows several decades in the lives of an American soldier and a Korean orphan whose paths cross during the Korean War, the reverberations of which, Lee shows, are now deeply woven into the fabric of what it means to be American.The Big ShortMichael Lewis (Norton)Lewis has written the briskest and brightest analysis of the crash of 2008. Other books might provide a more exhaustive account of what went wrong, but Lewiss character-driven narrative reveals the how and why with peerless clarity and panache. When will they ever learn?The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksRebecca Skloot (Crown)Medical history is grippingly told through the life of one African-American woman and her family, which begins at the colored ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s. Skloot, who hit the road in her beatup old car to relentlessly follow this story, explores issues of race, poverty, the ethics of medical research and its sometimes tragic, unintended consequences.Just KidsPatti Smith (Ecco)Smiths beautifully crafted love letter to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by a passion for art and writing. Her elegant eulogy lays bare the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpes life and work.Man in the WoodsScott Spencer (Ecco)A man and a dog in Spencers adroit hands adds up to one stunning story. Spencer says he likes to put his characters in situations and turn up the heat. Here his well-meaning, easygoing protagonist lands in the third circle of hell, with his whole life in jeopardy, after a chance encounter at a highway rest stop. Exciting, thoughtful, compelling: you wont want to put it down and you wont want it to end.The Lonely PolygamistBrady Udall (Norton)Golden Richards, a fundamentalist Mormon with four wives and 28 children, flirts with infidelity in this tragicomic family saga with a cast of flawed, perfectly realized characters. Dont mistake this for the Great American Mormon Novel-it could just be the Great American Novel of the year.The Warmth of Other SunsIsabel Wilkerson (Random)Wilkersons sprawling study of the flight of six million blacks from the humiliation of Jim Crow to uncertain destinies in the American North and West is expansive in scope, pointillist in focus, and a triumph of scholarship and empathy. Anchoring her narrative in the suspenseful stories of three who made the journey, Wilkerson humanizes the migration that reshaped American demographics, art, and politics. FictionThe Pregnant WidowMartin Amis (Knopf)Amis propels a very Martin Amis-like Keith Nearing through a summer of poolside torment-sexual, psychological, literary-in 1968 Italy. This dark drawing-room comedy is a showcase of Amiss ability to make the English language bend to his whims.Parrot & Olivier in America Peter Carey (Knopf)Olivier, a fictionalized and absolutely obnoxious riff on Alexis de Tocqueville, contends with Parrot, a cunning servant dispatched to spy on Olivier by Oliviers mother, as the two journey across early 19th-century America. In this vast picaresque, Carey finds, via a snobbish Frenchman and an earthy Brit, a truly American story.The PrivilegesJonathan Dee (Random)Dee again turns a gimlet eye on the way we live now, offering a churning story of greed, risk, danger, and financial industry chicanery set amid the foibles of a rabidly ambitious Manhattan family. Think: Bonfire of the Vanities, updated, hipper, and stripped to the bone.TutankhamunNick Drake (Harper)Drake easily injects a serial killer plot into the middle book of his Ancient Egyptian trilogy while vividly evoking the reign of the boy king Tutankhamun.Extraordinary RenditionsAndrew Ervin (Coffee House)Modern Budapest comes to life in three linked novellas with characters that cover the spectrum from a concentration camp survivor who returns for the premiere of his opera to a black American G.I. forced into gun running by his unscrupulous commander.Faithful PlaceTana French (Viking)Suspense blends with family demons in Frenchs meticulous crime novel about a cops quest for the truth behind the disappearance of the young Dublin woman he was planning to elope with 22 years earlier.To the End of the LandDavid Grossman, trans. from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen (Knopf)Grossmans epic masterwork maps the long, dark shadow war has cast over an Israeli family. From domestic disruption to harrowing violence, this unflinching account is devastating and seductive.The Four Stages of CrueltyKeith Hollihan (St. Martins/Dunne)Hollihan combines a labyrinthine plot with a nuanced, character-driven narrative that provides insights into prison life in his impressive debut.Father of the Rain Lily King (Grove)Kings intense family drama coincides with the demise of Waspdom and exposes the thrill and despair of an alcoholic, charismatic father who is wildly entertaining to a child but difficult to deal with as an adult.Our Kind of TraitorJohn le Carr (Viking)Those who have found post-cold war le Carr too cerebral will welcome this Russian mafia spy thriller involving an English couple on holiday in the Caribbean.Beneath the Lions GazeMaaza Mengiste (Norton)African novelists have been taking center stage, and Mengistes debut marks her as one to watch. Ethiopia from the fall of Haile Selassie through the dark 70s of Derge rule is her setting as a family struggles to maintain its humanity.How to Read the AirDinaw Mengestu (Riverhead)Mengestu sticks to familiar territory in his soulful second novel, but here brings an intriguing formal rigor to the tale. Jonas Woldemariam retraces a brief road trip that his parents, both Ethiopian immigrants, took 30 years before, compelling him to distort the truth about not only their lives, but his own, in ever more complicated ways.The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de ZoetDavid Mitchell (Random)Mitchell goes straightup historical in this majestic account of a young Dutch East Indies clerks time in the trading port of Dejima, in turn-of-the-19th-century Japan.SourlandJoyce Carol Oates (Ecco)Yes, we suspect there are really three separate writers producing the endless stream of prose: Joyce, Carol, and Oates. Here, Oates takes it to the edge, bringing her recurring themes of violence and desire to terrifying fruition. Widows figure prominently, as do children, and everyones in trouble.Years of Red DustQiu Xiaolong (St. Martins)This collection of linked short stories from the author of The Mao Case and five other Inspector Chen novels charts the political changes in China under Communist rule through the eyes of the inhabitants of Shanghais Red Dust Lane. The ImperfectionistsTom Rachmann (Dial)The ragtag staff of a dying English language daily newspaper in Rome provide a memorable cross-section of experience, failure, expectation, and perilous aspiration. Its also a magnificent paean to that increasingly endangered species: the printed newspaper.Invisible BoyCornelia Read (Grand Central)Acid-tongued ex-socialite Madeline Dare uncovers a childs skeleton in Queens Prospect Cemetery in a crime novel that exposes undertones of racism and classism in New York Citys justice system.VestmentsJohn Reimringer (Milkweed)This sensitive and searching debut confronts the conflicts of a newly ordained young priest from a family whose men have always loved strong drink and a good fight, torn between his desire for spirituality and the temptations of the flesh.InnocentScott Turow (Grand Central)Twenty-two years after the events in Presumed Innocent, former lawyer Rusty Sabich once again faces a murder charge in a novel that rates as a worthy successor to that memorable debut.Self-PortraitsFrederic Tuten (Norton)For 40 years, since his early postmodernist stunner, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March, Tuten has reworked the shape and consistency of the novel. In this one, Tuten, now 74, turns self-ward. The result: magical Calvino-like tales both revealing and uncompromising, as the authors energy for invention trumps nostalgia while ennobling it.AgaatMarlene van Niekerk, trans. from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House)South African van Niekerk takes readers into the muck of her homelands complicated history of race relations via the perspective of a dying woman whose only companion is her black servant.PoetryNoxAnne Carson (New Directions)This is a fold-out replication, a kind of scroll, of the handmade notebook that Carson made to mourn her brothers death.The Eternal CityKathleen Graber (Princeton)Graber is the kind of poet who thinks out loud. What may at first seem like casual conversation with the self, however, turns out to be deep philosophical thinking.By the NumbersJames Richardson (Copper Canyon)Richardson is the best aphorist writing in English, and hes a hell of a poet, too. Both forms are represented in this wonderful book.WaitC.K. Williams (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Fear of death has sent some lightning through veteran poet Williamss poems. These are urgent remembrances of a lifes regrets and what hopes still survive into old age.Come On All You GhostsMatthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon)Zapruders third book mixes the kind of hip swagger hes known for with an increasingly earnest engagement with the people and things he loves.MysteryThe Man with the Baltic StareJames Church (Minotaur)Church audaciously sets his fourth Inspector O novel in 2016, when O must investigate a Macao prostitutes murder linked to the young man being groomed as the future leader of North Korea.Love Songs from a Shallow GraveColin Cotterill (Soho Crime)The murders of three women, each with a dueling sword, preoccupy 73-year-old Laotian coroner Siri Paiboun in a mystery that has it all-a heroic protagonist, a challenging puzzle, and an exotic setting.Bleed a River DeepBrian McGilloway (Minotaur)Despite being suspended from the Garda for failing to prevent what could have been the fatal shooting of a visiting former U.S. senator, Irish Inspector Devlin persists in looking into a bank heist and other crimes in a mystery that explores the underside of the Celtic Tiger.Bury Your DeadLouise Penny (Minotaur)Pennys gift for displaying heartbreak and hope in the same scene is just one of the many strengths of her sixth traditional mystery to feature French-Canadian Chief Insp. Armand Gamache.The Insane TrainSheldon Russell (Minotaur)Railroad security agent Hook Runyon must help transport a trainload of dangerous mental patients from California to Oklahoma in a rough-edged 1940s historical that evokes both Chandler and Hammett.The Red DoorCharles Todd (Morrow)Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked WWI veteran, looks into a missing missionary and a bludgeoning murder in a mystery that offers a tricky puzzle and incisive character portraits.RomanceThe Forbidden RoseJoanna Bourne (Berkley Sensation)In mid-revolution France, a noblewoman and a spy are torn between wartime practicality and headstrong passion. The gripping espionage story and wry voiceovers from the heroine will win hearts.The Iron DukeMeljean Brook (Berkley)Brooks fabulous steampunk tale has an iron-boned war hero and a half-Asian detective inspector matching wits and wills on airships and battleships and in smoke-choked London as England recovers from 200 years of Mongol rule.The HeirGrace Burrowes (Sourcebooks Casablanca)Burrowes pulls off an improbable Regency affair between a spoiled ducal heir and a housekeeper with a secret.Barely a LadyEileen Dreyer (Grand Central/Forever)The wartime amnesia romance is as old as the hills, but RWA Hall of Famer Dreyer (aka Kathleen Korbel) makes this one work.Trial by DesireCourtney Milan (HQN)Modern readers will be as intrigued by the Victorian-era political issues as they are by the central story of a man trying to reconnect with the wife he abandoned.SF/Fantasy/HorrorThe Bone PalaceAmanda Downum (Orbit)Deadly power games play out in haunted royal palaces, streets thronged with sex workers and political protesters, and sewers inhabited by seductive, amoral vampires.FeedMira Grant (Orbit)Grant (a pseudonym for urban fantasist Seanan McGuire) hits hard in a brutal tale of three bloggers following a Republican presidential candidate through the zombie-infested Midwest.The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms/The Broken KingdomsN.K. Jemisin (Orbit)These searing novels relate the struggles of ordinary people caught up in the machinations of gods at a time of global change when faith, power structures, and the fabric of reality have been called into question.Who Fears DeathNnedi Okorafor (DAW)Young adult author Okorafor makes a blazing entrance onto the adult fiction scene with a story of love, pain, magic, and genocide in postapocalyptic Saharan Africa. Readers will be enthralled by troubled, fierce adolescent Onyesonwu and her quest to find and destroy the sorcerer who fathered her.A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark MatterPeter Straub (Pegasus)This exquisitely horrifying outtake from A Dark Matter depicts a young psychopaths first steps along the path of becoming a serial killer. Straub drags the reader into the dark interstices of a deeply troubled mind, where brutality and murder seem only natural and right.ComicsXEd Out Charles Burns (Pantheon)The adventures of Tintin get a dark mirror image as a young man named Doug suffers teenage angst and a hostile universe of talking maggots.Beasts of Burden: Animal RitesEvan Dorkin and Jill Thompson(Dark Horse)Gorgeous artwork and a smart, witty script elevate this tale of household pets who unite to fight occult menaces in idyllic Burden Hill.How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or LessSarah Glidden (Vertigo)An evocative, sometimes funny and often emotional recap of Gliddens birthright visit to Israel done with charming watercolors and no shortage of candid responses to the Jewish state and the Palestinian question. Duncan the Wonder DogAdam Hines (AdHouse Books)A powerfully imagined and visually detailed experimental work set in an otherwise naturalistic world where animals can speak and argue the moral consequences of their treatment by humans.Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside ShortyG. Neri and Randy DuBurke (Lee & Low)The origin of ongoing urban violence is explored through the true story of Robert Yummy Sandifer, an 11-year-old from the Chicago projects who gained infamy after killing a 14-year-old neighbor.Batwoman: ElegyGreg Rucka and J.H. Williams (DC)A crazy-intense achievement of spectacular artwork tells the story of Kate Kane, a gay former Marine who must save Gotham City from a crime-worshipping cult.BodyworldDash Shaw (Pantheon)A goofy yet gorgeo