My Favorite Books of 2010 and Why Knitting and Reading Don't Mix

The more time I spend knitting, the less time I spend reading. In 2010 I added three books to my pending book pile for every book I read.  This is the sort of thing that makes me hyperventilate, jiggle my legs, and engage in much wailing and teeth-gnashing.

A couple of my knitting mentors who also own Kindles can read and knit at the same time.  They’ve both been knitting for years, though, and can whip out socks, baby blankets, and sweaters in their sleep. Since right now I can barely talk while knitting, I don't expect I'll be plowing through a book while weaving together a semi-presentable scarf anytime soon.

Last year, aka The Year She Read Ulysses, I finished 81 books, one sweater, two pairs of socks, and four scarves. The previous year I zipped through 104 books and bumbled through one scarf and one pair of socks. These days when I head to the beauty parlor or train station I’m more likely to stuff yarn and bamboo needles in my bag than my Kindle or a paperback book. Why?  Yarn doesn’t weigh as much as a book and knitting requires less immersion than reading. I can get so engrossed in a good book that I might not remember my destination until I'm two stations past it. Knitting lets me stay more situationally aware, thanks to a little game I've created called Knit Two Rows Before the Next Station.

Christmas gift from Japanese book club

Knitting gives me an opportunity to pause and reflect on the books I’ve read. What I've decided is that 2010 turned out to be a better book year than it seemed on the surface.  It was a year filled with provocative dialogues with my Japanese book club ladies and congenial camaraderie with my American book club friends.  ("Congenial camaraderie" is a euphemism for "the food and wine is often more interesting than the discussion.")

Last year I discovered Suzanne Collins, David Mitchell, and William Trevor. Collins’ The Hunger Games and Catching Fire both landed on my Top Ten Fiction List and the third book in this trilogy, Mockingjay, would probably be there as well but I consciously postponed reading it until 2011 just so Collins would not have to compete with herself (yes, that’s the way I think sometimes). Likewise, Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (#8) convinced me to tackle his more complicated but immensely rewarding Cloud Atlas (#3). Trevor, like Mitchell, first came to my attention through an Amazon analysis of my reading tastes. The Story of Lucy Gault (#19) provoked such an interesting discussion with Kyoko and Tsuneko last March that I went on to read Trevor's Fools of Fortune, winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award and the number four spot on my Top Ten Fiction List.  The Whitbread Award no doubt means more to the Irishman than my ranking, but I don't hold that against him.

Usually, due to the law of gravity, the books I read and like early in the year drift further down the list by year’s end but that’s not true of Dan Chaon’s spellbinding story about identity theft, Await Your Reply (#5), or Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies which came in #2 on my Nonfiction List, just behind Matthew Crawford’s eye-opening Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work.

Five other works of fiction deserve mention: Little Bee by Chris Cleave was a hit with my Japanese book club and I am willing to bet they will enjoy their current assignment, Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, even more. Another great Amazon recommendation was Labor Day by Joyce Maynard which impressed me so much that I am now reading the memoir she published in 1973 when she was a 19-year old college drop-out living with J.D. Salinger (thanks Kate, for my best Christmas present after the Peko-chan wristwatch). My fellow Knit Wit Betty, 29, loaned me her copy of Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett; I laughed out loud and promptly bought a copy of this classic for son James. And, although Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor dropped off my Top Ten List a few weeks ago, I believe it is well worth your time.

Mysteries continue to merit their own category and Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest earned the top spot because I forced myself to hold back on reading the British version I bought in November 2009 until after the U.S. version came out in the spring of 2010.  If you're wondering why, see Suzanne Collins above.  My second favorite mystery came to my attention via Amazon and moved to the top of the queue after it received high marks from Ann Holt:  Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin.  Nelson DeMille, Tana French, Martha Grimes, Donna Leon, Ruth Rendell, and C. J. Box all continued to entertain me last year, and books by Laura Joh Rowlands and Norwegian author Jo Nesbo (diagonal line through the o) were interesting enough to send me searching for the other books in their series.

That sums up my recommendations for the year just ended.  Now it's time to work on that pending pile.