Since the Word Nerds started this blog almost seven years ago, every December has brought a Top 10 list of the best books read that year. The criteria is never that the book had to be written that year, just that it was read that year.
I’ve been mulling over this post, rejecting lots of other potential categories, and trying to find a catchy category for picking some of what we consider the “Best of” out there.
So, consider this post like an archive, the top picks of the past few years. These are my “pusher” titles for the most part, the ones I will most likely try to push on you if you ask for a non-specific recommendation.
They are, by far, literary fiction, save for Blue Like Jazz which is a creative non-fiction memoir. I’ve linked to the full top 10 lists for year, so you can see what other titles really captivated me as a reader each year.
2005: Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller
2006: The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak
2007: The Liar’s Diary, by Patry Francis
2008: Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen and #2 spot An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke because it was *that* close
2009: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larson
2010: Son of Laughter, by Frederick Buechner
2011: The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
2012: This is in no way final and I reserve all rights to change this when the end of the year comes, but right now, of the 50+ books I’ve read so far, this one is American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. With Solzhenitsyn’s Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch running a close second.
The Word Nerds 