Alan Beard's site

As usual I have been adding books read to my Goodreads profile, so to avoid repeating myself here’s what I read in 2010:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/698826-alan?order=d&shelf=read-in-2010&sort=rating

My top ten – well, this year there seem to be a lot more novels. (I’m a short story man of course). I did read quite a few good story sollections, Dead Girls (by Nancy Lee), Dead Boys (by Richard Lange), Legend of a Suicide (David vann), Gold Boy, Emerald Girl (Yiyun Li), Both Ways is the Only Way I want it (Maile Meloy), The Shell Collector (Anthony Doerr) etc. – all these were excellent but not quite knock out enough to reach my top ten.

Here’s the books I liked most this year:

The Stars in the Bright Sky, Alan Warner’s follow up to ‘The Sopranos’:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/116072155

The Old Spring – a warm/funny book about a day in a pub.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/114812456

I’m cheating here and putting Flannery O’Connor’s two books of stories as one choice. I probably enjoyed this one best:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/94463596

(maybe because I read it first, and the O’Connor impact was at its greatest), but also enjoyed very much:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/109059406

A nonfiction book (!!) has made it to the top ten. Very odd for me, but then it is about local writer Shakespeare:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38827.1599

Winesburg, Ohio. Yep, been doing a lot of catching up this year, reading books I should have read many years ago (see also Flannery O’Connor):

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/83448093

Hard Rain Falling, a great great novel, perhaps my top book this year: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/82571142

Or maybe it’s this one (top book of the year), Henry Green’s uncollected writing rounded up:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/49058953

Another novel. Kelman’s latest definitely makes the list: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/87719656

Constantine’s new collection of stories: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78098228  was mostly fabulous. He’s a great story writer and some of the stories here just zing with life. I think Under the Dam just marginally pips this one though.

Finally a wonderful anthology that introduced me to some new writers. Not that I liked everything in this massive book though:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/64487355

December 21st - well that was a top 11, and I've just finished a book that has to go in this list to make it a top 12. It's a Simenon novel from 1948 called 'Stain in the Snow': http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/128270279