Favorite Books of 2010

It's LOB culture corner time again, friends. Every year, we culture vultures take stock of and share what we've enjoyed over the past year. Let's start with books. Every year I get closer to buying one of those Kindle/iPad style electronic readers but as of now I've still consuming books in a way that makes the trees weep. Here are my favorites from 2010:

1) Diane Ravitch – The Death and Life of the Great American School System: An education insider recants her previous neo-liberal views and lays out the raw scholarship on charter schools, vouchers and accountability.
2) Stieg Larsson – The Millennium Trilogy: Larsson's three books about corruption and sexual violence in contemporary Sweden are not great literature, but they were the most satisfying and enjoyable reads I had this year.
3) Greil Marcus – When that Rough God Goes Riding: Marcus has always had the knack, which I never had, of getting inside music when he’s writing about it. In this book about Van Morrison, he transcends the cliches of music writing in order to plumb the depths of Morrison’s art.
4) Bill Flanagan – Evening’s Empire: VH1 contributor Flanagan knows the history of Baby Boomer music culture like Don Rickles knows put-downs: intimately. This epic novel sweeps through the London of the swinging Carnaby Street period to Los Angeles of the 70s sun-drenched Laurel Canyon blow parties.
5) Gabriel Thompson – Working in the Shadows: In a book reminiscent of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Thompson documents the working conditions and lives of undocumented agricultural and restaurant workers.
6) Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger: In her latest, Waters tells the story of a humble country doctor tries to deal with an aristocratic family plagued by a haunted house.
7) Sarah Silverman – The Bedwetter: A memoir with more seriousness, candor (and humor, of course) than you might expect from Silverman.
8) Arthur Phillips – The Song is You: Philips' novella presents the story of an advertising exec who is inspired by hearing a “flame-haired” Irish singer in a NYC dive bar.
9) Tim Moore – French Revolutions: Irish journo has a simple but effective idea - cycle the famed Tour de France route and report on all the gory bum sores.
10) Steve Chandler and Terrence N. Hill – Two Guys Read Moby-Dick: Thanks for LOB contributor AZ Kicker for passing on to me this collection of correspondence by two friends as they plow through "the great book." They even make Melville fun.

Notable Other Reads:
• Pat Conroy – South of Broad: An old-fashioned novel about a group of friends in Charleston, South Carolina.
• Mark Goldman - City on the Edge: Goldman, a small-businessman and Buffalo promoter spares none of the bad news in this survey of Buffalo’s fall from grace in the 20th century.
• Chris Harman – Zombie Capitalism: The late great Chris Harman's devastating critique of late capitalism.
• Ian McEwan – Solar: In his last big book – Saturday – McEwan dealt with post-9/11 fear; in Solar, he’s on to a more existential threat: ecological doom.
• David Plotz – The Good Book: Plotz has a lot of fun as he reads through the Old Testament and free associates about its meaning.

Disappointments:
• Barbara Kingsolver – The Lacuna: For some reason, Kingsolver organized this rambling novel on the journal scribblings of a kid. And why did she continually refer to Trotsky as "Lev?"
• Thomas Pynchon – Inherent Vice: Pynchon's latest borrows too heavily from Robert Altman's great 1970s neo-noir "The Long Goodbye."

As always, I'd love to see what all of you have been reading this year.