Best of 2010, Update 19

I think this would be a good time to update my "Best of the Year" list since we are closing out the month of May on a hot three-day weekend, meaning the year is almost half over already. I have been so busy helping to pack my daughter and move her to another house that I've done very little reading for the last three or four days - but there are a few changes to the list.

Since the last update, I've read A Week in December (Sebastian Faulks), Johnny Porno (Charlie Stella) and Not So Perfect (Nik Perring). I'm also well into Jeremy Butterfield's Damp Squid (an exploration of the English language) and Republic, by Charles Sheehan-Miles (an alternate history look at what might happen if the Homeland Security agency got "over ambitious"). Two of the books crack the list at numbers 8 and 10.

So this is what the fiction list looks like after 38 fiction books read:

1. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese (novel)
2. Matterhorn - Karl Marlantes (Vietnam War novel)
3. The Calligrapher's Daughter - Eugenia Kim (novel)
4. Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier (historical fiction)
5. Drood - Dan Simmons (historical fiction)
6. Far Cry - John Harvey (police procedural)
7. A Fair Maiden - Joyce Carol Oates (novel)
8. Johnny Porno - Charlie Stella (noir crime fiction)
9. The Samaritan's Secret - Matt Beynon Rees (detective fiction)
10.Not So Perfect - Nik Perring (short story collection)

And the nonfiction list from a total of 13 read so far this year is unchanged:

1. Lies My Mother Never Told Me - Kaylie Jones (memoir)
2. Man of Constant Sorrow - Ralph Stanley & Eddie Dean (biography)
3. Losing My Cool - Thomas Chatterton Williams (memoir)
4. Jane's Fame - Claire Harman (on the evolution of Jane Austen's reputation)
5. The Opposite Field - Jesse Katz - (memoir)
6. The Tennis Partner - Abraham Verghese (1998 memoir)
7. Game Change - John Heilemann & Mark Halperin (political nonfiction)
8. Top of the Order - Sean Manning, Ed. (baseball essays)
9. A Time to Betray - Reza Kahlili (memoir of Iranian CIA agent)
10. Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood - Joyce Dyer (memoir)