Of my personal traditions, I like this one almost best of all.  Reflecting on the past year’s reading list and picking out the highlights is such a wonderful exercise.  It gives the reading enthusiast one last bite at the apple, a few more moments with the novels, before moving on. 

I’m pleased to report a good sampling: 46 books in many different genres.  As you know, I limit my year in review to fiction so a few will get bumped automatically.  I estimate then, that this list is compiled from about 40 books.  My top ten in order of my esteem are:

1) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

This is a beautiful love story.  Anna is described this way,

He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking.

But like other Tolstoy novels, it is also the story of a time, a society, of humanity.  I particularly fell in love with the treatment of class and the consideration of urban and rural life.  Anna is so deeply tragic as an individual but also as a symbol of womanhood in the 1800s.  Freedom, for all of these characters, comes at an unspeakable price. 

2) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

A novel as much about who we are as what we are, Eugenides uses the lens of hermaphradism to consider gender, culture and family.  This is a coming-of-age story told the best way – full of memory and insight. One of my favorite lines,

I’m the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.

3) Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

I’ve lived in Charles Dickens’ head so much this year that I’ve begun to think a bit like him.  He was a funny man and an ironic man  -  he’ll get you calling places of inefficiency “circumlocution offices.”   I picked Little Dorrit above A Tale of Two Cities chiefly because Arthur Clennam is such a loveable idiot. You can’t help but root for him even as he misses the most obvious signs of love and betrayal.  And I couldn’t help but enjoy Dickens’ craftsmanship in creating truly good and wickedly evil characters.

4) Possession by A.S. Byatt

I love Maud Bailey and I love the mystery at the heart of this novel.  As always, Byatt offers so much in one novel : poetry and short stories are woven delicately into the tale.  I think this is probably a literature lover’s novel.  I might have liked it better than The Children’s Book.

5) The Little Stranger by Sara Waters

I didn’t originally rate this novel as highly as some others but it has lingered with me as I’ve continued to think about the characters for some time.  I think that counts for something.  The people who Waters creates are the real mystery in this book and she leaves it just open-ended enough that you continue to ask long after you’ve turned the last page, what was really going on with those people?

6) The Passage by Justin Cronin

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

This book is as goofy as it is completely awesome. Full disclosure : it’s about a vampire apocalypse.  It’s a good story  – scary and touching at the right moments.  More importantly, Cronin allows the reader to consider what it really means to be human without pushing the issue.  Best scary story I’ve read in FOREVER.

7) Califia’s Daughters by Leigh Richards

Another gender bender that asks the audience to reconsider how we live and how we could live.  Richards creates characters that a reader can really invest in and no more so than Dian.  Her personal journey is epic. 

8) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Beautiful, beautiful book.  I just loved the circus and want to live there, challenge be damned.  This is an example of a vibrant and alive setting and I’m a sucker for those. 

9) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

An oldie but a goodie.  Collins really knew how to craft a mystery.  I didn’t find the storytelling dated as sometimes happens with these old, old books.  This is obviously the primogeniture of Rebecca and The Lantern. 

10) The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

I debated long and hard about the book for this last slot.  There were several tremendously entertaining and well written books in the running including one by Agatha Christie.  In the end, this is the right book to round out this list.  It is so touching and so poignant.  A very beautiful story about a very harsh life.

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