My Five Favourite Books of 2010

16Jan11

I love yearly top five lists; they’re the lazy man’s way of keeping up to date. This year, I thought I’d make my own. But what about? How would I sum up my year? I could list the top five ridiculous things my clients have said (I’m an editor). Or the top five ridiculous judicial decisions (I’m a law student). But since I’d get fired for the first and no one cares about the second, how about this: top five books I read this year (I’m a long-distance commuter).

A final disclaimer: these are not book reviews; they are my reasons for including the book in the list. As such, they are subjective, and you will probably feel differently about them. In fact, I hope you do, and that you tell me about it.

1. The Hunger Games Trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay)
Suzanne Collins

To subjugate the masses, a tyrannical Capitol district chooses 24 teens by lottery and tosses them into a booby-trapped arena, where they fight to the death for entertainment. And then – rebellion. The basic premise is Battle Royale meets Gladiator meets Survivor. But it goes on to transcend all of those.

What begins as fanciful nonsense transforms into something else – a commentary on class systems, on the many faces of tyranny, on the lifelong price each individual pays for war and the heavy cost of freedom. But you won’t find rambling discourses anywhere. Everything is subtly delivered on a bed of non-stop action with a dash of romance on the side. Make no mistake though; the action and romance are not the point of the book, but rather vehicles that carry a message.

2. Shiver
Maggie Stiefvater

Ah, where do I begin with this book? Suspend your disbelief as I try to explain how a story about a werewolf still manages to be one of the most haunting and quietly beautiful books I’ve read all year. Maybe it’s because the story isn’t really about a werewolf, but about a boy who’s losing the fight against a disability, and the girl who’s forced to watch.

This book moves along slower than the others on the list. That’s not to say that nothing happens; it’s just that everything that does happen differs little from what you or I experienced as a teenager. However, in describing simple pleasures through the eyes of a boy who’s about to lose it all, the author celebrates everything that is precious and fleeting – a kiss in a bookstore, running to secret hideaways, or falling in love wholeheartedly, as only the blessedly innocent can. With a poetic touch she creates powerful pictures that stay with you for a long time to come.

3. Outlander
Diana Gabaldon

It’s a basic premise: a woman accidentally goes back in time. Trying to return, she meets a strapping young Scot on the run from the law. This was set in the… I don’t know when, because my history is awful. Suffice it to say, the Scottish are about to be annihilated by the English. Think Mel Gibson in a skirt. Think Braveheart.

It is at its core a romance, yet it achieves a gritty realism that far surpasses the genre. You taste the sweat, hear the whistling whip, see the spray of blood and flesh. She pulls no punches with the violence and sex, unapologetically delivering a story that’s unwashed and shocking and utterly poignant. And searingly romantic. It grabs you hard and then drops you in a heap at the end. And yes, that’s a good thing.

4. I Heart You, You Haunt Me
Lisa Schroeder

When I put this book down, I sobbed for a good ten minutes. On the bus. Next to a frightened middle-aged man in a windbreaker. Not since I read Bridge to Terabithia at age nine did I cry so hard over a book. Written in simple verse throughout, it tells the story of a girl whose dead boyfriend comes back to haunt her. Despite its (hokey) supernatural themes however, it is, above all, a love story, and the unique method of delivery lends it an ethereal poignancy that simple prose could never have achieved.

Middle school gave me a fear of poetry – no offense to my English teacher, bless his soul. But this little book changed my mind. This is no Iliad; each verse is simple and spare, yet they come together to evoke feelings of loss that are somehow more realistic in the brevity, leaving plenty of room for you to fill in the gaps. It’s an easy read, so it’s tempting to zoom through and take the admittedly silly story at face value. But slow down and let each verse sink in, and you’ll see beyond the surface to the very real grief underneath.

5. Lord of Scoundrels
Loretta Chase

It was hard to decide on this last book because there were so many great ones to choose from. However, given that the other books in the top five veer towards the melodramatic, I decided to end things on a lighter note. For your ultimate guilty pleasure read, look no further than Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels.

The story’s nothing you haven’t heard before. Ugly/flawed rake meets beautiful woman; antics ensue; she cripples him; he marries her; more antics. However, what makes this book stand out is – like with all the other entries on this list – the method of delivery. You’d never guess from the saucy cover, but this book is hilarious. The author strikes the perfect tone with just the right balance of dry humour and throwback Regency English, taking the piss out of each situation with a deft touch and having fun doing it. She flits from one scene to the next with impeccable pacing, flirting with the ridiculous but never overdoing it. It’s that bag of chips you ate that you just can’t feel guilty about, because it tasted so good going down.

As for what I’m reading this year? I think I’ll keep that to myself, because once I told my brother that I was going to watch Pearl Harbor, and he said, “Oh, did you know that Josh Hartnett dies at the end?” DOH!

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