Books of 2010

1. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. This was a re-read; I first read this book as part of the honors program curriculum when I was in undergrad. It was fun to get back to this book, and nice to feel a little re-oriented in terms of, well, where everyone came from. A good way to start a year of history, biography, and women. Below are a few links (first to a documentary, then to reviews):

2. Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar.
It’s been on my Amazon.com wishlist for over a year – but I found it for sale at the public library for $1! A great deal on great stories about food and love, with some cheeky recipes included at the end. Only wish it was longer.

3. Women’s Work: The First 2,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

4. Abigail Adams by Woody Holton. My first biography of the year – I got interested in Abigail Adams because Frans watched the HBO John Adams documentary over and over, and I like it portrayed the relationship between the two of them. That and how Abigail is alway putting John in his place. Very good book, and I appreciated how Holton pointed out how Abigail challenged the notion of coverture (the idea that a woman was legally/financially invisible once she married) by making investments, going into trade for a little while, and, towards the end of her life, making her own will. Also fascinating was the huge amount of correspondence going on between Abigail and John, as well as Abigail and her other relatives and many friends and acquaintances. Many of the letters between Abigail and John are available digitally on the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams Family Papers Archive. I just picked up a copy of My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams – not sure if I’m going to have time to read the whole things right now, but I’ll definitely browse through it.

5. The Wall In My Head, an anthology published by Words Without Borders. Fiction, nonfiction, and visual art from people who witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. So very good.

6. An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah. A continuation of my short stories/women writers/non-American fiction kick that started last year. I’ve read Gappah’s blog for quite a while and love the combination of political commentary and thoughts on writing that she posts; this book showed me a new side of her writing. In ways they are slow, meditative stories, and I’ll admit I read them too fast. I suppose that’s just a good reason to read them again. Slowly.

7. Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. One of the first free ebooks I downloaded onto my Droid (legally!). I’m very interested in copyright issues, copyright reform, and copyright alternatives (like Creative Commons), and this book covers ideas that are central to a lot of the discussions. I still have a lot more to learn; I know Lessig’s approach isn’t the only one, but I do like what he says.

8. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. I’d been meaning to read this for quite a while, despite the “Oprah’s Book Club” sticker on the front cover. I like a lot of literature that comes out of India, and I like books that introduce a piece of a country’s history that I’m not too familiar with, so I thought this would be a winner. Unfortunately, it’s wasn’t. Not quite. I enjoyed it, to an extent. I definitely learned more about India. But I never really felt all that connected to any of the characters, and I really got the impression that the author was just torturing and killing them one by one. So . . . eh. I am glad I read it, but I wasn’t as astounded as I thought I might be.

9. Content, a SPECTACULAR collection of essays by Cory Doctorow. Good, good stuff. Musings on everything from copyright to DRM to Facebook to Spam to scifi writing. I downloaded the free copy but there’s a good chance I’ll eventually get around to buying a paper copy.

10. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. This is a totally interesting book – Doctorow’s first novel. I’m not a big reader of science fiction (maybe I should be?) but I thought this book was super-great!