Book List--2010
(+) for books I like/recommend
1. Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell
2. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
3. Liar by Justine Larbalestier
4. One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus (+)
5. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (+)
6. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (+)
7. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (+)
8. Push by Sapphire
9. March by Geraldine Brooks
10. Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (+)
11. The City of Fallen Angels by John Berendt
12. Shopgirl by Steve Martin (+)
13. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
14. Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane (+)
15. Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Region by Nancy Pearl (+)
16. Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst
17. Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons (+)
18. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
19. A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
20. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg (+)
21. Biggest Elvis by P.F. Kluge (+)
22. Rumspringa: To be or not be Amish by Tom Shachtman
23. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (+)
24. Tryst by Elswyth Thane
25. Leeway Cottage by Beth Gutcheon
26. Away by Amy Bloom (+)
27. An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken (+)
28. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert
29. Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane (+)
30. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
31. Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz
32. Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore
33. Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum (+)
34. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
35. Sacred by Dennis Lehane (+)
36. I’m Sorry You Feel that Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog by Diana Joseph
37. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (+)
38. The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer
39. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (+)
40. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
41. The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin and Hannah Salwen
42. A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy (+)
43. The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
44. Making Toast: A Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt
45. The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (+)
46. The Sweet by and by by Todd Johnson (+)
47. The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections by Tom Brokaw
48. Sight Hound by Pam Houston (+)
49. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (+)
50. And She Was by Cindy Dyson (+)
51. The girl she used to be by David Cristofano
52. Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman
53. Not Buying It: My year without shopping by Judith Levine
54. PornLand: How Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines (+)
55. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
56. Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust A New History in the Words of the Men and Women who Survived by Lyn Smith (+)
57. What I Was by Meg Rosoff
58. Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
59. Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (+)
60. Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz (+)
61. How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley (+)
62. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
63. Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson (+)
64. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman (+)
65. The Lost Diary of Don Juan by Douglas Carlton Abrams (+)
66. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
67. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
68. The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard
69. I Was Told There’d be Cake by Sloane Crosley
70. Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow (+)
71. Spiced: A Pastry Chef’s true stories of trials by fire, after-hours exploits, and what really goes on in the kitchen by Dalia Jurgensen
72. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow
73. Blame by Michelle Huneven
74. DarkFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
75. Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange by Amanda Symth
76. In the Woods by Tana French (+)
77. I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
78. Growing Up Fast by Joanna Lipper
79. Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindquist (+)
80. Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahnuik
81. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (+)
82. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
83. The Cracker Queen: A Memoir of a Jagged, Joyful Life by Lauretta Hannon
84. BloodFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
85. The Gift of Shyness by Dr. Alexander Avila
86. The Career Coward’s Guide to Changing Careers by Kathy Piotrowski
87. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
88. The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart (+)
89. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemminway (+)
90. Bless His Heart: The GRITS Guide to Loving (or Just Living With) Southern Men
by Deborah Ford
91. I Feel Bad about my Neck and other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
92. The Passage by Justin Cronin (+)
93. FaeFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
94. The Dirty Life: on farming, food and love by Kristin Kimball
95. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (+)
96. DreamFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
97. The Pleasing Hour by Lily King
98. My Reading Life by Pat Conroy (+)
99. Be a Kickass Assistant: How to get from a grunt job to a great career by Heather Beckel
100. Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran
101. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
102. The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
1. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: In 1950s Barcelona, young Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a sanctuary where books go so they won't be forgotten. He chooses a copy of The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax and falls in love with it. He discovers that a mysterious man with a burned face is trying to destroy every copy of this book. I adored the character of Fermin, a shell-shocked solider who comes to life under the care of Daniel and his father. It's a coming-of-age book, a love story and a mystery, but it’s also a tale about the power of book and reading. It's epic and sprawling, with subplots within subplots, but it's great and I loved it.
2. The Sweet By and By by Todd Johnson connects the lives of five Southern women around a nursing home. Angry Margaret and sweet, crazy Bernice are residents. Lorraine is their compassionate nurse and April is her ambitious daughter. Tough Rhonda is a hairdresser who reluctantly takes a part-time job there but comes to love the residents. It’s a funny, bittersweet book with strongly written characters. It’s not very dramatic, but I enjoyed watching the characters lives unfold.
3. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: The Sarajevo Haggadah (a centuries old Jewish religious text) is discovered in Sarajevo just after the war in 1996. Hanna is a rare book expert charged with restoring the manuscript. Every time she finds a miniscule clue to the text's past (a piece of a butterfly's wing, a cat hair, etc.) we get a story about the Haggadah's luminous and exhilarating past. It was a little disjointing to jump from Hanna's story to the stories of the people who helped the Haggadah survive, but every story was unique and intriguing and left me wanting more. It's my favorite of all of Geraldine Brooks' works.
4. Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum is a fantastic book that follows the lives of nine New Orleans residents, ranging from a transsexual bar owner, a wealthy king of Carnival, a police officer and a criminal, from Hurricane Betsy in 1965 through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The real main character is the uniquely vibrant city of New Orleans.
5. In the Woods by Tana French: As a child Detective Rob Ryan's two best friends disappeared in the woods and were never seen again. He was found clinging to a tree and had no memory of what happened. Twenty years later, he is a police detective with complicated feelings for his partner who is investigating the murder of a young girl in the same woods. This mystery was so riveting that I attempted to read a 400-page novel in one setting, which was a mistake.
6. Away by Amy Bloom: Lillian Leyb immigrates to America after her entire family is killed in a Russian pogrom. When she receives word that her young daughter, Sophie, may still be alive, Lillian sets out on a journey across America, through Chicago and Seattle and into the wilds of Alaska. Lillian is emotional and intense and she meets many interesting characters during her sojourn. This is a short but stunning book.
7. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane: is probably Lehane's best novel (and one of those rare cases when the movie and the book are equally good), but it's dark, heart of darkness dark. As children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle were playing in the street when Dave is kidnapped by pedophiles. He escapes four days later. In present day, Sean is a cop with a troubled marriage, Jimmy is an ex-con who went straight for the sake of his daughter and Dave is a strange, haunted man. When Dave comes home covered in blood on the night that Jimmy's daughter is murdered, the ramifications of the fateful day when Dave was taken come home to roost.
8. The Help by Kathryn Stockett is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. Skeeter is a white woman who has recently graduated from college. She starts a project of interviewing African-American maids about their experiences working for white families and writes a book based on their stories. The book is told from the points of view of Skeeter, Aibileen (a black maid who has raised 17 white children), and Minny (another maid who has trouble keeping jobs because she can’t tolerate the abusive treatment). My favorite character was Celia, a white trash woman married to a rich man that Minny goes to work for. As Skeeter interviews more maids and finds a publisher for the book, the women face real-life consequences and even danger.
I am kind of cautious about this book because I do believe that there is some merit to the accusations that the book is racially insensitive--the black characters speak in accents and the white characters don’t, although they should all have had Southern accents. The characters were not as developed as they could have been. But the story grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. I read the book in about one day. I also liked that Stockett wanted to show that there was love as well as hate between white and black people in the 1960s South.
9. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an all-time favorite, but it didn’t impact me as much the second time around, although Marquez transports the reader to another world like no one else. Florentino and Fermina fall in love when Fermina is only a teenager. She eventually spurs him and marries another man. Florentino loses himself in 622 affairs, but never stops loving Fermina. When her husband dies, he professes his undying love to her. The characters live and breathe on the page. The scene where Florentino falls in love with an escaped lunatic at Carnival, which only lasts about two pages, is a more fully realized work of art than most entire novels could even dream of being.
10. The Passage by Justin Cronin: I don't know quite how to feel about The Passage: it's a page-turner, it was so derivative of The Stand that I’m surprised that the Stephen King blurb didn’t say, “Thanks for ripping me off,” parts were excellent and parts were dull and I'm still having weird nightmares influenced by it. But I am going to recommend it because I think many people, especially people who aren’t big readers, would enjoy it. Cronin wrote one great book in the first 250 pages of the novel. The military has discovered a vampire virus that turns people into creatures but causes immortality. Agent Wolgast is a haunted man who is responsible for convinced death row inmates to sign up for a mysterious experiment--being injected with the virus. Amy is a six-year-old girl who has been abandoned by her mother at a nunnery. Because Amy virtually has no past or family, a military scientist sends Agent Wolgast to procure her for the experiment. The best part of the book is watching Wolgast regain his humanity through his love for Amy. As things usual go in these kinds of novels, the monstrous death inmates escape, but not before Amy is injected with the most refined version of the virus.
Suddenly, we're a hundred years in the future and it is rather jarring. I don't know why this book is described as a vampire novel; the death row inmate creatures, known as Virals, are more like zombies/demons than vampires. If you're attacked by the Virals, they kill you or you turn into one. In the future, there is a colony of people in California who have no idea if they are the last people on earth. They've managed to survive for 100 years in a sort of fortress, but now the power source for their lights is running out. Circumstances force a small band of people out into the outside world. I can totally see this novel as a movie. I was let down by the number of loose ends at the end of the novel, considering that it is 766 freaking pages long, but I have heard rumors that there will be sequel(s).
Honorable Mention: Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie detective series, the best of which is Gone, Baby, Gone; Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks--a story about a small English village that is quarantined during the plague that would have made the top ten if it weren’t for its awful ending; A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy--a memoir about the author’s fiancée who died in Iraq.
1. Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell
2. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
3. Liar by Justine Larbalestier
4. One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus (+)
5. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (+)
6. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (+)
7. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (+)
8. Push by Sapphire
9. March by Geraldine Brooks
10. Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (+)
11. The City of Fallen Angels by John Berendt
12. Shopgirl by Steve Martin (+)
13. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
14. Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane (+)
15. Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Region by Nancy Pearl (+)
16. Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst
17. Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons (+)
18. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
19. A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
20. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg (+)
21. Biggest Elvis by P.F. Kluge (+)
22. Rumspringa: To be or not be Amish by Tom Shachtman
23. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (+)
24. Tryst by Elswyth Thane
25. Leeway Cottage by Beth Gutcheon
26. Away by Amy Bloom (+)
27. An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken (+)
28. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert
29. Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane (+)
30. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
31. Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz
32. Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore
33. Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum (+)
34. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
35. Sacred by Dennis Lehane (+)
36. I’m Sorry You Feel that Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog by Diana Joseph
37. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (+)
38. The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer
39. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (+)
40. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
41. The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin and Hannah Salwen
42. A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy (+)
43. The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
44. Making Toast: A Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt
45. The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (+)
46. The Sweet by and by by Todd Johnson (+)
47. The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections by Tom Brokaw
48. Sight Hound by Pam Houston (+)
49. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (+)
50. And She Was by Cindy Dyson (+)
51. The girl she used to be by David Cristofano
52. Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman
53. Not Buying It: My year without shopping by Judith Levine
54. PornLand: How Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines (+)
55. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
56. Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust A New History in the Words of the Men and Women who Survived by Lyn Smith (+)
57. What I Was by Meg Rosoff
58. Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
59. Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (+)
60. Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz (+)
61. How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley (+)
62. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
63. Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson (+)
64. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman (+)
65. The Lost Diary of Don Juan by Douglas Carlton Abrams (+)
66. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
67. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
68. The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard
69. I Was Told There’d be Cake by Sloane Crosley
70. Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow (+)
71. Spiced: A Pastry Chef’s true stories of trials by fire, after-hours exploits, and what really goes on in the kitchen by Dalia Jurgensen
72. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow
73. Blame by Michelle Huneven
74. DarkFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
75. Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange by Amanda Symth
76. In the Woods by Tana French (+)
77. I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
78. Growing Up Fast by Joanna Lipper
79. Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindquist (+)
80. Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahnuik
81. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (+)
82. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
83. The Cracker Queen: A Memoir of a Jagged, Joyful Life by Lauretta Hannon
84. BloodFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
85. The Gift of Shyness by Dr. Alexander Avila
86. The Career Coward’s Guide to Changing Careers by Kathy Piotrowski
87. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
88. The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart (+)
89. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemminway (+)
90. Bless His Heart: The GRITS Guide to Loving (or Just Living With) Southern Men
by Deborah Ford
91. I Feel Bad about my Neck and other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
92. The Passage by Justin Cronin (+)
93. FaeFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
94. The Dirty Life: on farming, food and love by Kristin Kimball
95. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (+)
96. DreamFever by Karen Marie Moning (+)
97. The Pleasing Hour by Lily King
98. My Reading Life by Pat Conroy (+)
99. Be a Kickass Assistant: How to get from a grunt job to a great career by Heather Beckel
100. Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran
101. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
102. The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
1. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: In 1950s Barcelona, young Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a sanctuary where books go so they won't be forgotten. He chooses a copy of The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax and falls in love with it. He discovers that a mysterious man with a burned face is trying to destroy every copy of this book. I adored the character of Fermin, a shell-shocked solider who comes to life under the care of Daniel and his father. It's a coming-of-age book, a love story and a mystery, but it’s also a tale about the power of book and reading. It's epic and sprawling, with subplots within subplots, but it's great and I loved it.
2. The Sweet By and By by Todd Johnson connects the lives of five Southern women around a nursing home. Angry Margaret and sweet, crazy Bernice are residents. Lorraine is their compassionate nurse and April is her ambitious daughter. Tough Rhonda is a hairdresser who reluctantly takes a part-time job there but comes to love the residents. It’s a funny, bittersweet book with strongly written characters. It’s not very dramatic, but I enjoyed watching the characters lives unfold.
3. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: The Sarajevo Haggadah (a centuries old Jewish religious text) is discovered in Sarajevo just after the war in 1996. Hanna is a rare book expert charged with restoring the manuscript. Every time she finds a miniscule clue to the text's past (a piece of a butterfly's wing, a cat hair, etc.) we get a story about the Haggadah's luminous and exhilarating past. It was a little disjointing to jump from Hanna's story to the stories of the people who helped the Haggadah survive, but every story was unique and intriguing and left me wanting more. It's my favorite of all of Geraldine Brooks' works.
4. Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum is a fantastic book that follows the lives of nine New Orleans residents, ranging from a transsexual bar owner, a wealthy king of Carnival, a police officer and a criminal, from Hurricane Betsy in 1965 through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The real main character is the uniquely vibrant city of New Orleans.
5. In the Woods by Tana French: As a child Detective Rob Ryan's two best friends disappeared in the woods and were never seen again. He was found clinging to a tree and had no memory of what happened. Twenty years later, he is a police detective with complicated feelings for his partner who is investigating the murder of a young girl in the same woods. This mystery was so riveting that I attempted to read a 400-page novel in one setting, which was a mistake.
6. Away by Amy Bloom: Lillian Leyb immigrates to America after her entire family is killed in a Russian pogrom. When she receives word that her young daughter, Sophie, may still be alive, Lillian sets out on a journey across America, through Chicago and Seattle and into the wilds of Alaska. Lillian is emotional and intense and she meets many interesting characters during her sojourn. This is a short but stunning book.
7. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane: is probably Lehane's best novel (and one of those rare cases when the movie and the book are equally good), but it's dark, heart of darkness dark. As children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle were playing in the street when Dave is kidnapped by pedophiles. He escapes four days later. In present day, Sean is a cop with a troubled marriage, Jimmy is an ex-con who went straight for the sake of his daughter and Dave is a strange, haunted man. When Dave comes home covered in blood on the night that Jimmy's daughter is murdered, the ramifications of the fateful day when Dave was taken come home to roost.
8. The Help by Kathryn Stockett is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. Skeeter is a white woman who has recently graduated from college. She starts a project of interviewing African-American maids about their experiences working for white families and writes a book based on their stories. The book is told from the points of view of Skeeter, Aibileen (a black maid who has raised 17 white children), and Minny (another maid who has trouble keeping jobs because she can’t tolerate the abusive treatment). My favorite character was Celia, a white trash woman married to a rich man that Minny goes to work for. As Skeeter interviews more maids and finds a publisher for the book, the women face real-life consequences and even danger.
I am kind of cautious about this book because I do believe that there is some merit to the accusations that the book is racially insensitive--the black characters speak in accents and the white characters don’t, although they should all have had Southern accents. The characters were not as developed as they could have been. But the story grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. I read the book in about one day. I also liked that Stockett wanted to show that there was love as well as hate between white and black people in the 1960s South.
9. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an all-time favorite, but it didn’t impact me as much the second time around, although Marquez transports the reader to another world like no one else. Florentino and Fermina fall in love when Fermina is only a teenager. She eventually spurs him and marries another man. Florentino loses himself in 622 affairs, but never stops loving Fermina. When her husband dies, he professes his undying love to her. The characters live and breathe on the page. The scene where Florentino falls in love with an escaped lunatic at Carnival, which only lasts about two pages, is a more fully realized work of art than most entire novels could even dream of being.
10. The Passage by Justin Cronin: I don't know quite how to feel about The Passage: it's a page-turner, it was so derivative of The Stand that I’m surprised that the Stephen King blurb didn’t say, “Thanks for ripping me off,” parts were excellent and parts were dull and I'm still having weird nightmares influenced by it. But I am going to recommend it because I think many people, especially people who aren’t big readers, would enjoy it. Cronin wrote one great book in the first 250 pages of the novel. The military has discovered a vampire virus that turns people into creatures but causes immortality. Agent Wolgast is a haunted man who is responsible for convinced death row inmates to sign up for a mysterious experiment--being injected with the virus. Amy is a six-year-old girl who has been abandoned by her mother at a nunnery. Because Amy virtually has no past or family, a military scientist sends Agent Wolgast to procure her for the experiment. The best part of the book is watching Wolgast regain his humanity through his love for Amy. As things usual go in these kinds of novels, the monstrous death inmates escape, but not before Amy is injected with the most refined version of the virus.
Suddenly, we're a hundred years in the future and it is rather jarring. I don't know why this book is described as a vampire novel; the death row inmate creatures, known as Virals, are more like zombies/demons than vampires. If you're attacked by the Virals, they kill you or you turn into one. In the future, there is a colony of people in California who have no idea if they are the last people on earth. They've managed to survive for 100 years in a sort of fortress, but now the power source for their lights is running out. Circumstances force a small band of people out into the outside world. I can totally see this novel as a movie. I was let down by the number of loose ends at the end of the novel, considering that it is 766 freaking pages long, but I have heard rumors that there will be sequel(s).
Honorable Mention: Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie detective series, the best of which is Gone, Baby, Gone; Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks--a story about a small English village that is quarantined during the plague that would have made the top ten if it weren’t for its awful ending; A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy--a memoir about the author’s fiancée who died in Iraq.