Following the precedent set in 2008 and repeated in 2009, I bring you my recommendations and non-recommendations from this year. The titles are in alphabetical, not rank, order.
Every one a winner:
Top 10
Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout
After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry
Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Nemesis by Philip Roth
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
To be avoided:
Bottom 3
Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Fraud by Anita Brookner
Tomorrow by Graham Swift
Highly recommended:
10 'really good reads'
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb
The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
The Great World by David Malouf
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
Howards End by E.M. Forster
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry
