NYT Picks Top Ten of 2010

Yesterday The New York Times presented its choices for the top ten books of 2010, five fiction, five nonfiction (the article will appear in the print edition of the NYT on December 12th). I can't imagine winnowing a whole year down to ten books, and I'm sure the process involved heated discussions and perhaps even a fisticuff or two. And now that the newspaper has presented its list, what surely will follow will be billions (ok, maybe dozens) of comments along the lines of "how could you possibly have picked/omitted that book?" Personally, I agree with some of the choices, disagree with a couple, and -- mostly -- find myself with an increasingly large stack of want-to-reads. Here's the list; what do you think?

FICTION

• Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
• The New Yorker Stories, Ann Beattie
• Room, Emma Donoghue
• Selected Stories, William Trevor
• A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

NONFICTION

• Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, Jennifer Homans
• Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff
• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, Stephen Sondheim
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson

One last note about this list: several of these books were already becoming increasingly hard to get; now that they've hit the NYT top ten list they are likely to become even more scarce, so if you're thinking about one or more for a holiday gift, call or come see us soon!