After months of work, the Best-of-2010 Megalist is complete! You can download your copy of the full Excel spreadsheet here. The Megalist compiles 175 different major awards and best-of-the-year lists into one convenient, sortable list. This year, 2,279 different titles published in the U.S. received mention in these sources, and the Megalist documents each of those mentions, showing which sources touted each title and providing links to the original lists online.
The full Megalist is divided into ten major categories, and I’ve been documenting the top vote-getters at my other blogging home, Book Group Buzz. That documentation concludes with the top speculative fiction titles today. While I encourage book lovers to download and peruse the whole list, here’s the short version: titles that received at least 12 mentions or were in the top 3% of titles from categories where few books received 10 mentions.
GENERAL FICTION
Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (60)
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (49)
Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray (37)
The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman (30)
To the End of the Land, by David Grossman (23)
The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte (18)
Great House, by Nicole Krauss (18)
The Lonely Polygamist, by Brady Udall (16)
The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson (15)
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson (15)
Solar, by Ian McEwan (14)
The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris (14)
How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu (13)
So Much for That, by Lionel Shriver (13)
MYSTERIES & THRILLERS
Room, by Emma Donoghue (48)
Faithful Place, by Tana French (22)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson (20)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (13)
Our Kind of Traitor, by John Le Carré (11)
Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny (10)
Mr. Peanut, by Adam Ross (10)
Innocent, by Scott Turow (9)
Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane (9)
SPECULATIVE FICTION
Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (34)
The Passage, by Justin Cronin (32)
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu (18)
Kraken, by China Miéville (15)
Horns, by Joe Hill (14)
Blackout, by Connie Willie (13)
Zero History, by William Gibson (11)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin (11)
HISTORICAL FICTION
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell (35)
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes (28)
Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey (22)
The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer (20)
C, by Tom McCarthy (17)
The Surrendered, by Chang-Rae Lee (15)
Nemesis, by Philip Roth (14)
The Pregnant Widow, by Martin Amis (12)
YOUNG ADULT FICTION
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins (29)
Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi (12)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green & David Levithan (10)
Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver (9)
For the Win, by Cory Doctorow (9)
Monsters of Men, by Patrick Ness (9)
POETRY
Nox, by Anne Carson (16)
Human Chain, by Seamus Heaney (10)
The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, by Kay Ryan (8)
GRAPHIC WORKS
Wilson, by Daniel Clowes (10)
BodyWorld, by Dash Shaw (7)
Acme Novelty Library #20, by Chris Ware (6)
Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit, by Darwyn Cooke (6)
NARRATIVE NONFICTION (but not biography & memoir)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (55)
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson (33)
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis (31)
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee (26)
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, by Elif Batuman (20)
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, by John Vaillant (18)
Travels in Siberia, by Ian Frazier (16)
War, by Sebastian Junger (16)
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes, by Stephen Sondheim (14)
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach (14)
Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory, by Peter Hessler (12)
BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS
Just Kids, by Patti Smith (44)
Life, by Keith Richards (30)
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand (19)
Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship, by Gail Caldwell (18)
Hitch-22, by Christopher Hitchens (17)
Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff (16)
Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow (16)
The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, by Mark Twain (14)
Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris (13)
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss, by Edmund De Waal (13)
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy (13)
COOKBOOKS
The Essential New York Times Cook Book, by Amanda Hessler (9)
Around My French Table, by Dorie Greenspan (8)
The Flavor Thesaurus, by Niki Segnit (6)
Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, by Rene Redzepi (6)
Baked Explorations, by Renato Poliafito (5)
The Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Recipe from Each Year 1941-2009 (5)
Thai Street Food, by David Thompson (5)
Feel free to re-purpose, sort, and share the list as you like, but please acknowledge Blogging for a Good Book, Williamsburg Regional Library, and myself, Neil Hollands, when you do so. It’s been a pleasure compiling the Megalist again. Thanks to all the writers who inspire us and the critics, bloggers, librarians, newspapers, book stores, magazines, and awards panels who help us find the books. See you next year!
WOW! Thanks… this is quite a list!!
[...] and compiled all the best lists, awards and other honors for books published in 2010 for their annual megalist — available as an Excel [...]
[...] 2. Neil Hollands has compiled the “Megalist” of 2010 best book lists. It is available for download in Excel format at the Williamsburg Regional Library’s blog, Blogging for a Good Book. [...]
[...] year’s list , accessible via my other blogging home, Williamsburg Regional Library’s Blogging for a Good Book. Book groupers might find this especially timely, as most of the top choices from 2010 are now [...]