What are the best books of 2010?
Recently, many publications and retailers of books, such as Amazon and Publishers Weekly, have finalized their lists for the best books of the year. Some of the most popular include a book with a chapter written entirely in PowerPoint, a memoir by music-legend Patti Smith, and the third book of the Millennium Trilogy by Sweden’s late Stieg Larsson.
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad was immensely popular this year and memorable for the PowerPoint chapter. The book pieces together short stories from the past, present, and future with music as the overall theme. Publisher’s Weekly calls Egan “unpredictable and, here, brilliant.”
In Just Kids, Patti Smith writes about her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, an artist who passed away in 1989. Amazon says the book is “tender and artful.” Patti Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Stieg Larsson submitted The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and the two other books in his trilogy to his publisher and died later in the same year, according to the New York Times. The books have been made into a film trilogy in Sweden, and Hollywood will reveal its own version of the first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, in 2011.
Other acclaimed books of the year include The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, and The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall.
