Beginnings of Best of 2010!

Things these lists are: tentative (as I just started a book this morning that made it onto the list--what if I read something awesome on New Year's Eve?!?), in reverse order of when I read 'em instead of any kind of ranking, needlessly idiosyncratic. Links go back to original mention on this blog, in an omphaloskeptical sort of way.

FRONTLIST (i.e., published in 2010)

• Death is Not an Option, Suzanne Rivecca
• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell
• Blackout and All Clear, Connie Willis
• Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
• Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu
• Bad Marie, Marcy Dermanksy
• The first three volumes of kitten manga Chi's Sweet Home, Konami Kanata (tr. by my friend Ed!)
• Kraken, China Mieville
• One Bloody Thing After Another, Joey Comeau
• Stories: All-New Tales, ed. Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio
• The Boneshaker, Kate Milford (N.B. not the Cherie Priest of the same name everyone's reading)
• Elegies for the Brokenhearted, Christie Hodgen
• The Origin of Species, Nino Ricci
• The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To, D.C. Pierson

BACKLIST

• The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
• Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman
• American Gods, Neil Gaiman
• The Midwife's Apprentice, Karen Cushman
• Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
• Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels, Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan
• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
• The first three books in the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series, Louise Rennison
• Last Night in Montreal, Emily St. John Mandel
• The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway
• Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
• Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill
• Lowboy, John Wray
• When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
• The Secret History, Donna Tartt