The Year's Top Ten

I've often wondered who comes up with these lists and really, who're they trying to impress. I'll look at the year's top 100 or even the top ten and discover how few I've read or even been tempted to read (even after the earnest urging of some reviewer supposedly in the know). I'm a constant reader, one of those who feels at a loss without a book--a real book in hand--no e-readers for me, thank-you very much. So here's my top ten, books I'd re-read in a snap.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Loved it and already reread it.
The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott. Ditto.
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. So what if he takes nine years between novels? This one made me go back and re-read Middlesex.
Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan. Love. Jazz. Betrayal. Paris. With a backdrop of World War Two. I hear the call of Hollywood, with Oscar not far behind.
An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas. Missing feet and vampires along with an endearingly eccentric inspector.
The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell. I really hope this isn't the last Wallander. Mankell's a fine writer but his other stuff just doesn't compare.
The Virgin Cure by Ami MacKay. A modern day Dickens.
Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman. The only non-fiction on my list and almost too sad to recommend. Like Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, this is both a comfort and a painful reminder of the devastation of ongoing grief.
Until Thy Wrath be Past by Asa Larsson. Not quite as excellent as her previous, The Black Path, but still every bit as good as the other Larsson.
Started Early, Took my Dog by Kate Atkinson. Yes, yes I know this came out in 2010 but since Case Histories just came out on PBS, I had to re-read the Jackson Brodie books. Anyway, Atkinson didn't have a new book out--here's hoping for 2012!
I do regret not having yet read Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table or The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt but sometimes too much buzz is a bad thing. And I'm decidedly undecided about Stephen King's 11/22/63. I loved his writing at the beginning--I still have my original copies of The Shining and Nightshift--but The Dome was a stinker.
And I'm sorry, much as I love P.D. James, her latest, Death Comes to Pemberley, is a snore. Ditto for A.S. Byatt's Ragnarok. Ian Rankin's The Impossible Dead only makes me long for Rebus much as Peter Robinson's Before the Poison begs for Inspector Banks.
In the meantime, a slew of new mysteries have snuck into bookstores: The Betrayal of Trust, another Simon Serrailler crime novel by Susan Hill, two by Icelander Yrsa Sigurdardottir,  Ashes to Dust and The Day is Dark and finally (!!!) 1222, the start of a new series by the enigmatic and under-appreciated Anne Holt. So let the crap weather begin, get a stack of books and stay in. 

                                    What more could you want than a dog, a book and a blog?