Time Out's Old Favourites

BEST OF 2010

The baker's dozen that we fell in love with in 2010:

Atlantic, C, Freedom, Granta 110: The Sex Edition, It's a Book, Just Kids, Matterhorn, Monsters of Men, New Zealand Fashion Design, Room, So Much for That, The Passage and Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

And some older favourites...

Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
Sarah’s book of the year
Nevena’s book of the year
The quiet winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and one of our biggest sellers in the last six months. An insightful, frank and very moving reflection on the human condition - read this book!

An Equal Stillness – Francesca Kay
Harriet’s book of the year! Beautifully written, romantic without being clique, this book is simply a joy to read - Harriet

Love and Summer - William Trevor
An ‘Age of Innocence’ tale told with spare and beautiful prose

Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood
Unfailingly brilliant, Margaret Atwood does it again with this powerful and prophetic dystopian novel – Wendy

Summertime – J M Coetzee
A fascinating postmodern take on the art of autobiography from the elusive and ever astonishing J M Coetzee

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – Steig Larsson
The third and final book of the Millennium trilogy. An intelligent and exciting thriller with one of the best female protagonists to emerge in the last decade - Nevena

The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
From the writer of The Fall, a beautiful novel about the architecture of family, love and war. Time Out's favourite of the Man Booker 2009 shortlist

American Rust – Philipp Myer
A vivid depiction of a rural American ghost town. Absolutely gripping, a must read for fans of Cormac McCarthy and John Steinbeck – Emma

Relief – Anna Taylor
A remarkable debut collection of short stories by an emerging New Zealand talent - Sarah

Too Much Happiness – Alice Munro
Another amazing and perceptive collection of short fiction from the ever masterful Alice Munro.

The Death of Bunny Munro – Nick Cave
Dark, dirty, despicable and profound in an interesting sort of way. Nothing less could be expected from the enigma of a man that goes by the name of Nick Cave.

Miles From Nowhere – Nami Mun
Darkly poetic and wonderfully constructed, tragic but never sentimental; it reminded me of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar - Sarah

The Ask and the Answer – Patrick Ness
The heart stopping follow up to ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’

Love, Aubrey – Suzanne LaFleur
Heartbreaking and memorable young adult fiction.

Ordinary Thunderstorms – William Boyd
A fantastic thriller set in the streets of contemporary London. One of my favourite novels of 2009 - Wendy

Still Alice – Lisa Genova
A poignant, real and ultimately uplifting story of a Harvard professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s - Nevena