The Best Books of 2010

It seems appropriate to end this year with some sort of list. Isn't that what people do? Top ten movies of the year! Ten ten celebrity scandals of the year! Top ten Wikileaks of the year!

Well, without further ado, here's my add to the end-of-the-year fray:

Rina's Favorite Books of the Year

1) Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud by Jonathan Safran Foer: I started 2010 off with an amazing read, and I'd still happily recommend it. A friend once commented that he was hesitant to read Foer because of his pop-celebrity: don't let it deter you.

2) Let the Great World Spin by Colum McMann: The only one on this list that I haven't previously quoted: I wanted to, but I simply couldn't find a passage that encapsulated everything that I loved about the novel. A beautiful tribute to a New York past and, in its own way, a New York present.

3) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan: Although I'm particularly partial to McEwan, this was absolutely riveting. A couple falls in - and out - of love. Tragedy from misunderstandings.

4) Tales of the City trilogy by Armistead Maupin: After hearing a friend rave about this series for over a year, I finally picked up Maupin's trilogy. It's set in 1970s San Francisco, and while I've had the pleasure of visiting the city on multiple occasions, it made me think about the city's role in transforming cultural norms and the counterculture movement. Also: a really great, (sometimes trashy) scandal filled trilogy!

5) The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar: As I noted in my original post, Dr. Iyengar's book is a fascinating look into how individuals make choices, taking into account factors like cultural factors or cognitive biases. It was a little tedious at times, but four months later, I still find myself re-reading - and quoting - her passages on individualist versus collectivist societies. I rarely read non-fiction, but I would happily pass this on.

Happy holidays! xo

Travel in London

Five months in, and despite the occasional mishap, I feel like I finally have the hang of London's beloved Tube. One of the best descriptions I've read comes from Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island:

"The best part of Underground travel is that you never actually see the places above you. You have to imagine them. In other cities, station names are drearily mundane: Lexington Avenue, Potsdamer Platz, Third Street South. In London, by contrast, the names nearly always sound sylvan and beckoning: Stamford Brook, Turnham Green, Bromley-by-Bow, Maide Vale, Drayton Park. That isn't a city up there, it's a Jane Austen novel."

(Although, if we're going to be fair, Bryson also points out that: "The problem with losing yourself in these little reveries is that when you surface things are apt to be disappointing. I came up now at Tower Hill, and there wasn't a tower and there wasn't a hill.")

In my Beginning is my End

"I've already marked my beginning, the explosion of consequences, with the touch of a wine bottle and a shout of distress. But this pinprick is as notional as a point in Euclidean geometry, and though it seems right, I could have proposed [other moments]. There are always antecedent causes. A beginning is an artifice, and what recommends one over another is how much sense it makes of what follows."