2010 Year-End Roundup, and a Call for Ideas

Here are all the books I read (that I know of) in 2010, in crude alphabetical order. This doesn't include children's picture books, cookbooks, single-issue comics, magazines, or uh, the Internet. My own personal Best of the Year are highlighted in bold. And thanks to the superquick book search on greenlightbookstore.com (where, ahem, you can purchase any and all of these titles), you get pictures! The call for ideas is at the end.

A. D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld (reviewed)

Agents of Atlas by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk (reviewed)

Air, Volume 2: Flying Machine by G. Willow Wilson & M.K. Parker (reviewed)

Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly (reviewed)

Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka, J. H. Williams, and Dave Stewart (reviewed)

The Box of Delights by John Masefield: A Christmas book, quintessentially English in a Narnia kind of way, dreamy and eccentric and magical and stiff-upper-lip. Practically perfect.

Cowboy Ninja Viking Volume 1 by AJ Lieberman & Riley Rossmo (reviewed)

Folly by Marthe Jocelyn (reviewed)

Freakangels, Volume 1 by Warren Ellis & Paul Duffield (reviewed)

Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel (reviewed)

A God Somewhere by John Arcudi, Peter Snejbjerg, & Bjarne Hansen (reviewed)

Half Empty by David Rakoff (reviewed)

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt by Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegred0 (artist) (reviewed)

Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing by Macon Blair & Joe Flood (reviewed)

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch (reviewed)

The Hipless Boy: Short Stories
by Sully
(reviewed)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (reviewed)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (reviewed)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (reviewed)

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly & JM Ken Niimura (reviewed)

I Thought My Father Was God edited by Paul Auster (reviewed)

Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan Howard (reviewed)

Kill Shakespeare Vol. 1: A Sea of Troubles By Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col, and Andy Belanger: Hamlet, Richard, Juliet, Othello and everyone else converge in one world, and everyone's trying to get at a wizard named Shakespeare. Bloody and weird, but not too heavy to be lighthearted fun.

Kraken by China Mieville (reviewed)

The Madman of Venice by Sophie Masson (reviewed)

Market Day by James Sturm (reviewed)

The Midnight Folk by John Masefield (reviewed)

The Museum of Thieves by Lian Tanner (reviewed)

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer (reviewed)

New Orleans, Mon Amour by Andrei Codrescu (reviewed)

Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn by Meredith Gran (reviewed)

Odd Is On Our Side by Dean Koontz, Fred Van Lente & Queenie Chan (reviewed)

Old Mr. Flood by Joseph Mitchell (reviewed)

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley (reviewed)

The Passage by Justin Cronin (reviewed)

Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie (reviewed)

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (reviewed)

Rasl Pocket Book One by Jeff Smith (reviewed)

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly (reviewed)

Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley (reviewed)

The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens (reviewed)

Superman: For Tomorrow Volume 1 and Volume 2 y Brian Azzarello (writer), Jim Lee, and Scott Williams (artists) (reviewed)

The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel (reviewed)

Summerland by Michael Chabon (reviewed)

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (reviewed)

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht (reviewed)

Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham (reviewed)

Two Cents Plain by Martin Lemelman (reviewed)

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris (reviewed)

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (reviewed)

Werewolves of Montpelier by Jason (reviewed)

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (reviewed)

When You Were A Tadpole And I Was A Fish by Martin Gardner (reviewed)

Y: The Last Man, Volume 7: Paper Dolls by Brian K. Vaughan (writer) and Pia Guerra (artist) (reviewed)

You Were Wrong by Matthew Sharpe (reviewed)

(plus rereads, not reviewed: Scott Pilgrim 1-5 by Bryan Lee O'Malley, The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, Take This Bread by Sara Miles)

That's... 55 I think, plus the rereads? Measly. And a ridiculous percentage of those are comics, which while I will continue to insist on their status as literature, do tend to be much quicker reads. Goal for 2011: read more, especially frontlist fiction/nonfiction, so as to be a better bookseller, and to dig deeper into the world of words.

Unlike some years past, I'm refreshed to find I don't feel the need for a soul-searching post about the bookstore project. Greenlight is a solid reality -- as I reflected with a bookseller friend, I'm in the happily ever after. Rebecca and I have plans for growing and making things better, so it's not about to get boring. But it's been a happy year, chronicled mostly elsewhere, and I'm contented to stick to the book talk on this site -- it's still true that "sometimes the best relief from the stresses of working in the book industry is the books themselves."

And now my request for your ideas: not for what to read next (I've already got teetering stacks on my nightstand that should take me through the next six months at least), but about how to keep track of reading. I'd like a better way to note what I'm reading now and write about it when I finish, and have it show up on the various book sites (GoodReads, Shelfari, etc.), and on this blog, and on Facebook/Twitter, etc. Does anyone have a good system, easy enough that you don't get bogged down? Is there an app that works (I do have an iPhone now!)? Does one of the sites push out to all the others? Or would I be better off with pencil and paper this year?

In any case, it was a good year in books, and 2011 promises old friends returning and new surprises awaiting. Thanks to all of you who read and talk about books -- a very happy new year, and happy reading!