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Top 10 List (2006-2008) In part because I was working at a law firm, I didn't have as much time to read or update this site over the past two or three years. So this top 10 list will cover the entire time I was delinquent. 10. Cormac McCarthy's The Road Very bleak. A little pointless. But hard to shake. 9. Alastair Reynolds's Pushing Ice Extremely satisfying sense of wonder. It makes you realize that Earth is a very, very small place in an unfathomably vast universe. 8. Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections Yet another yuppie novel about suburban middle-class angst -- but surprisingly readable. 7. Ian McEwan's Atonement A beautifully written sucker punch of a novel. 6. Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres King Lear in rural Iowa. As good as the original. 5. John Scalzi's Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe's Tale Jazzily written military sci-fi that is, above all things, fun. 4. C.J. Sansom's Dissolution, Dark Fire, and Sovereign In 16th-century England, a humane, hunchbacked detective investigates dastardly crimes and navigates the treacherous shoals of politics. Sansom tells a good story, but he's even better at conveying the moral bleakness of ambition. 3. David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas A virtuoso display of Mitchell's talent: nested stories, each completely different, yet equally gripping. 2. Sheri Holman's The Dress Lodger Volcanic drama never feels out of place in this slender but intense volume about Victorian prostitutes and the terrors they faced. 1. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell A languorously written and beautifully backgrounded novel that charms, then moves. One of my favorite books of all time. |
Steven Wu's Book Reviews |