Books of the Year 2010

From this day on, until the 2nd of January, I hope to be too pizzled to blog (is there such a time, I hear you ask – silently), so what better time to do a good ol’ meme (nicked from Paul, who in turn nicked it from Norm – and, well, it’s hardly a new idea is it).

I’m taking on Paul’s rules and format, which you know anyway; 10 favourite non-fiction, 10 favourite fiction, 5 binners, not necessarily published this year, but read by yourself this year.

Here I go:

Top 10 non-fiction

Kenan Malik – From Fatwa to Jihad

David Cesarani – Eichmann: His Life and Crimes

Slavoj Zizek/John Milbank – The Monstrosity of Christ

Ron Rosenburg – Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil

A.C. Grayling – Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime?

Richard Dawkins: Climbing Mount Improbable

Peter Hitchens – The Cameron Delusion

Alain Badiou – St Paul: The Foundation of Universalism

Iain Sinclair – London Orbital

George Ross – The Brink of Despair: A History of Basildon 1915 – 1986

(An eleventh? Well that would have to be the immortal Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton)

Top 10 Fiction

Anais Nin – A Spy in the House of Love

Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf

Jean Cocteau – Les Enfants Terribles

D H Lawrence – Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Fyodor Dostoevsky – Notes from Underground

Give it a miss

Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaku Ikeda – Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century: Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and Communism

A.C. Grayling – Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay

Susan Blackmore – The Meme Machine

Francis Fukuyama – After Neoconservatism

Phillip Blond – Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It

 

I’ll then add here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here