New York Times Notable Books 2010
The Globe Corner Bookstore’s Selection
Fiction
Nonfiction
Art, Architecture & Photography
Cookbooks & Gardening Books
Travel Narratives
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How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu
Mengestu’s own origins inform this tale of an Ethiopian-American tracing the uncertain road once taken by his parents.
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I Curse the River of Time, by Per Petterson. Translated by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson
This novel’s lonely Scandinavian protagonist grapples with divorce, death, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco
A murder mystery punctuated with serious philosophical musings, this novel traces 150 years of Filipino history, posing questions about identity and art, exile and duty.
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The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman
This intricate novel is built around the personal stories of staff members at an improbable English-language newspaper in Rome, and of the family who founded it in the 1950s.
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The Long Song, by Andrea Levy
Levy’s high-spirited, ambitious heroine works on a plantation in the final days of slavery in Jamaica.
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The Lotus Eaters, by Tatjana Soli
The photojournalist heroine of Soli’s Vietnam War novel ponders whether those who represent war merely replicate its violence.
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Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes
In this tale, 30 years in the creation, bloody folly envelops a Marine company’s construction, abandonment and retaking of a remote hilltop outpost.
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To the End of the Land, by David Grossman. Translated by Jessica Cohen
Two friends are deeply involved with the same woman in this somber, haunting novel of love and loyalty in time of conflict, set in Israel between 1967 and 2000.
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Vida, by Patricia Engel
Engel’s understated stories are told from the perspective of a daughter of Colombian immigrants.
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Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff
It’s dizzying to contemplate the ancient thicket of personalities and propaganda Schiff penetrates to show the Macedonian-Egyptian queen in all her ambition, audacity and formidable intelligence.
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Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory, by Peter Hessler
Hessler chronicles the effects of an expanding road network on the rapidly changing lives of individual Chinese.
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Encounter, by Milan Kundera. Translated by Linda Asher
Illuminating essays on the arts in the context of a “post art” era.
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Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, by Paul Greenberg
Even as Greenberg lays out the grim and complicated facts about the ravaging of our seas, he manages to sound some hopeful notes about the ultimate fate of fish.
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Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris, by Graham Robb
This series of character studies — some of familiar figures, some not — is arranged to give meaning to a volatile, complicated city.
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Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth, by Hilary Spurling
The vast historical backdrop of this biography informs but never overwhelms its remarkable, elusive subject.
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The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, by Elif Batuman
An entertaining memoir-cum-travelogue of a graduate student’s improbable education in Russian language and literature.
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The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, by Eliza Griswold
A journey along a latitude line where two religions meet and often clash.
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Travels in Siberia, by Ian Frazier
Dubious meals, vehicle malfunctions and relics of the Gulag fill Frazier’s uproarious, sometimes dark account of his wanderings.
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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson
This consummate account of the exodus of blacks from the South between 1915 and 1970 explores parallels with earlier European immigration.
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The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, by Susan Casey
Brainy scientists, extreme surfers, and mountains of water mix it up in Casey’s vivid, kinetic narrative.
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Art, Architecture & Photography
Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, by Rebecca Solnit
What makes a place? “Infinite City,” Solnit’s brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, searches for the answer by examining the many layers of meaning in one place, the San Francisco Bay Area. Includes 22 gorgeous color maps.
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This book presents the epic story of New York in photographs, photo-portraits, maps, and aerial views–nearly 600 pages of emotional, atmospheric images, from the mid-19th century to the present day.
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Photographs of the City of Light taken by a master photographer in the early part of the twentieth century.
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Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook, by Sara Roahen and John Edge
Including more than 170 tested recipes, this cookbook is a true reflection of southern foodways and the people, regardless of residence or birthplace, who claim this food as their own. Traditional and adapted, fancy and unapologetically plain, these recipes are powerful expressions of collective identity.
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Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, by Rene Redzepi
René Redzepi has been widely credited with re-inventing Nordic cuisine. His Copenhagen restaurant, Noma, was recognized as the best in the world by the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards in 2010 and received the unique ‘Chef’s Choice’ award at the same ceremony in 2009. Redzepi operates at the cutting edge of gourmet cuisine, combining an unrelenting creativity and a remarkable level of craftsmanship with an inimitable and innate knowledge of the produce of his Nordic terroir.
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New Brooklyn Cookbook: Recipes and Stories From 31 Restaurants That Put Brooklyn on the Culinary Map
A gorgeous compendium of greatest hits from the bold, exciting new restaurants of Brooklyn, compiled by a pair of serious eaters from Park Slope. Includes recipes.
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Of Gardens: Selected Essays, by Paula Deitz
Paula Deitz has delighted readers for more than thirty years with her vivid descriptions of both famous and hidden landscapes. Her writings allow readers to share in the experience of her extensive travels, from the waterways of Britain’s Castle Howard to the Japanese gardens of Kyoto, and home again to New York City’s Central Park.
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World of Trees, by Hugh Johnson
From well-loved oaks and pines to rare, spectacular species such as the snowbells of Japan, this lavishly illustrated work is an unparalleled guide to more than six hundred of the world’s major forest and garden trees.
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The Book of Leaves, by Allen Coombes
A lavishly illustrated volume, “The Book of Leaves” offers a visually stunning and scientifically engaging guide to 600 of the most impressive and beautiful leaves from around the world, each reproduced at its actual size, in full color, and accompanied by an explanation of the range, distribution, abundance, and habitat of the tree on which it’s found.
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Venice: Pure City, by Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial–a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the ultimate city.
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The Black Nile: One Man’s Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World, by Dan Morrison
With news of tenuous peace in Sudan, foreign correspondent Dan Morrison bought a plank-board boat, summoned a childhood friend who’d never been off American soil and set out from Uganda, paddling the White Nile on a quest to reach Cairo – a trip that tyranny and war had made impossible for decades.
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All Over the Map, by Laura Fraser
What’s a wise, witty travel writer to do when she reaches forty and is still single? Wander the globe searching for romance and adventure, of course.
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Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity, by Sam Miller
Sam Miller set out to discover the real Delhi, a city he describes as “India’s dreamtown–and its purgatory.” He treads the city streets, making his way through the city and its suburbs, visiting its less celebrated destinations–Nehru Place, Rohini, Ghazipur, and Gurgaon–which most writers and travelers ignore. His quest is the here and now, the unexpected, the overlooked, and the eccentric.
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