Best Book of 2010 (so far)?

[Greg Zimmerman]

What is the best novel you've read in 2010 so far?  It could be either a novel actually published in 2010 (for me, Bloodroot, by Amy Greene) or a novel published any time that you've read in 2010 (for me, Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann).

My TBR pile is actually thinning out a bit, so I'm looking forward to hearing your suggestions.

[Leah Hudson]

Best one read (despite publishing year): The Road by Cormac McCarthy

[Kelli & Natalie]

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (read in 2010).

While I know it's not a piece of lasting greatness, I really enjoyed Richelle Mead's Spirit Bound (5th book in the Vampire Academy series) (released in 2010).

[Chelsea Hegge]

I loved The Help as well. Easy to read but meaningful a rare combination. Plus a bonus of entertainment

[JessicaW]

I would say the Road as well but in order to give a different answer I also loved In memory of the forest by Charles Powers

[Joseph Arellano]

The best so far this year? It would have to be The Truth About Delilah Blue, a novel by Tish Cohen. Here are not just one but two (2) reviews:
http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/free-fallin/

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/the-truth-about-deli...

[Alley Rivers]

The best book I read in 2010, though it was published in 2002, is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

What Red Read

[The Girl from the Ghetto]

I loved The Help by Kathryn Stockett. And I just got to meet her two weeks ago. What a fabulous book.

[Skip O'Neal]

I really, really can't decide between MATTERHORN by Karl Marlantes and THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE by Julie Orringer. If pressed, MATTERHORN comes out ever so slightly ahead.

Skip

The Reading Ape

[Matthew Yau]

This novel has some remarkable word-smithing that gives it some essence of literature. But I wonder why McCann has chosen the tightrope walker as the device to link all the individual stories. As much as the novel deals with love and loss, the choice of the twin towers, even in 1974, can’t help refresh raw memories of the more recent attack.

As for me, the best novel I've head so far is Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry has also made a lasting impression.

[Greg Zimmerman]

Well, I think McCann used the tightrope walk as the symbol for New York exactly FOR the reason you mention - that it brings to mind the recent attacks 27 years before they happened.

Furthermore, McCann almost explicitly explains his choice of using the tightrope walker as the common element of all the stories : "The city lived in a sort of everyday present....New York kept going forward precisely because it didn't give a good goddamn about what it had left behind." And then later, "(The tightrope walker) had made himself a statue, but a perfect New York one, a temporary one, up in the air, high above the city. A statue that had no regard for the past." For that reason, Petit's walk was a "stroke of genius." And McCann's use of the walk as the unifying element is too, in my humble opinion....