In the year in which the death of the book as we know it was often heralded, it seems that good books were to be found in excess. So edgetsread has decided to jump into the NYTimes literary jenga game with a red wagon stack of some of his own favorites. 

A is for The Atlantic, Simon Winchester’s account of the ocean by which I live and in which Philip Hoare’s awesome The Whale swims.

B is for bridge, the game played in The Card Turner. Who knew the card game, teen angst & a crotchety old man could play so well together?

C is for the novel of the same name by Tom McCarthy, rightful inheritor of the title post-modern novelist.

D is for dance as in ballet, the subject of Apollo’s Angels, the exquisite history of a disappearing art.

E is for Emily Dickinson’s estate, which looms large in the controversial bio Lives Like Loaded Guns. Talk about a incentive for estate planning!

F is for Full Dark, No Stars, proving Stephen King is still king of the creepy, master of the mind-boggling.

G is for American Gothic painter Grant Wood, the subject of R. Tripp Evans’ fascinating biography.

H  is for Hamburger Halpin, as in the oversized protagonist of Josh Berk’s The Dark Days of... who abandons his school for the deaf and finds a little more than he bargained for when a fellow classmate dies at an abandoned coal mine.  No, really!

I is for Insectopedia, Hugh Raffles compendium that starts with bugs and then encompasses way too much to go into here.

J is for juvenile, as in the section where you’ll find the masterful biography Sir Charlie, helping keep Charlie Chaplin’s antics alive for a new generation.

K is for Alfred Kinsey who appears often in my very favorite nonfiction book of the year The Secret Historian, a sometimes randy, always respectful, biography of the forgotten figure, Samuel Steward.

L is for The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, a book about a baseball hero but that is really about so much more.

M is for the master as in The Autobiography of Mark Twain, proving the master of self-promotion can even outlast a century.

N is for the newspaper business disappearing in Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists, a book well-deserving of all its accolades.

O is for outer space, where the always hilarious Mary Roach takes us Packing for Mars.

P is for poets Paul Guest, Mary Oliver, C.K. Williams and all those in Poetry in Person. All new accessible volumes well worth reading.

Q is for queen as in the queen Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff’s great bio which proves, once and for all, that the Liz Taylor movie was...well, wrong.

R is for Rumi’s appearance in Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love, a thought-provoking novel about love and spirituality.

S is for The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, the slim volume about a gastropod and a debilitating illness which stays with you long after the ailing author Elisabeth Bailey has returned the snail to the wild.

T is for The Tiger, a true adventure story told with adrenaline.  If you are the thrill-seeking type, do not miss reading this one!

U is for Under The Sun, the letters of Bruce Chatwin, the renowned travel writer who lived a fascinating life, even though he could infuriate family and fans alike.

V is for how very vexed (and vexing) President Jimmy Carter reveals he could be in his massive White House Diary.

W is for Will Grayson, Will Grayson, another oversized Will on the young adult shelves, leading a complicated adolescence. I started 2010 reading this short book and still haven’t forgotten its charms.

X is for 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, Rebecca Goldstein’s novel sure to have even the most skeptical among us, thinking and the most confident, doubting.

Y is for Karen Yamashita’s I-Hotel, a giant novel written in various forms, all of which make it both difficult to follow at times and yet somehow a joy to read.

Zzzzzzzzz is for the sleep I lost reading short story collections Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson, and Sourland by Joyce Carol Oates, which towers among all of these book as my favorite fiction book of the year.  In its opening story, a young suitor arrives at a widow’s door with a jack-o-lantern on his head to charm, court or torment her. What happens next and for the entire book is classic Oates and storytelling at its very best.