The 2010 Pub Challenge is about reading 10 books published in 2010. Follow the link to the official home page of the challenge to read the rules and how to sign up. Even before I discovered this reading challenge, I had made a new years resolution to read 10-12 books in 2010 that had been published in 2010. I have discovered that my reading feels more exciting when I mix in a good many new books. But this challenge presents another challenge: How to find the best books of 2010 before the end of the year when everyone publishes their Best of 2010 reviews?
The only solution I can think of is to read as many book reviews as possible and see if I can spot titles with several consistent rave reviews. Bookmarks Magazine does just this, but unfortunately, I’ve sworn off buying paper magazines, but they do have a links page to many current book reviews.
What I’ve decided to do is collect links on this page to the best online book reviews I can find. Hopefully this will help me spot the emerging best books of 2010. I also create another list, one for books I want to keep an eye on. Working on this 2010 goal is actually helping me achieve a long term goal I’ve been thinking about for years. I’ve always wanted to find a way to systematically read book reviews. Even if I don’t have time to read all the books I want, I’d like to at least be aware of what’s out there. Assembling this list below has been very rewarding already.
Best Book Review Sites
- Arts & Letters Daily
- The Atlantic
- Barnes and Noble Review
- BookBrowse
- bookforum.com
- Booklist Online
- BookPage
- BookSpot
- Chicago Tribune
- Christian Science Monitor
- The Complete Review
- Entertainment Weekly
- Guardian
- Kirkus Reviews
- Los Angeles Times Books
- New York Review of Books
- New York Times Books
- New Yorker
- Publishers Weekly
- Salon
- SFFMeta
- The Times
- USA Today
- Washington Post
- Wilson Quarterly
- 100 Best Book Reviewing Bloggers
2010 Books to Keep an Eye On
JWH – 1/2/10
Auxiliary Memory 
Another way to read new books is to keep an eye out for new ones by authors you’ve enjoyed in the past. I know that Don DeLillo has one coming out this year as does Steig Larsson. I also read a lot of reviews, though.
Bekah, I do follow authors to a degree, but when I think about it, I’m surprised by how many dead authors I favor. There were several writers I was looking forward to their next book and those books got less than exciting reviews, so I’m hesitant. Novels like Her Fearful Symmetry or The Almost Moon or The Mermaid Chair just never seem to catch fire.
I’m anxiously awaiting Yann Martel’s next novel, Beatrice and Virgil, but it sounds weird. It must be hard to write a novel after writing a novel that’s been embraced by readers all over the world.
In recent years I’ve had pretty good luck with Pulitzer and Booker awards. So awards can be a good indicator, but not for catching great books the same year they are published. The Booker Prize has a long nomination process that helps.
You might want to take a look at The Complete Review website:
http://www.complete-review.com/main/main.html
Its indices page is worth a visit:
http://www.complete-review.com/maindex/maindex.html#tit
Thanks Mike, I added The Complete Review to my list of Book Review sites. What a wonderful resource. I wonder how many great book review sites are out there, creating fantastic content, but going unnoticed.
Here’s a little link which came to my attention today –
“Most Anticipated: The Great 2010 Book Preview”
http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2010-book-preview.html
It’s selected new releases through August plus some with unknown release dates.
Bekah