Extra Special Post! First Year’s Top Ten

This week marks the one-year anniversary of my blog, so I decided that would be the perfect time to announce my top ten books instead of doing it at the end of last year. My list is a little different from other lists in one other way. It is a list of the top ten books I’ve reviewed in the past year, not those that were published that year. Also, since it was difficult to narrow down my list even though I restricted myself to the best books list, I had to make some artificial rules for myself–for example, to only select one book from a series or by an author.

So, with no further ado, here is my list, in the order of appearance on this blog (earliest to most recent):

• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
• The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin
• Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• Queen’s Play by Dorothy Dunnett
• Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
• Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh