I thought about the best books I read in 2010. Two came to mind: Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow, and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were so good I followed up with Bellow’s, A Theft, and Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, which I hadn’t read since high school and discovered there was much to be appreciated on my second trip to West Egg. The scene in which Daisy and Gatsby are reunited over tea at Nick Carraway’s house is a gem! The lexicon of those great writers is something I’ve found to be very rare amongst writers today. I edited my novel this year using Fitzgerald as a thesaurus. Some examples of his interesting and beautiful language: “Mrs. Speer’s consciousness was still clogged with sleep…” “The hotel crouched amid tumult, chaos and darkness.” “Already he could feel her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulder; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden…”
On my list for 2011 are The Adventures of Augie March and This Side of Paradise.
What did you read in 2010?
What are you looking forward to reading in 2011?
