Continuing my series of posts looking back at my top 10 book lists from years past, today I'll re-visit my 10 favorite books from 2004. As a reminder, that means books I read in 2004, not necessarily books published that year. 2004 was a very eventful year for me personally, in that I became a mother for the first time! (And yes, that means Allison will be 14 next month - crazy!) I definitely did somewhat less reading in the latter half of the year being a new mom. But nonetheless, this is a pretty good selection of books!
Here's my list from 2004, in alphabetical order by author's last name:
Wedding Season - Darcy Cosper
The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
The Probable Future - Alice Hoffman
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
The Dogs of Babel - Carolyn Parkhurst
Second Glance - Jodi Picoult
The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
Little Earthquakes - Jennifer Weiner
How Does This List Hold Up Over Time?
Considering that I had a baby in 2004 and was definitely sleep-deprived for half the year, I actually remember these books surprisingly well. The two I remember the least are "The Probable Future" and "Second Glance," and I think that's in part because I have read so many books by those two authors (Alice Hoffman and Jodi Picoult, respectively) and that neither is the best of those authors' works. All the rest I actually remember at least what they were generally about, and many of them I actually remember pretty well. The one that stands out the most for me is probably "The Time Traveler's Wife," which I absolutely adored.
Genres
Two of these books are chick lit ("Wedding Season" and "Little Earthquakes"), one is historical fiction ("The Other Boleyn Girl"), and the rest are all contemporary fiction, though 3 of those have elements of the fantastic (magic in "The Probable Future," time travel in "The Time Traveler's Wife," and ghosts in "Second Glance").
Popularity
The most popular of these books on Goodreads is "The Time Traveler's Wife," with more than 1.3 million ratings. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime" and "The Other Boleyn Girl" were also huge bestsellers, and "The Namesake" was talked about a lot that year too. The least popular is "Wedding Season," with only 724 ratings.
Other Random Stuff
This list marks both Alice Hoffman's and Jodi Picoult's 3rd appearance on my Top 10 list. It's the second appearance for Jhumpa Lahiri and Jennifer Weiner.
The highest rated of these books on Goodreads was "The Other Boleyn Girl," with a 4.05 rating.. "Wedding Season" was not just the least read, but also the lowest rated, with a 2.82 average which is notably low for Goodreads - usually if I look up a book on Goodreads and it has less than a 3.3 or so average rating, I won't even bother reading it - but luckily Goodreads didn't exist back then as I remember thinking "Wedding Season" was a really enjoyable chick lit book.
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Note that I'll give all these posts the tag "Top 10," so you should be able to click on the label "Top 10" at the bottom of the post and see all my other Top 10 posts. And if you just want to see all my old Top 10 lists now without waiting, you can also click through to my Goodreads profile - I have a separate shelf for each of my old lists.
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