From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2011

If you've been following this blog for a while, then you'll know that I contemporaneously made a top 10 list of my favorite books I read each year for many years, all the way back to 1999 when the internet barely existed!  But since I started this blog, I've been slowly re-visiting my top 10 ten lists from years past, both to share them with those who weren't original recipients of those lists, and out of curiosity to see how the lists hold up over time.   Today I'll be looking at 2011.  As a reminder, these are books that I read in 2011, not necessarily books that were published in 2011.

Here is my 2011 list, listed in alphabetical order by author's last name.

A Dog's Purpose - W. Bruce Cameron
America, America - Ethan Canin
The Passage - Justin Cronin
Room - Emma Donoghue
A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Faithful Place - Tana French
The Wrong Mother - Sophie Hannah
Roses - Leila Meacham
The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein
The Help - Kathryn Stockett



How Does This List Hold Up Over Time?

I have to say, this is a damn fine list!  As we get closer to the present day, the quality of these lists seems to be getting better and better - or I'm just remembering them more because it's more recent in time.  😉  The only book on this list that I don't remember at all is America, America, and Roses is a little hazy in my memory.  But I remember the rest pretty vividly.  5 of the 10 books were books I gave 5 stars at the time - The Passage, Room, A Visit to the Goon Squad, The Art of Racing in the Rain, and The Help.  It is hard to narrow down, but you know I am constantly blabbing both on here and in real life about how I live for The Passage (click on the tag for The Passage at the bottom of the post and you can see some of my other entries gushing about it) so if I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be that one.

Genres

One of the fascinating things about this list is that it contains not just one, but *two* books told from the perspective of a dog (A Dog's Purpose and The Art of Racing in the Rain)  I don't know if that is really a genre but I'm going to include it as one.  There are also two mysteries (Faithful Place and The Wrong Mother), two historical novels (Roses and The Help), one science fiction/horror/dystopian thriller (The Passage), and one book of linked short stories (A Visit from the Goon Squad).  The other two are I suppose literary fiction.  So this might be the first (and possibly only?) list of mine that doesn't include any chick lit or contemporary women's fiction.

Popularity

There are a lot of quite popular books on this list, but the most read has to be The Help," which has a whopping 1.8 million ratings on Goodreads.  The least read on Goodreads is America, America, which only has 3,261 ratings as of today.  

Other Random Stuff

The Help also has the highest average rating on Goodreads, with a 4.46.  The lowest rated is The Wrong Mother with an average rating of 3.48.

A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize.  None of the rest of the books won anything major.

This is the third appearance on the list for Justin Cronin who was also on my 2003 and 2007 lists.  And it's the second list (and third book) for Tana French whose first two books I put on my 2010 list.

Although I had a kindle in 2011, I still hadn't fully transitioned over to reading on it, so all these books were actually paperbacks that I owned, and I think I still have most if not all of them.  Indeed, waiting for the book to come out in paperback instead of hardcover is why "The Help" is on my 2011 list when many other people read it back in 2010!

My book club started in 2011, and two of the books we read in book club that year ended up on this list - Room and A Dog's Purpose.  Both of those books were also adapted into movies, as was The Help.  I haven't seen A Dog's Purpose, but the other two movies were great.

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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.