Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary lists her best reads of 2010.
Thank you so much for all your help this year with suggestions for books and apologies in advance if a book you have recommended isn't on the following list.
I have pruned and pruned but this is the smallest I can make my annual list.
The first category is recent books that have drawn rave reviews from almost everyone.
I considered excluding David Mitchell's 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Man Booker prize winner The Finkler Question only because a few of you have found them very slow going.
It really is worth persevering with these two, so have another crack at them and concentrate, you slackers! Having said that, I still haven't managed to finish Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel so I do understand the problem.
Louis Zamperini was an Olympic track athlete who was drafted into the United States Air Force during World War 2.
You can probably guess from the title that he was a bit wild and hard to keep down.
An air crash in the Pacific, shark attacks, a long stint in various Japanese POW camps - this man could beat them all.
It's very American (weeping when they see their flag, justifying the use of atomic bombs and generally "my God and country"-ish) and very fabulous.
Hard to believe it's non-fiction but Hillenbrand is strong on research, and with the hero still very much alive at 93, it must be true.
Although some of my favourite book suggesters have been at me for a while to read this, I didn't much like the sound of it.
I was a fool.
This is going to be one of the biggest hits ever.
Room by Emma Donoghue is another great read.
A young woman lives locked in a garden shed.
She's had a child in there and the story is told from the 5-year-old boy's point of view.
His innocent ideas about the life he considers normal are shocking to us, and reading it reminds you constantly that everyone thinks their own life is just like that of other people's.
It's very tense and creepy, but very beautiful at the same time.
I don't know of anything written quite this way before.
Ian McEwan's Solar is the latest addition to this brilliant author's brilliant body of work.
Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning scientist who hasn't done much in recent times apart from philandering and stealing people's ideas.
He's thoroughly obnoxious and if you enjoy a little schadenfreude, you will be so happy to read of the downward path his life is taking.
This book is very funny and, as ever, McEwan doesn't waste a word.
Nora Ephron has been a very busy writer (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Julie and Julia and loads more) but this is her memoir.
Definitely a candidate for the best memoir title, I Remember Nothing is a series of essays about her life and what it's like now she's 66.
It's impossible not to laugh and even more impossible not to wonder how she knows exactly what you're experiencing.
Matthew Johnstone and James Kerr have put together the two-sided Alphabet of the Human Heart, a delicious illustrated alphabet of life.
The "upside" cover shows a heart-shaped tree covered in flowers and leaves with happy people enjoying its shade.
The "downside" cover has a bare tree with sad people cringing underneath its leafless, grey branches.
When you read the "upside", "f" is for "friendship" and "h" is for "hope".
The "downside" describes "fear" and "hate" for those letters.
"A handbook for the happy and a Bible for the broken-hearted" is how it has been described.
Perfect.
Someone Knows My Name by Canadian Lawrence Hill is a historical novel, i.e. a novel based on real events and real people but rearranged enough to be considered fiction.
Meena is a black African girl who is caught by the slavers and sent to the southern states of America.
The original title was 'The Book of Negroes' (a much more memorable and meaningful title), and the book is a record of all the African slaves who were promised liberty and land in Nova Scotia if they helped the British troops.
She is a highly intelligent and eloquent midwife, but keeps her talents well hidden.
A smart, well-spoken slave is a great threat.
As with all books covering the subject of slavery, there is a lot to be horrified by, but the way Hill keeps Meena beating the system and reaching her goals makes it more palatable, and his swift and easy style earns it full marks.
TERRIFIC NEW ZEALAND TITLES
A Life on Gorge River by Robert Long is the story of New Zealand's remotest family.
Robert Long a.k.a. "Beansprout" lives in South Westland with his wife and two children, a good five-hour walk from the nearest road.
It's a life of extraordinary hardship and richness and a reminder of how easy and comfortable our lives are.
I wouldn't swap for quids, but I am fascinated by the way they have managed this very different way of life.
Rebel with a Cause is New Zealander of the Year Ray Avery's ghostwritten autobiography.
You can't beat a seriously good story of one man making a huge difference, and this is New Zealand's version of that story.
A brilliant scientist and entrepreneur from a very discouraging background, he has truly changed the lives of vast numbers of people without hope around the world.
In Pinot Central our own Alan Brady tells the history and adventures of growing pinot noir in Central Otago.
Despite all the expert opinions advising the opposite, he went ahead and planted the vines anyway.
It was only 30 years ago, and it is hard to imagine not having the essential Otago red wine here now.
Brilliant photos, and anyone local will know most of the characters.
John Blair - Architect is exactly what it says.
This book takes a look at some of the best of local John Blair's work in his 40 years of practice.
The photos are great and there are so many buildings I recognised but didn't know were John's work.
As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong is her novel on love and life for Chinese immigrants in an unwelcoming Wellington.
Racism is nothing new and this story set in New Zealand is written in beautiful language while describing some very ugly behaviour.
The Free-range Cook: lovely Annabel Langbein's face is everywhere these days with her enormously successful television show and her hard-to-go-wrong recipe book.
Delicious food and you could almost eat the photos.
BESTSELLERS AT DOROTHY BROWNS
Simon Mawer's The Glass Room has as its hero a 1930s glasshouse designed by Mies van der Rohe in Czechoslovakia.
The house represents the open thinking and modern ideas of the intellectuals who are forced to flee when the Nazis invade.
Mawer's bestselling novel depicts the history of World War 2 for the Czech people.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery has been one of the all-time favourite books.
It's a French novel, fluently translated into English.
The "hedgehog" is Renee, the ugly, dumpy, prickly concierge of a smart Parisian apartment building.
She's well versed in philosophy, art, music and literature and is mad about Japanese culture.
So is Paloma, the young daughter of one of the residents.
She plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday.
These two covert intellectuals enjoy feeling superior to all around them and finally get talking once the new Japanese resident moves into the building.
City of Thieves by David Benioff is set during the siege of Leningrad.
As a punishment, two young men are given the task of finding a dozen eggs for the general's daughter's wedding cake in the foodless city.
Lev and Kolya's adventures, as they try to avoid failure which will cost them their lives, make for a tense, laugh-out-loud funny, unputdownable book.
Loving Frank by Nancy Horam is still enormously popular.
Naughty architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a serial philanderer.
This historical novel uses the material available (plus a bit of artistic licence) about the great man and the affair he had with one of his many mistresses.
It's a heartbreaker and a marvellous, snoopy, up-close look at the life of FLW and this "immoral" woman in the early 20th century.
When A Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin is a chilling history of Zimbabwe under madman dictator Robert Mugabe.
Godwin has cleverly laid his own parents' history over the top of it.
A doctor and an engineer, they believed in Mugabe's ambitions for the new country and stayed to help make it work.
It's tragic to read how their determination to do good failed, and even more tragic to learn how the regime undermined all that was already good about Zimbabwe.
Godwin is one of the few outsiders to have documented what was happening in this unhappy place.
Warhorse by Michael Morpurgo is the perfect book to share with a younger reader.
This is World War 1 through a horse's eyes, has been made into a terrific stage play and is set to be made into a film by Steven Spielberg.
While it is a child's book, there are few adults who won't get great pleasure from it as well.
Touching and tense without being sentimental or scary, it ticks all the boxes for getting reluctant readers to see how interesting books can be.
GREAT BOOKS I HAVEN'T READ
These are nearly all by favourite authors of mine and I just know they're going to be good.
Of course, there is Ken Follett's Fall of Giants, part one of his trilogy covering the 20th century - ambitious task!
Ape House, by Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen, is a novel based on researchers who are studying bonobos and the relationships between the apes and the humans.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: Henrietta unwittingly gave her cancerous tumour to science and it has provided huge benefits to the world.
Science can be heavy going for the average reader but this is meant to be a terrific read.
Matterhorn is Karl Marlante's superb-sounding novel that he wrote to explain his service in the Vietnam War.
Jo Nesbo, author of The Snowman, is billed as the next Stieg Larsson.
He's a Norwegian crime writer and this thriller is said to be spectacularly good.
This list could be ten times longer and I'd still have to miss out some great reads.
Keep telling me what you love and have a great Christmas.
