Top 10 Literary "Things" of 2010...So Far

Here we are, already at the midpoint of 2010. So let's take a post and look back at the Top 10 most interesting, funny, and stupid book-related events, stories or general happenings of the first 180 days of the year.  

10. Jonathan Safran Foer on The Colbert Report — It's very rare that a literary novelist makes an appearance on a mainstream TV talk show, so this was exciting. Let's just conveniently ignore the facts that Foer's Feb. 8th appearance was on a "fake" talk show to discuss his non-fiction book, Eating Animals, okay? Foer kept up with Colbert pretty well, which is significant as Colbert almost always gets the best of his guests, or at least flusters them to some degree. It's just a great clip. "Since you seem to be very interested in animal love-making..." 

9. Publish or Perish — This mid-April New Yorker piece laid out the e-book landscape and explained how iPad is changing it. The article is as complete and interesting as any piece you'll find on the changing publishing culture.

8. Walter Kirn Snubbed for Oscars (at first) — Note to readers: If you ever publish a novel, and that novel is adapted into a screenplay, and that screenplay is made into a movie starring George Clooney, and that George Clooney is nominated for Best Actor (and the movie is nominated for Best Picture), your invitation to attend the ceremony is far from a sure thing. Up In The Air novelist Walter Kirn eventually did get to attend the Oscars, but his initial snub seemed like a huge slap in the face to the real creative genius behind many movies.

7. Dan Brown is MIA — I don't have a link for this one, but in my view, when it comes to Dan Brown, no news is good news. I must say I find it refreshing that after the initial publicity bounce from last year's deplorable The Lost Symbol, we seem to have collectively decided to ignore Dan Brown. Kudos to us! 

6. Tinkers, by Paul Harding Wins Pulitzer; Heads Are Scratched — Though I still haven't read it, I have it on good authority that Tinkers is actually a very good book. Still, it seems very bizarre that the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded in April, was awarded to a novel actually published on January 1, 2009 and that it was a book very few had heard of and even fewer had read. 

5. R.I.P. J.D. Salinger and Jose Saramago —  The Catcher in the Rye novelist, also famous for his reclusiveness, died Jan. 27. Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel Laureate, probably most famous for Blindness, died June 18.

4. This Just In: Christopher Moore IS Funny — I'd put off reading Christopher Moore for years, but finally got around to Lamb in January. I absolutely loved it! On another note, because I love books and I love music, I thought, naturally, I'd love books about music — but I wasn't really a fan in my first foray into Nick Hornby. 

3. Sparks to Readers: Stop Miscategorizing Me! — And we have our leader in the clubhouse for the 2010 "Totally Un-Self-Aware Award." Nicky Sparks, who clearly didn't understand that photo-posing with Miley Cyrus wouldn't help his cause when attempting to make himself appear smart, tried to make the case that he's a literary, not romance, author. Anyone who knows anything about books (and terrible romance movies) laughed heartily after reading this March USA Today article, and then went about their day. 

2 . Millenium Series on Cover of Entertainment Weekly — Especially as EW has increasingly toed the People/US Weekly line, it was refreshing to see a novel show up on the front cover of a pop culture mag, as it did for the June 25th issue. I really gotta get to these Stieg Larsson books, or you're going to start wondering about my literary cred.

1. Amy Greene's Bloodroot is the Best Book of 2010...So Far — Bloodroot is simply mesmerizing.You should definitely check it out. If you do, I'll read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Deal? 

So what has caught your eye so far in 2010? What did I miss here? Any nominations of your own for Best Book of 2010...So Far (must have been published in 2010)?