Favorite Read(s) of the Year

A glance at my sidebar will show that when I am not beading, I can usually be found with a book. It’s time to pick a favorite from 2010.

Having lived in Jackson, Mississippi in the early seventies, I felt like the characters in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help were old friends. They were my privileged, intolerant upstairs neighbors. They were the women I stopped to chat with at the bus stop when my year-old daughter and I went for our morning walks. It’s a wonderfully written book told from the voices of three very different but incredibly strong southern women. If you haven’t read it, I recommend the audio book, where the narrators’ voices make the characters even more vivid (and harder to leave behind!)

But my favorite book of 2010 has to be Mornings on Horseback, David McCullough’s biography of the pre-presidential life of Teddy Roosevelt. The subtitle says it all: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. This is an amazingly detailed look at a close-knit family – an admired father, a cherished mother and the life they created for Teddy and his siblings in post-Civil War New York City.

The running list on the right doesn’t include all the beading books I’ve savored (devoured!) during the past twelve months. It’s even harder to pick a favorite in this category. But I love peyote stitch, and I was able to take my skills from flat to dimensional this year with Diane Fitzgerald’s Shaped Beadwork. The clear and detailed instructions and gorgeous projects make this a book I’ll return to again and again.