With just a few days left in the year, I decided that it’s a good time to review my favorite books of 2010. I’m probably forgetting a couple of good books here, but as I thought back over what I’ve read, these are the books that stuck out in my mind.

Intellectuals and Society, by Thomas Sowell — Clear, precise, and insightful, as I’ve come to expect from Sowell.

Are We Winning?, by Will Leitch — A pleasant surprise from Leitch. Thoughtful, without lapsing into the sentimentality too common in sports memoirs.

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis — Demonstration that Lewis can make the most difficult and convoluted story into something compelling.

Blind Descent, by James Tabor — The best of the various pop science/adventure books I read this year.

The Passage, by Justin Cronin — I can’t say it better than Maggie: These aren’t your angst-ridden, emo teen vampires.

The Game from Where I Stand, by Doug Glanville — If I could have been a ballplayer, this is the book I would have wanted to write.

The Fall of the House of Zeus, by Curtis Wilkie — What more must be said about this book? Read it.

Yes, Steve Martin the actor.  He’s actually quite the Renaissance man–actor/comedian, fiction writer, playwright, and he even has his own bluegrass band.  I kind of love Steve Martin so I may have already been a bit biased when I picked this novel up, but I enjoyed it. In my opinion it’s written the way you’d think an actor would write a novel–kind of like it’s already a movie.  I could easily see the narrator in An Object of Beauty voicing over the film version (think Shopgirl, which if you haven’t seen it is a nice little film starring Steve Martin based on a novella written by Steve Martin–see, I told you that I love Steve Martin).

An Object of Beauty is about  Lacey Yeager, a young woman anxious to make it big in the New York art scene. Lacey is ruthless when it comes to getting what she wants, and you can’t help but feel pity for Martin’s nerdy art writer narrator for being mixed up with her.  All in all it’s a quick read with 2-3 page chapters and nice color prints of each art piece that Martin’s characters encounter.  Pick it up because you’re curious about whether or not good ol’ Steve can pull off being a novelist, or pick it up because you, like me, think Steve can do no wrong, or pick it up to learn a little about the New York City art scene.

And after you do so, come in and talk to me about it.  So far I’m the only person I know of who has read it, and that’s just no fun.

P.S. Steve has even written a book for children.  Can you believe this guy?  We have signed copies here.  -Kaycie

Growing Up in Mississippi is a collection of essays written by a wide range of notable Mississippians–from news anchor Maggie Wade, writers Ellen Douglas and Richard Ford, our former Governor William Winter, and many more distinguished educators, entrepreneurs, and artists. Accompanied with a photograph from their Mississippi childhood, these essays attempt to capture the parents, teachers, communities, history and landscape that shaped their young minds as they rose into adulthood.

In the foreword, Richard Ford writes of the difficulty in constructing a clear picture of what actually influenced an individual as we all “invent” influences to serve our own needs and desires: “How does influence work, when you get down to it? I’m not sure. But it rarely works as mechanistically as, say, a hammer ‘influencing’ a nail to penetrate a prime piece of pine planking. I sometimes think that Mississippi influenced me by so insisting that Mississippi was an influence that I ran away across many state lines just to prove that the accident of birth was not as powerful as my own private acts of choosing” (xii).

With this challenge of defining influence, the twenty-nine contributors earnestly set down their stories. While it has already been two years since the first publication of Growing Up in Mississippi, editors Judy H. Tucker and Charline R. McCord have given Mississippians a timeless collection of stories illustrating the wide range of talent and ability nurtured by our Mississippi landscapes.

Tucker and McCord’s latest collection is Christmas Memories from Mississippi. Christmas Stories from Mississippi is another collection which also makes a great gift.

A teacher in Austria, I had finally given myself permission to indulge in English language reading when I ran across a paperback of The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart by Alice Walker in a Swiss bookstore.  It was the title that convinced me to the purchase the book as I had never read Alice Walker before.

The opening stories are a fictionalized reflection of Alice’s marriage to civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal. Even though the reflections are weighted with the heaviness of a broken heart, I admired this couple in Jackson, Mississippi, Alice teaching and writing, birthing and raising their only baby girl, Mel working late nights all across Mississippi to prosecute civil rights violations. Alice also worked for the Legal Defense Fund, documenting cases of blacks who had been evicted from their homes because they had tried to register to vote.

When I first read Alice Walker’s work in Austria, I never ever would have imagined that I would find myself living in Jackson, Mississippi–since at that time I had no connections in Jackson. It was some time after I moved here that I picked The Way Forward off the bookshelf and was amazed that this book and I were here.

Since then I have read Alice Walker’s biography and was saddened to read the details of how Alice was unhappy and often felt her creativity to be stifled in Jackson. Obviously, she moved on as need be and has long felt Mississippi’s imprint.

Did you know that one in four Americans has high blood pressure? It is estimated that only 70 percent of these individuals know that they have high blood pressure. To help increase awareness and to aid those who are working to lower their blood pressure, Dr. Chad Rhoden of the University of Mississippi Medical Center and registered dietitian Sarah Wiley Schein have written a comprehensive yet practical book on this widespread condition.

Rhoden and Wiley offer straightforward plans for creating new habits regarding diet and nutrition; weight loss; exercise; binge eating; alcohol, tobacco and drug use; and stress management. To help develop some of these habits, Bringing Down High Blood Pressure also includes a guide for food selection as well as 70 delicious recipes for reducing blood pressure. Also included is a thorough discussion on the benefits and risks of various medications in addition to a discussion on alternative therapies.