I know, I know. You’ve been sitting around for days reading other people’s lists of what they consider to have been the best things they read over the last year. You’ve even come up with your own winners. But where, you’ve asked, is soe’s list?

Wonder no more. I offer here for your review, my own thoughts on the best books I read over the last year:

1. Summerland, by Michael Chabon (Pittsburgh impulse buy)

My favorite book of the year for its knowledge of literature, complicated characters, love of baseball, and fantastic twists. My review from earlier this year.

2. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke (accidentally kept 6 months after its due date at the D.C. library before being purchased from Olsson’s)

This was my second-favorite book and the book that I bought most frequently during my Christmas gift-giving selections. The story of two magicians in turn-of-the-19th-century England, Clarke is deft with her portrayal of two men who are strong and weak in complimentary ways who share the common goal of returning magic to its original glory in Britain. Well worth reading the author’s debut novel of 800+ pages.

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling (an “opening night” purchase, also from Olsson’s)

My opinion hasn’t weakened over time. This is still a fine successor to a magnificent series. I can’t believe the next one is the end… My earlier review.

4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon (a gift from Sam several years ago)

After finishing an enjoyable Summerland, it occurred to me that my earlier trouble with this book might have been attributable to Chabon’s seeming difficulty writing the first few chapters of a book. This theory held up and I succeeded in finishing the book the second time around. The first half of the story of cousins and cartoonists Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay in an early-20th century New York City held up better than the second half, but was still compelling enough to make me want to read through to the end.

5. Eragon, by Christopher Paolini (a birthday present from Rudi two years ago)

I don’t know why I didn’t keep reading this book the first time around. I set it down one day, about halfway through the novel and didn’t pick it up again for two years. Mind you, it sat next to the bed for the whole time, which meant I intended to pick it up again any day, but it wasn’t until after Danny read and liked it that I went back to it. The story focuses on a young man being raised by his uncle in a rural village under the tyrrany of a dragonrider gone bad, until a blue stone and a storyteller cross his path and change his life forever. The book kept me riveted during the second reading and I sped through it. Young Paolini’s sequel in the trilogy, Eldest, is on my reading list for 2006.

6. The Summer We Got Saved, by Pat Cunningham Devoto (advance reader copy at ALA Midwinter)

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the storyline and the characters, which takes place in Alabama and Tennessee in the early- or mid-1960s and is the intertwined stories of three main characters (a 14-year-old white girl named Tab who gets whisked off to a radical “summer camp” by her aunt, Tab’s father Charles who envisions a more liberal Alabama, and a 17-year-old African American girl named Maudie who has survived polio to become a voter registration teacher) and how they deal with the changing times and mores of the period. Anyway, I enjoyed it enough that I’m actually interested in investigating the history behind the historical fiction.

7. Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor (a 2004 Christmas present from Rudi)

I struggled to think about what book would round out my top ten and realized that there had been one book that I’d picked up, mulled over, and consulted on multiple occasions in the last year — and that was Keillor’s first collection of poetry. (Continued mulling made me boost it up in the ultimate ratings.)

Keillor says in his introduction that good poets “offer a truer account than what we’re used to getting. They surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar. The soft arc of an afternoon in a few lines. Poems that make us love this gaudy, mother-scented, mud-bedaubed language of ours.” He includes some old favorites and then introduces us to some new poets we ought to be more familiar with. Ultimately, he hopes the poems will ricochet around our heads, follow us through our daily trials and tribulations and morning coffee, before ultimately settling around our hearts, able to help us celebrate the beauty in the infintesimal and to struggle through tragedy. Gramma gave me Keillor’s second collection for Christmas this year and I’m eager to read on.

8. The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri (a 2004 Christmas present from Sam)

There seems to be a glut of excellent Indian-American fiction on the market and Pulitzer-Prize-winning Lahiri is one of the leaders of the genre. The story crosses two generations — the older immigrants from India, the younger their children — and focuses on the son Gogol. I think children of immigrants face certain unique challenges, but this story pointed out how universal coming of age ultimately is. If you enjoyed Toni Morrisson’s Song of Solomon, you will enjoy this, as well.

9. The Lost Continent, by Bill Bryson (bought at Politics and Prose)

For the last decade or so, I have been compiling books I think I might like to read one day. When I lived in Middletown, I would write the books on index cards and carry the cards with me to the library and get them out. That was back when I lived in a town where the library was likely to have a majority of the books I wanted. Now, I record them in a little book and it seems more of a way to feel like I could eventually get to all the interesting books I’d like to read someday than a productive means of providing reading suggestions.

But I digress. Back when I was carrying around the little cards, Bill Bryson’s name appeared all over them. Every time a bookstore or a bookclub member or a magazine reviewed one of his books, I wrote it down.

Last spring, I happened upon one of his books at the Quaker church’s used book sale and bought it. A Walk in the Woods was highly enjoyable and informative and led me to the audio book of Notes from a Small Island, which we didn’t finish before we had to return it to the library.

So when we were at Politics and Prose one afternoon last January, Bryson’s book on small-town America demanded to come home with me.

Bryson grew up in Iowa (the subject of his next book according to a recent interview in the Post) and did his journey in two legs (east and west of his hometown — and his mother’s garage). He covers the good, the bad, and the ugly of America’s shops, hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions, and does it all with a keen eye and a sharp wit.

You couldn’t ask for a funnier tour guide (in fact, I suspect that if he opted to start leading tours, he could be a rich man). So if you happen to want to travel anyplace — known, unknown, or academic (he’s written about language and science, as well) — through a good book, I cannot recommend his work highly enough.

10. The Language of Baklava, by Diana Abu-Jaber (won through a contest at Bay Area Bites)

I debated including this book in my top ten and then decided I would because it succeeded in ways that others do not. Yes, it made me interested in the culture of the Middle East, the home of Abu-Jaber’s father, but it also made me want to whip up some of the recipes that she includes, driving me so far that I now have tahini, chickpeas, and rose and orange blossom water in the kitchen cabinets. Food writing at its best.

Feel free to share your own thoughts on what was and what wasn’t great in your own reading piles.