What Was Your Favorite?

2010 is drawing to a close, and as the new year approaches, the Best of 2010 lists are popping up all over the place. Publishers Weekly chose their top 100, with 10 overall front-runners, and 90 picks from specific genres. Of note among the genre favorites were: Faithful Place by Tana French, Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny, and Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell. Amazon's Omnivoracious blog released The Top 10 (and More) (pictured above) in November. And most recently, the New York Times Book Review published their Top 10 Books of 2010. You can click on the link to check them out.

Personally, I enjoyed a couple of books that popped up on these "best of" lists -- Tana French and Louise Penny are two writers I just discovered this year and they now rank high among my favorites. I'm looking forward to reading a few others, though I probably won't get to them until the new year. But I try not to feel like I should read a book simply because it has been deemed important by the powers that be. Personal recommendations carry far more weight, probably because they usually yield better results. My favorite read of 2010 was suggested by a colleague and was published years ago. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon is where dark and gothic intersect, rife with plot twists and layers of complexity, and simply beautiful.

NPR has a whole slew of "Best of" lists broken down into amusing categories, including Sex, Drugs, and 'Life' - The Year's Best Guilty Reads. I don't know if Rick Springfield's memoir would normally catch my interest, but Susan Jane Gilman's annotation of it was a fun read. In that light, I look on all of these "best of" compilations not as any kind of definitive 2010 canon, but as a source of inspiration for the next time I find myself without a good book on my nightstand.

And now for the vote that really counts: what was your favorite book of 2010?

I could use a laugh.

Ever had one of those days? ...or weeks?

Adult life can be serious business, full of responsibilities and deadlines, checklists and consequences. But woven among the worries and the burdens we carry are shining moments of glee -- chuckles and giggles, snorts and guffaws to lighten the load and remind us why we work so hard.

Like my mother before me, I find comic relief in my children. America's Funniest Home Videos has twenty seasons of recorded evidence to support the position that, most times, there is nothing so hilarious as family.

Sometimes, though, baby escape artists and fashion model five-year-olds fail to tickle my funny bone. When I've got a lot on my plate and life seems to get a bit more complicated at every turn, I can lose my sense of humor.

Where do I turn when I could use a laugh?

When I take a look around, here at the library, side-splitting opportunities abound.

Choose the format you prefer. For example, my husband laughed all the way to work, and home again, listening to the audiobook of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on CD, but it can also be found in the DVD section and among the books. Absurdistan is another humorous selection available in multiple formats.

Among the audiobooks, I came across offerings like English Majors with NPR legend Garrison Keillor, and Old Time Radio Comedy Favorites -- including greats like Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor. I took home Abbot & Costello on a digital playaway so I could chuckle while I sat in a hospital waiting room.

Into funny fiction? Try Wild Ride by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer or The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore.

Memoirs like Sarah Silverman's The Bedwetter and Howie Mandel's Here's the Deal Don't Touch Me can show insight into the lives of comedians.

Check out the Comedy section in the CDs on the third floor. You can find recordings of performances like Chris Rock's Cheese and Crackers and Tailgate Party by Larry the Cable Guy.

If the funny pages make you grin, head upstairs to the fourth floor to reminisce over Calvin and Hobbes or The Far Side. We've got Doonesbury, too.

Right here on this very website, One-Click DVD Searches under the heading Read/Watch/Listen will take you right to our latest selection of Comedy DVDs, like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Men Who Stare at Goats, and The Great Buck Howard, just to name a few.

Milton Berle said that "laughter is an instant vacation," so take a moment to think about it -- what makes you laugh?

Now go ahead and treat yourself, check out a free laugh from the library!