The Millions is in the middle of it annual series treat, A Year in Reading, in which various contributors recommend the best books they read this year, whether published in 2010 or not. The site’s been kind enough to ask me to participate the past two years. My entry is still to come, but there’s a lot up already: Lionel Shriver chooses to do God’s work and praises William Trevor, Dan Kois can’t resist choosing Freedom, Anthony Doerr admires a book that is both “a quest for the loneliest places in the world” and “a testament to the transformative power of maps,” Margaret Atwood recommends a book that’s been in print since it was published in 1860, and Emma Rathbone says one novel “fulfilled a need for British postwar spinster fiction I didn’t know I had.” . . . Jessica Francis Kane talks to Mark Doten about her debut novel, which will be reviewed here soon: “In the very beginning, it was a book set only in 1943. Then I saw Errol Morris’s Fog of War and realized I wanted to write about tragedy and how we remember tragedy.” . . . Christopher Graham profiles and interviews Lewis Lapham, who explains why he’s not approached more often by op-ed pages: “I’m not apt to know what I’m going to say, and they need people they can rely on. Your opinions have to be a commodity that can be trusted to measure up to the contents named on the box. You know what Rush Limbaugh’s going to say, you know what Paul Krugman’s going to say, and so on. God help them if they should change their minds.” . . . The Library of America’s blog recognizes Louisa May Alcott’s birthday, and approvingly quotes another source: “[Little Women is] something much better than ‘great’: it is beloved.” . . . Melville House asks if you can think of any authors “who have produced two great yet unalike works within a short period of time.” . . . As ever, Largehearted Boy is rounding up all of the year-end best-of lists you could want (and more).