As 2009 comes to an end, many publications and pundits are offering their assessments of the best whatevers of the decade just past. Inspired by the best books of the decade list from Salon magazine, I’ve listed those from their list with which I agree, and I’ve added my own. These are the books that left the greatest impressions on me as a reader, through the authors’ craft, imagination and that magical je ne sais quoi that makes for a memorable reading experience.

The best books of the decade
A tribute to the fact and fiction we wouldn’t stop talking about in the 2000s
By Laura Miller

From the Salon list, here are the ones I’ve read that I agree are “best of” the last decade:

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathem Lethem

Additionally, here are other books I’ve read since 2000 that I think are “best of’s”, including links to previous reviews on this blog. (I’ll aim to add reviews for the others in, well, the next decade.)

• Darkmans, Nicola Barker

• Wild Dogs, Helen Humphreys

• Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones

• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

• Small Island, Andrea Levy

• Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

• A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro



• Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

• We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

• White Teeth, Zadie Smith

• A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews

• The Master, Colm Toibin

• Let’s Talk About Love – A Journey to the End of Taste, Carl Wilson

 

This is an engrossing and sensitive depiction of the complexities of human lives lived during the German occupation of France during the Second World War. It’s made all the more poignant by the fate of the author, who was arrested and died at Auschwitz in 1942. Her notes accompanying the manuscript reveal that she had envisioned an even more sweeping and ambitious work, but that she sensed that her time was running out. The novel’s appendices, detailing her notes and the correspondence of her last days and that of her family and colleagues as they tried to find and rescue her, are as riveting as the novel.

The mother of all trashy, addictive, guilty pleasure reads!

This examination of different mother-son relationships – some intimate, some estranged, some just strange – is movingly rendered in language that is simultaneously rich and plain-spoken. This is an absorbing read that I think would touch everyone in some way, even if you aren’t a mother or a son.

Mark Hurst waxes exuberantly optimistic on the promise of simple bit literate habits to make every computer user more productive and savvy. I think he underestimates how ingrained people’s habits are, coupled with their fear of the “mystique” of technology and their dependence on specific applications. His contention, though, that bits should be independent of a given company’s software or platforms makes very good sense. Even if you just develop a few of his suggested habits, you’ll be more in control of your digital world … and, whether we admit it or not, we all *do* have a digital world nowadays.

This book is sweet, funny and insightful. Winter unerringly dissects the intimate minutiae of relationships with friends and lovers, while simultaneously maintaining a wry distance, and also looking out at the bigger world. His dialogue is at times devastatingly hilarious and moving.