Friday, December 27, 2019

Top 10 Books of the Decade

I posted my Top 10 movies of the 2010s earlier this month, so now it's on to the Top 10 books of the 2010s.



10. Beautiful Ruins (2012), Jess Walter: I would call this one an epic. Walter expertly weaves together the lives of multiple characters over the course of a lifetime, with unrequited love always the driving force. Walter hasn't published another novel since this, so I eagerly await more from him.

9. A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010), Jennifer Egan: This is a brilliant book. Don't take my word for it, Egan won a little something called the Pulitzer Prize for this baby. Egan masterfully uses multiple characters, weaving their stories together to create a transcendent whole. I don't want to give anything away, but at one point Egan uses the power point format, and if for no other reason, you should read this book just to see how she pulled it off.

8. The Goldfinch (2013), Donna Tartt: At 784 pages, this is the longest book in my Top 10. Although critical reception was quite mixed, it did manage to win a little something called the Pulitzer Prize. I was very excited when the film adaptation came out, but unfortunately, the movie is no where near as good.

7. Unbroken (2010), Laura Hillenbrand: Nonfiction doesn't get much better than this. Louis Zamperini is a true American hero, and you will be a different person after reading his heroic story. Simply put, Hillenbrand is a nonfiction master.

6. Gone Girl (2012), Gillian Flynn: This book is just wicked fun. I like to think of it as War of the Roses.....on steroids.....or even better, meth.  Flynn's first two books are really good, but this one was a coming out party for a great writer.

5. Born to Run (2016), Bruce Springsteen: If you love The Boss, this book must forever live in your personal orbit. If you don't love The Boss, you should still read this book. It is one of the best looks into the mind of an artist I've ever come across in any medium.

4. Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), Jesmyn Ward: This is an epic road novel about 3 generations and the ghosts that haunt them. It is also a searing portrait of a country still struggling to deal with its past. Ward is arguably the best American novelist of the decade. This is her second book, the other being Salvage the Bones in 2011, to win the National Book Award.

3. Killers of the Flower Moon (2017), David Grann: In the early 1920s, oil deposits were discovered on the land of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma. Grann masterfully details a series of murders of wealthy Osage tribal members that essentially amounts to a secret history of the American frontier. This is hands down my favorite nonfiction of the decade.

2. The Underground Railroad (2016), Colson Whitehead: In this alternate history infused with surgical doses of magical realism, the Underground Railroad is reimagined as an actual railroad. The protagonist is Cora, a runaway slave whose journey is a unique exploration of the foundational sin of America. This is the first book since The Shipping News in 1993 to win both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.

1. Station Eleven (2014), Emily St. Mandel: I wold call this a literary descendant of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. This is the book that simultaneously moved and entertained me the most this decade. I can't say that I remember specific details of the story all that well, but the memory of it hovers in my mind and still has the power to evoke the feeling of awe I had when reading.

Let me know what you think of my choices, and of course, I'd love to hear your thoughts on best books of the decade.

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