Top 10 Books of the Decade

[Hilldodger]

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is well inside my top ten.

 

[Perfect Virgo]

I’ve started then abandoned a lot of novels in the past decade. Weak vocabulary and writing style often spoil a good premise and I can’t stick with it. I am as much drawn in by style and technique as storyline. There have been only a handful of authors whom I couldn’t put down. Mostly the books on this list are highly authentic fictional studies in human nature and character:

1998 Wally Lamb – I Know This Much is True
a truly astonishing insight into mental illness and how it affected the sane half of twins. Lamb completes one novel every 6 or 7 years and his exhausting effort shows. His dialogue is natural and convincing.
1998 Douglas Coupland – Girlfriend in a Coma
2002 Sue Monk Kidd – The Secret Life of Bees
2002 Alice Seebold – The Lovely Bones
2003 Siri Hustvedt – What I Loved
2004 Iain M Banks – The Algebraist
2005 Jackson Tippett-McCrae – The Bark of the Dogwood
An incredibly complex work of art set in Georgia and NYC. Reminiscent of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil but infinitely superior. This is a story within a story about a man at last able to research and confront his childhood. It is a long novel but not a single word is redundant. Various layers are intricately interlaced and even the characters and place names are clever but unobtrusive anagrams. It reaches a devastating climax which could have been agonising to read if it weren’t so exquisitely phrased. Utterly recommended.
2008 Stephen King – Duma Key

I find McCrae and Lamb are modern masters of the English language who write effortlessly.

 

[goo_mason]

I’ve started then abandoned a lot of novels in the past decade. Weak vocabulary and writing style often spoil a good premise and I can’t stick with it. I am as much drawn in by style and technique as storyline. There have been only a handful of authors whom I couldn’t put down. Mostly the books on this list are highly authentic fictional studies in human nature and character:

1998 Wally Lamb – I Know This Much is True
a truly astonishing insight into mental illness and how it affected the sane half of twins. Lamb completes one novel every 6 or 7 years and his exhausting effort shows. His dialogue is natural and convincing.
1998 Douglas Coupland – Girlfriend in a Coma
2002 Sue Monk Kidd – The Secret Life of Bees
2002 Alice Seebold – The Lovely Bones
2003 Siri Hustvedt – What I Loved
2004 Iain M Banks – The Algebraist
2005 Jackson Tippett-McCrae – The Bark of the Dogwood
An incredibly complex work of art set in Georgia and NYC. Reminiscent of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil but infinitely superior. This is a story within a story about a man at last able to research and confront his childhood. It is a long novel but not a single word is redundant. Various layers are intricately interlaced and even the characters and place names are clever but unobtrusive anagrams. It reaches a devastating climax which could have been agonising to read if it weren’t so exquisitely phrased. Utterly recommended.
2008 Stephen King – Duma Key

I find McCrae and Lamb are modern masters of the English language who write effortlessly.

I'll need to look over the bookshelves when I get home to remind myself of what I've read since 1999, but Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much Is True" was certainly one of them and one I'd put on my list. His latest work, based around the Columbine killings, was another great read.

 

[mknash]

Just 10 and just the last decade is tricky.

I would say just about anything from Iain M Banks (his sci-fi works) and Terry Pratchett (back on top form), also loved The Time Travellers Wife (female written book I have most enjoyed in a long time).

"the girl with the dragon tattoo" and "the girl who played with fire" by Stieg Larsson are both great examples of the crime genre (with an "edgy" heroine very reminiscent of a computer game protagonist).

And as it is fresh in memory "Anathem" by Neil Stephenson would go down as the best book fo the year by far.

 

[Perfect Virgo]

I'll need to look over the bookshelves when I get home to remind myself of what I've read since 1999, but Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much Is True" was certainly one of them and one I'd put on my list. His latest work, based around the Columbine killings, was another great read.

Yes indeed. Also his earlier "She's Come Undone." It must be rare for a man to write so convincingly about a woman, especially in a first person narrative.

 

[marinyork]

As this list has warped slightly into the late 90s I don't have so much of a problem posting what I was thinking the other day. I wrote a list and then though argh two of them are from the 90s as time does warp your senses slightly as to when things were written and not when you necessarily read them.

Naive. super - Erlend Loe
The Amber spyglass - Philip Pullman
The light of day - Graham Swift
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
The road to reality - Roger Penrose
JPod - Douglas Coupland
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Rowling

I don't read that much fiction from the naughties, the list is probably only three dozen long. They're all pretty light reading books, slightly funny and simplistic and tilted slightly in fantasy direction. These are more favourites, I've read better written books but enjoyed them less.

 

[Stig-OT-Dump]

Might I recommend the following?

The Book Thief - Markus Zuzak
The Kite Runner and / or A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khaled Hosseini
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamed
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Lovely Bones would be in there but has already been mentioned. Can't make up my mind about the other 3.

The Shipping News, by E Annie Proulx misses out by some 5 years. The fantastic Ashley Book of Knots, referred to in the shipping news, misses out by many more years but has got to be up there with some of the best books ever published, it really is a work of beauty.

 

[Bandini]

I'm scratching my head a bit here to remember what I've read in the last ten years


The Long Firm, Jake Arnott. I loved the different perspectives on the same man, especially the Open University lecturer.

He Kills Coppers, Jake Arnott. I thought this was really good too. I especially liked the journalist, occasional serial killer character.

I enjoyed both of those.

 

[rich p]

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is well inside my top ten.

I have an unproven theory that his wife wrote it as every other book of his has been sheer tripe IMHO.

 

[Hacienda71]

Iain Banks Dead Air
J G Ballard Super-Cannes

Both good reads.

 

[Unkraut]

This thread is filled mainly by works of two kinds of authors:

a. Those of whom I have never heard.

b. Those whose names crop up on the review pages but I've never come across anybody who's actually read their books. Until I read this thread that is.

I am clearly grossly inadequate in literary terms. .

Is this because you have been ex-pat for so long, and so don't have such easy access to buying English books? I can certainly relate to what you are saying!

For myself, I have read Roy Jenkin's Churchill, and Max Hastings' Road to Armeggedon about the last year of WW2, together with his Bomber Command. Also a couple of books on Arnhem, but I don't want to get too bogged down in WW2, interesting as it is. I never quite finished a German book on Dresden, as it was too harrowing.
Apart from that, have read several different detective novels, including Morse and some Wexfords, and a couple of Agatha Christies in German, but these are more holiday reading. The thread has reminded me I don't read enough, though there are three reasons for this who are now growing up and giving me more time perhaps. I've got a couple on recent British history still to get into.
FM - it won't be that long before 'books' like The Blue Balloon, Thomas the Tank Engine and Little Miss Cyclist etc. etc. will be added to your list - to be read over and over and over again until either they fall asleep, or you do.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Forgotten The curious Incident of the dog in the nightime, thanks for the reminder.
Also enjoyed Stalingrad and Longitude as faves.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

FM - it won't be that long before 'books' like The Blue Balloon, Thomas the Tank Engine and Little Miss Cyclist etc. etc. will be added to your list - to be read over and over and over again until either they fall asleep, or you do.

Oh Christ! - my two year old is only interested in one book at the moment - 'Maisy's Bathtime'. I couldn't begin to guess at the amount of times I've read it....it was 6 or 7 last night. "read it, read it"

It's Maisy's bathtime, she runs the water and puts in some bubbles....and in goes duck. Ding-dong, oh that's the doorbell, Maisy runs downstairs to see who it it. Hello Tallulah, Maisy can't play now it's her bath time....

 

[Bandini]

I have an unproven theory that his wife wrote it as every other book of his has been sheer tripe IMHO.

Ha! Agreed.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

The Kite Runner and / or A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khaled Hosseini

The Shipping News, by E Annie Proulx misses out by some 5 years. The fantastic Ashley Book of Knots, referred to in the shipping news, misses out by many more years but has got to be up there with some of the best books ever published, it really is a work of beauty.

I have read all three of these.

Khaled Hosseini's are good but awfully sad as well, but read them both very quickly as I got sucked in....