Apparently, we’re at the end of the decade. (We’re not really, not if you believe all those people who said 2000 wasn’t the beginning of the new millennium but rather the end of the old one.) But that hasn’t stopped every Moe, Larry and Curly from creating a “Best of the Decade” list of books.
Here are just a few to hold you over until the real end of the decade.
- The Times UK newspaper came up with its 100 best books of the decade. It’s an impressively comprehensive list, with a wide range of fiction and nonfiction alike. It also mixes “popular” books such as Twilight and Harry Potter with “literary” books like Middlesex and The Corrections. Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic journey The Road took the number one spot.
- Over on The Millions blog, they’re writing up the Best of the Millennium, So Far, which is very ambitious of them, to say the least. That list pits the critics against the fans, with the critics naming Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections as number one and the fans giving the honor to Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Overlaps between the two lists include The Road, Atonement, Middlesex and Gilead.
- The book-sharing website Good Reads asked its readers and users to name their favorites from the past ten years. They gave top honor to Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, with the top 10 including lots of Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Kite Runner. This list is probably much more reflective of an average reader’s taste, compared to the critics who usually compile the lists for specific publications.
- Another list from across the pond, the Guardian UK had a “best of the decade” series with individual posts for each year. Among the books included in those posts were White Teeth, The Corrections, The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, the 9/11 Commission Report, several books by Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore writings on climate change and, in the year leading up to the 2008 election, both of Barack Obama’s books.
- Lastly, Entertainment Weekly dived into the ’00-’09 nostalgia and came up with its picks for the 10 best books of the decade. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (widely considered by many to be the best of the seven, save for the last book) came in at #8, while The Corrections took spot #6. And once again, Cormac McCarthy claimed the high ground with The Road being named #1.
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