Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

9Dec/090

Smashing Words: The Best Books of the Decade

Yes, I know there was no "year zero." I know that means the decade can't really end until New Year's Eve 2010. But just as The Empire Strikes Back is obviously an '80s movie (21 May 1980) and Goodfellas belongs to the '90s (18 September 1990), so the pop culture of a mere season away will belong to the future. Also, I'm well aware that this is my own list, not yours or the New York Times's or anyone else's. I can only tell you what knocked my own subjective socks off, the books that resonate in my mind years later, the books I've given as gifts because I couldn't imagine anyone I respect not falling in love with them. My book list owes a lot to Jennifer Reese, former book critic for Entertainment Weekly, but also to my friends, most of whom are rapacious readers. I recommend all these books unreservedly and wouldn't dream of ranking one above the others, so here are all twenty in alphabetical order by title.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon -- No one writes a better sentence than Chabon, a master of every genre he attempts, but his most extravagant novel has hundreds of pages in a row of perfect detail and character to back them up. I live in awe of his talents and probably always will.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell -- Also known as the voice of Violet Parr in The Incredibles, Vowell packs her adoration for Lincoln and American history on a cross-country tour of all the places people tried to kill a president. I'll admit I'm not much of a history buff, which is probably why John Adams by David McCullough narrowly missed this list, but Vowell's so adorably entertaining, she's the atheistic Okie history teacher I would've developed an insufferable crush on. And she turns forty just after Christmas this month, so happy birthday, Ms. Vowell!

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz -- A brazenly Spanglish love letter to the lonely, labyrinthine lives of pop culture nerds of all ethnicities. It might as well have arrived with "Dear Carv, please read" on the cover.

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold -- I've pimped this book so many places to so many people they probably think I wrote it, but no, it was the debut novel of a guy who's probably better known as Mr. Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones). If you haven't read it yet, you probably never will, but I'll give it one last try: This was the most pure fun I've had reading since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If only his second novel, Sunnyside, which was every bit as erudite, had been even half as entertaining.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon -- Since Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn was published three months too early to qualify for this list (his Fortress of Solitude earns honorable mention, and I'm reading Chronic City as we speak), I'll give the Dysfunctional Narrator of the Decade to Christopher Boone, Haddon's fifteen-year-old autistic savant.

(And don't you dare think about writing in Bella from Twilight, a far crappier book than the excessively ridiculed Da Vinci Code.)

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson -- Hells, yeah, I mix nonfiction and fiction. You got a problem with that? It's all about the story either way, right? And Larson has a humdinger of a serial killer yarn to share, set in and around the dazzling 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Expo.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser -- Before Super Size Me or Food, Inc. (in which Schlosser is a recurring interviewee), there was this nauseating exposé. I haven't been able to stomach fast food since.

It's Superman! by Tom De Haven -- This is the 1930s-set Man of Steel movie I wish someone at Warner would finally make, concealed in grown-up book form. No, strike that--not just anybody. I want Marc Forster to direct this sucker with Roger Deakins lensing and a young Kyle Chandler as Superman. Make that happen, Warner Bros. Oh, and I also want the ghost of Aaron Copland to write the music.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini -- I read this just before a secondary wave of Middle Eastern memoirs inundated our shores, each of which begged the question, "I wonder how this particular author will be horribly molested?" My point is, don't move to the Middle East.

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan -- One of the most overwhelming challenges an author can face is to make the lives of ordinary, working class people riveting. What could possibly sound less amusing or instructive than the wintry final shift of a shuttered Red Lobster franchise? Yet O'Nan makes it fly, and manager Manny De Leon is one of the most memorable characters in years.

The Last Samurai by Helen De Witt -- First and foremost, this has nothing to do with Tom Cruise. It's the story of Sibylla and Ludo, a mother and her brainiac child, trying to find a surrogate father within ancient Greek literature and the films of Akira Kurosawa. Be warned: This is an intellectually punishing read, and I wouldn't recommend it for a long, noisy flight. But believe me, the reward is worth all the extra effort...which is more than I can say for Infinite Jest.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel -- You've probably read it. Almost everyone has, and by now it's become a bit fashionable to bash it (that floating island, oy!). But consider this: You remember it pretty damn well, don't you? And you don't even like magical realism, do you? The book's undeniable merit aside, we also have its Amazon associations to thank for so many people discovering Geek Love and Water for Elephants.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides -- As gimmicks go, the life story of a biological hermaphrodite is almost laughably hard to beat, but this is more than just a hook; Eugenides wrings the idea for all it's worth and then some. They say a book's opening sentence should grab every reader's attention. Well, try this on for size: "I was born twice..." And the rest of the paragraph is even better than that.

Nine Minutes Twenty Seconds by Gary M. Pomerantz -- A Scott Evans find, so please remember to thank him after you finish this book in a daze. Nine minutes and twenty seconds is the length of time ASA flight 529 stayed in the air before crashing into a west Georgia hayfield in August 1995. Everyone on board survived. But to call the account of what happened next either breathless or shattering would in no way be excessive; I was wiped when I finished it. Yet what lingers is the unpredictable pettiness and heroism of ordinary humans under extraordinary circumstances.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan -- Almost every "best of the decade" critic's list out there places Atonement near the top, and it is very good. But for my money, this slim novel accomplishes just as much as Atonement or Saturday in only two hundred pages. I'm writing a novel about sex myself, or rather, how we find ourselves longing for the thrill-a-minute sex lives our culture overpromises, so On Chesil Beach has become my new high hurdle. Never say I don't aim high.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi -- If a graphic novel about a teenaged girl rocking out to "Eye of the Tiger" in post-Islamic Revolution Tehran doesn't warm your cockles, then you should probably stay away from The Kite Runner as well. I'm just sayin'. Don't move to the Middle East, is what I'm sayin'. (See also The Thousand Splendid Suns, Reading Lolita in Tehran...) Persepolis earns its frequent comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus, and if you've read that instant classic, then you know this is high praise indeed.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy -- Leaving soon from a theater near you. Throw the movie on your Netflix "save" queue; spend more quality time with the book. I have a longstanding beef with authors who disregard quotation marks around dialogue. It's pretentious and pointless--but McCarthy (Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men) is so amazing he gets a lifetime pass. I'll be the first to admit my apocalyptic novel is nowhere near as good as his...though it does have better jokes.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson -- Actually, you could start pretty much anywhere with Bryson; he's so much fun. But this book really does feel like an introduction to every single thing the human race has ever been, said, or learned in only five hundred mesmerizing pages: He's the ultimate teacher. Maybe that's how, in 2007, he was able to capture Shakespeare in only two hundred pages (also highly recommended).

The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis -- This is the book in which every resident of Varennes (not the one near Montreal in Quebec, but a Faulknery fictional border town) is given a voice. This includes senior citizens, little girls, foxes, lichens, glaciers, and a Dodge Dart. Davis sets the bar so high that it's a laudable miracle how far she leaps over it. What an under-read gem.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith -- I could've just as easily included Smith's On Beauty from 2006, but I stuck with her first novel because it's as masterful a debut as any I've seen in my lifetime. White Teeth gets better, richer, wilder, and more delightful with every page, and it's a book only one author could have written. I think that's the kind of literary art that affects us longest and matters most.

Keep an eye out for my Best TV and Movies of the Decade lists, coming later this week.

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  1. I couldn’t read “The Road.” I got about 20 pages in and became amazingly depressed. I also tried to read S.M. Stirling’s end of world series around then, but I was a brand new father and reading about helpless children in that horrible world was too much for me then. (I was one of those fathers who worried about SIDS until my stomach hurt.)
    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon has been on my shelf for awhile now. Maybe I will read it over the Christmas break.

  2. Two books on your list I found only mediocre – Devil in the White City and On Chesil Beach. However, I listened to both of these on audiobook, and this could have been greatly affected by the narrator. I thought they were so mediocre, though, that I have no desire to try to actually read them in print. :o)

    I completely concur with your choices of Carter Beats the Devil and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (which I also listened to on audiobook, but the narrator was awesome!)

    And your book is certainly one of the best I’ve read this year…I’d have to think about it for the decade, though. That’s a long time!

  3. Yay, I got name-checked! I discovered Bryson this year (Thunderbolt Kid) and can’t wait to read more. I also really liked Water for Elephants. 200 pages into Under the Tome…er, I mean…Dome right now.

  4. At least I can back you up on many of these. Devil in a White City had my hands glued to the cover. The Last Samurai and The Road were equally good.

  5. I loved Kavalier and Klay, the Hitchhiker’s Guide, Middlesex and The Road. I agree that dialogue without quotes can be irritating. So can lapsing into Spanish without the English translation, which McCarthy did frequently in his “Border Trilogy.” But like you I’m willing to give him a lifetime pass on these and other transgressions.

  6. Alec, you might have an issue with Junot Diaz.


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