Personally, I think everyone should post a list of the books that delighted or awed them over this past decade, without pretending it’s anything definitive.
--Jeff VanderMeer
Nobody ever gets over their first camel.
--Bryher
I love lists and am wary of them. They are a being that is half parlor game, half manifesto. And half a few other things, too, including whatever's in the dumpster outside my friend Maury's apartment in Detroit. (My arithmetic skills are impressive, I know. And I don't have a friend name Maury. I'm not sure I even know anybody who lives in Detroit.)
The years 2000-2009 were important ones in my life as a reader, though, and I would like to memorialize them with something. I could spend the next decade making lists of books from the previous decade, but I've probably got better things to do. Instead, here's a list of books that come to mind this morning, Saturday, 13 February 2010, when I think about the previous ten years. I'll mostly, though not exclusively, stick to fiction here, because I read tons of nonfiction but in a very different way from fiction. Some links are to my reviews or notes about the books, though in cases of books I haven't written about or haven't written about online, I've included a link to The Book Depository, unless I knew of a better source of information.
Here's the list:
