Oh look, another "best of" list

[Anamnesis]

The best books of the ’00s | Best Of The Decade | The A.V. Club

I was pleasantly surprised to see The Terror on here. I never read any of Simmons' work, but it's good to see at least one horror title in the bunch. I wish the writer(s) of this list included Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris in the nonfiction section--Running with Scissors and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim were two of the funniest books I've read this decade (and possibly of all time).

 

[Peder]

Well, at least it was a straightforward list of books judged to be best as books, instead of books best at doing something else like, say, defining a decade or whatever.

And I was beginning to despair of finding even a single book I had read on the list until Gilead turned up, which I liked immensely, but which many other people I know with well informed opinions found to be a snore-fest. So I'm glad to see it on one list so far. Time Travelers Wife I've read and wouldn't call that outstanding, but it is on the list, so OK. And I did read The Road, which is indeed outstanding.

Perhaps I should get around to reading The Corrections, which is on the shelf in front of me, but just at the moment I'm reading 2666 as an alternative monster tome. And perhaps I should finally get with it and read The Tipping Point, to join the parade before it goes completely passé. Then, in ten years or so, I might actually twitter for the first time. Who knows?

As for books that I wish could have made some list, I will single out only one, because I thought it was that outstanding: Light Years by James Salter. Nuf said. If anyone is curious, just go look. I count it as one of my best reads of the decade, even though it was written out of the decade (1975) and I got to it only recently. So I hope someone else gets to enjoy it too, before it and the decade fade completely.

For the rest, I've heard of many, but will continue to skip them as I go my own way with other idiosyncratic readings from other decades. And then the new deluge will start arriving.