What's your 'Book of the Decade'?

[toomuchsplother]

Someone has just asked me this! Such a hard one and obviously everyone is going to have a totally different idea.
I am going with 'Lincoln in the Bardo' by George Saunders, which I know is a 'marmite book' but blew me away when I read it.
I have reread it at least 3 times, gifted and recommended it lots too.
Watching with interest to see other people's choices..

Life after life and a God in ruins for me too.
Fabulous.

Life After Life
American Wife
All the Light we Cannot see.

Like a pp I feel I got more out of books and reading in the decade 1990 - 2000. More time..too many distractions these days.

Place marking for later!

Gotta be the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch

Hard one, but given inspiration from earlier pp suggestions, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has to be a very strong contender. There are moments in that book which will never leave me.

I'm part way through A Little Life though so we shall see. It's good, but hasn't pulled me in just yet.

Where the Crawdads sing I just loved it. Beautiful story highly recommend it

The Girl on the Train.

I’ve read and enjoyed a lot of the books mentioned, and could make a case for a few if I thought about it, and sure I’ve forgotten some great ones, but going to go with what immediately sprang to mind - Milkman by Anna Burns. Had such an extraordinary, rewarding experience reading it and has one of my favourite narrators ever.

Hmm ...

Eleanor Oliphant
Life after life
Behind the scenes at the museum
The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold fry
Perfect
The girl on the train
Before I go to sleep
Miss Smillas feeling for snow
A man called Ove

Too many...
The Goldfinch maybe, A Man Called Ove, Eleanor Oliphant is up there...but in terms of books that I absolutely couldn't put down the Hunger Games trilogy takes some beating.
I seem to be the only person on the planet who found All the lights we cannot see really hard work.

A Little Life was exhausting but I did feel a sense of achievement after finishing it.

The Goldfinch. I read a lot but this was the one that instantly came to mind.

I didn't enjoy All the light we cannot see either and was struggling to finish it

In terms of the most prominent book, it's a hard one to call as there have been many

I was absolutely overwhelmed by The Good Samaritan by John Marrs, it was the first time ever that I felt compelled to look up the author's social media page and leave a message saying how just how much it struck me

Really interesting looking over some of these choices . However... time is flying faster than we think because when I looked up the publication dates on some of these I was shocked-

Behind the scenes at the museum 1995
Miss Smillas feeling for snow 1992
Hunger games - only the last was written in 2010
American wife - 2008
A thousand splendid suns - 2008

If we are going for books published this decade, I would also have Life After Life and A God In Ruins (never really got the fuss about Atkinson before those two), but also Faithful Place, Broken Harbour and The Secret Place from Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series. I think French is brilliant, and those three are my favourites.

I am sure there are others I've forgotten.

The Goldfinch. God I loved that book.

I am going to add:
The Heart's Invisible Furies
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Tin Man
I second: Home fires, God in Ruins and many other already mentioned.
Adding Lincoln and little life to my 20s read list

The Goldfinch. Fabulous.

(Wolf Hall too, but that was published in 2009.)

Not life changing but I loved -

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
(Claire North)

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hard castle
(Stuart Turton)

Have only just realised how weirdly similar the titles are.

Also looking forward to reading some of the novels mentioned here.

For me a thousand splendid suns and the kite runner. I also loved the hearts invisible furies.

Just ordered the goldfinch, life after life and all the light we cannot see :)

The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker. A female retelling if the Greek-Trojan wars. I could not put it down. I also love The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (2005).

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt. Beautifully written and almost poetic in parts.

Burial Rites - Hannah Kent. Dark and riveting. Based on a true story of an Icelandic murder and reminiscent of Atwood's Alias Grace.

Station Eleven was ok......I prefer the dystopian worlds Atwood and Huxley write about. Won't be rushing out to buy her new novel published this year.

The Heart's Invisible Furies
The Goldfinch
The Poisonwood Bible
Life After Life
The Blind Assassin
Star of The Sea
The Forgotten Garden
Atonement

To name but a few, we are all different, I hated Lincoln in The Bardo, thought it was one of the worst books I've attempted to read

Damn! forgot Middlesex, loved that one too

I loved A Thousand Splendid Suns too - and All The Light We Cannot See.

Additionally I really enjoyed Circe, The Help, The Night Circus, This is Where I Am and The Shadow of the Wind - although not all of these were actually published in the 2010s, this was just the decade I read then in...