1. Cormac McCarthy, THE ROAD -- Somehow it has gotten out that I don't like this book. Untrue! I liked it, though not as much as NO COUNTRY... or BLOOD MERIDIAN.
2. Marjane Satrapi, PERSEPOLIS
3. Barack Obama, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER
4. Robert Bringhurst (trans.), MASTERWORKS OF THE HAIDA MYTHTELLERS -- I've never heard of this, but won't rule it out just for that reason.
5. Irène Némirovsky, SUITE FRANCAISE -- Own it, haven't read it -- is it worth the hype?
6. Malcolm Gladwell, THE TIPPING POINT
7. Yann Martel, LIFE OF PI -- Ooooooooverrated.
8. Margaret Atwood, PAYBACK: DEBT AND THE SHADOW SIDE OF WEALTH -- I didn't like it but I've seen it pop up on some other lists like this.
9. Ian McEwan, ATONEMENT
10. Dan Brown, THE DA VINCI CODE
11. Leo Tolstoy, WAR AND PEACE (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
Sorry, what? I know I'm on record as declaring WAR AND PEACE overrated, and since I haven't read the new translation I can't speak to its greatness. (There's also a debate to be had over whether new translations count as new publications.) But this juxtaposition should never have been allowed to happen. I hope there was
(There ought to be a subset of Godwin's Law about that phrase and conversations about publishing, but naturally I'm not willing to donate my last name to it.)
3 comments:
Um, I thought that WAR AND PEACE was written before the noughties.
But at least I've read some of these books! Specifically, I've read three of them: PERSEPOLIS, LIFE OF PI, and THE DA VINCI CODE, and while I am no fan of LIFE OF PI, that is still probably the order in which I would put them.
I mean, if the editors of the Times had read fewer than 100 books published in the past decade among them, then I can understand putting THE DA VINCI CODE on that list by default.
...Shoot, now I have to go back and figure out if that would also be the case for me, at which point I may have to eat my words.
You've read about 50 books this year, so I think its safe to assume you've read more than 50 this decade.
Off the top of my head, and in no particular order: The Corrections, Kavalier & Clay, The Road, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Moneyball, Atonement, Consider the Lobster, The We Came to The End, Gilead, White Teeth, and Falling Man.
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